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<p>The Indian Smart Cities Mission (SCM), launched in 2015, has been celebrated as one of the world’s largest urban transformation initiatives. While the program aims to modernize infrastructure and governance across 100 cities, its narrative has been dominated by quantitative rankings, dashboards, and competitive indices such as the Ease of Living Index and Municipal Performance Index. This paper critically reviews the SCM by focusing on three interrelated issues: the limitations of India’s metric-driven evaluation system, the inequitable outcomes of Area-Based Development (ABD) projects, and the governance challenges posed by Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and weak citizen engagement. Drawing on comparative insights from selected Indian cities, the paper argues that official metrics privilege infrastructure delivery and managerial efficiency over lived urban realities, thereby masking exclusion, displacement, and widening digital divides. At a broader scale, the Indian case exemplifies how global smart city narratives, when translated into a highly centralized, competition-driven model, reinforce technocratic governance while neglecting equity and sustainability. The paper concludes by proposing a reformed evaluation framework that incorporates citizen satisfaction, distributive justice, and environmental resilience as core dimensions, offering lessons for urban policy design in India and beyond.</p>

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Smart for Whom? Reconciling EoLI/MPI with urban well-being in India

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月28日

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  • Nazish Abid,
  • Mohammad Faisal Noor,
  • Somi Sareen,
  • Sagarika Nayak

摘要

The Indian Smart Cities Mission (SCM), launched in 2015, has been celebrated as one of the world’s largest urban transformation initiatives. While the program aims to modernize infrastructure and governance across 100 cities, its narrative has been dominated by quantitative rankings, dashboards, and competitive indices such as the Ease of Living Index and Municipal Performance Index. This paper critically reviews the SCM by focusing on three interrelated issues: the limitations of India’s metric-driven evaluation system, the inequitable outcomes of Area-Based Development (ABD) projects, and the governance challenges posed by Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and weak citizen engagement. Drawing on comparative insights from selected Indian cities, the paper argues that official metrics privilege infrastructure delivery and managerial efficiency over lived urban realities, thereby masking exclusion, displacement, and widening digital divides. At a broader scale, the Indian case exemplifies how global smart city narratives, when translated into a highly centralized, competition-driven model, reinforce technocratic governance while neglecting equity and sustainability. The paper concludes by proposing a reformed evaluation framework that incorporates citizen satisfaction, distributive justice, and environmental resilience as core dimensions, offering lessons for urban policy design in India and beyond.