اثرات پذیرفته شدن خدمات فناوری اطلاعات در شهرهای هوشمند مطرح هند Effects of successful adoption of information technology enabled services in proposed smart cities of India

Introduction Few cities, mostly in developed countries, have already taken a new shape with updated and modern facilities where different information technology (IT)-based digital services are readily available to their citizens. These cities where all modern amenities and facilities are mostly based on IT platform are called “Smart Cities”. Practically, urban settings have undergone thorough changes due to substantial and accelerated development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The cities are becoming smarter as a consequence of enhancement of e-governance-related services provided to their residents. This also improves the economy of those cities, which in turn eventually improves the economic health of the whole country. Hence, conversion of cities to smart cities would improve gross domestic product (GDP) of that country. Probably with this contemplation, the Government of India has decided to create or convert cities to make them what we may call “smart cities”, where all the services available to the citizens would be IT-enabled. Government of India, through its “Ministry of Urban Development”, has adopted an exhaustive, comprehensive and implementable detailed plan to develop and enhance the living standards of residents of cities and has taken an initiative to upgrade or to newly set up 100 cities having all the modern amenities and facilities, mostly based on IT platform, to create “smart cities”. However, with the effort from Government and private enterprise, there are few smart cities in progress in India, which are in their advanced stages. Few of the smart cities which are in progress are Lavasa in Maharashtra, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City in Gujrat and Nano-city in Haryana. It is expected that digital services to be provided in the proposed smart cities of India would play a vital role because these services are expected to enhance the quality and performance of the services available to the users. With the help of internet and IT-enabled services in proposed smart cities of India, it is expected that it would reduce costs, increase efficiency and automate services and it would become an active channel to connect with the citizens in a more effective and pragmatic manner (Kai et al., 2008; Cai et al., 2009). Few of the services to be provided in the proposed smart cities of India include transportation, government services, health care, traffic, energy sector, housing, water supply system and waste management activities. This is the reason why sometimes “smart cities” are called “Digital Cities”, “Intelligent Cities”, “IT Cities”, “Cyber Cities”, etc., as the backbone of these cities is IT-enabled digital services. Thus, we can say a city can be converted to a smart city with the help of IT-enabled services if it has a balanced economy and overall development in social and environmental sectors (Caragliu et al., 2011).