The Algorithm Vs The Pothole: India's 'Smart Cities' Face Their Ultimate Reality Check

In the bustling Tajganj neighborhood of Agra, just steps from the iconic Taj Mahal, a state-of-the-art control room hums with CCTV feeds and data dashboards. This Integrated Command and Control Centre, a showcase of the Smart Cities Mission, is meant to coordinate everything from traffic to trash collection.

Yet outside, Tajganj’s streets tell a different story: gaping potholes, snarls of overhead electric wires, and “smart” public toilets that remain padlocked. In Shimla, sleek new escalators installed on the steep hillsides were supposed to ease pedestrian movement, but they sit idle and rusting, monuments to grand plans gone awry.

These scenes capture the paradox of India’s Smart Cities Mission, a flagship urban renewal effort launched in 2015 with the promise of transforming 100 cities with cutting-edge infrastructure and technology. A decade on, the Mission has achieved some notable gains but fallen conspicuously short of its transformative ambitions. 

A Bold Vision and Some Tangible Gains

When the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) was unveiled in 2015, it was nothing if not ambitious. The government promised to tackle India’s chronic urban woes, from traffic congestion and pollution to water shortages and crime, by leveraging “smart” technology and innovative design.

Each of the 100 selected cities drafted a Smart City Proposal envisioning data-driven, digitally connected urban ecosystems.

The Mission’s strategy had two components:

--area-based development (ABD), intensive upgrades in a chosen zone of each city to serve as a model.

--pan-city solutions applying tech-based improvements citywide.

The Union government committed Rs 48,000 crore (later raised to Rs 98,000 crore) in central funds to kickstart projects, to be matched by contributions from states, city municipalities, and private partners. 

A decade later, the results are mixed.

Of the 8,062 projects sanctioned across the 100 cities, 93 per cent were officially reported as completed by March 2025, with roughly Rs 1.5 lakh crore spent out of a Rs 1.64 lakh crore outlay. In fact, 18 cities, including Agra, Varanasi, Coimbatore, Pune, and Surat, claim to have finished all their Smart City projects.

The Mission has delivered visible improvements in certain domains. All 100 cities now boast operational Integrated Command and Control Centres, high-tech nerve centers that monitor urban services in real time. Over 84,000 CCTV cameras were installed across these cities, a boost to public safety that contributed to measurable crime reductions in some areas.

Cities laid 1,740 km of smart roads with integrated utilities and created over 700 km of dedicated bicycle tracks to promote green mobility.

Yet the Mission’s bright spots tell only part of the story.

Even as government reports boasted of 90 per cent and more project completion, the reality is that only 18 out of 100 cities actually completed all their planned projects, meaning the remaining 82 cities failed to finish certain initiatives despite multiple deadline extensions.

Many completed projects delivered only superficial change: a new ICT system here, a refurbished junction there, often without addressing cities’ most pressing needs.

The Mission’s area-based approach meant that large sums were spent on pilot zones that cover just a fraction of each city, only about 9 per cent of the population on average benefited directly from the showcase area developments.

The Capacity Conundrum: Weak Cities, Slow Delivery

A core failing of the Smart Cities experiment has been the limited capacity of India’s municipal institutions. Simply put, many city governments lacked the expertise, manpower, and systems to plan and execute projects of this scale.

About 46 of the 100 smart cities are relatively small (population under 5,00,000) and found themselves overwhelmed by the task of spending Rs 1,000+ crore on complex works within a few years.

These smaller cities struggled to hire qualified staff and consultants, prepare viable plans, and manage procurement for high-tech projects. Even by late 2023, in the 20 lowest-ranking smart cities, over half of all projects were still stuck at preliminary stages. Many cities failed to complete even half of their planned projects, with initiatives stalled due to weak project management and technical know-how.

Institutional capacity was particularly strained by the multiplicity of projects being executed simultaneously. Each city was tasked with implementing dozens of components across sectors, from mobility to e-governance, energy to education. The burden on thinly staffed urban bodies was substantial. Cities without strong administrative legacies or adequate human capital lacked the bench strength to coordinate across contractors, consultants, and departments. Moreover, delays in tendering, frequent design changes, and procedural bottlenecks added to implementation woes.

Compounding the issue was a shortfall in state support and local funding.

States cumulatively contributed about Rs 32,149 crore against the Union government’s Rs 36,561 crore, leaving a gap of roughly Rs 4,482 crore in expected state co-funding. This funding crunch hit weaker cities hardest, forcing them to scale back or slow down projects.

Ambitious ideas like raising money via municipal bonds or public-private partnerships also met with limited success. While 21 per cent of Smart City project value was nominally planned to come through PPPs, in reality half of the cities could not execute a single PPP project.

Furthermore, many ULBs lacked the financial acumen to prepare credible proposals for investment, leading to under-utilisation of even available grants.

Techno-centrism vs. Basic Needs: The “Smart” Overreach

The Smart Cities Mission was driven by a techno-utopian vision that sometimes proved disconnected from ground realities. The emphasis on digital tools and innovation sometimes eclipsed the need for foundational urban services. In city after city, officials chased “smart” innovations while core issues like waste management, sewage, and planned housing remained unaddressed.

Hundreds of crores were spent on integrated command and control centers, while basic tasks like pothole repair or garbage clearance remained unresolved. Mobile apps for grievances proliferated, but lacked the backend staff and resources to act on complaints effectively.

Take Shimla, added to the Smart Cities list in a later round. The city drew up a Rs 2,906 crore plan including escalators and elevators to ease hill mobility, as well as storm-water drains and new housing. But the escalators became a symbol of misallocated priorities: non-functional, visually obtrusive, and displacing urgent repairs to roads and walkways.

Similarly, Agra implemented advanced traffic monitoring and garbage tracking, yet its showcase zone in Tajganj is riddled with potholes and broken infrastructure. Public schools there received smart boards and purifiers under the Mission, yet a year on many of those remain unusable due to lack of upkeep.

Such examples illustrate a larger flaw: high-tech projects were prioritized without ensuring basic services were functional. A smart water meter is of little use if water flows for only a few hours a day. A GPS-tracked garbage truck matters little if trash is not picked up consistently. Instead of layering technology onto a broken base, cities should have focused first on universalizing core services - then used tech to make them more efficient.

Moreover, the pursuit of innovation often lacked contextual relevance. Sensor-based dustbins, public Wi-Fi zones, and facial-recognition CCTV systems were rolled out in cities still grappling with waste management or unpaved roads.

The mismatch between futuristic tools and current urban deficits created a disconnect that citizens immediately noticed.

Many smart features went underutilized, or quickly fell into disrepair due to poor maintenance, technical glitches, or lack of user awareness. Smart cannot mean digital-first; it must mean context-appropriate.

Governance Gaps and Accountability

To expedite Smart City implementation, each city created a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) - a company-like body led by a CEO and insulated from municipal red tape.

While SPVs helped speed up contracting and procurement, they often operated in isolation from elected councils and legacy departments. In many places, mayors and city councils had little say in Smart City projects once the SPV took charge. This diluted democratic accountability and created a parallel governance structure. Moreover, the SPVs’ lack of coordination with line departments led to fragmented planning. A Smart City road might be built without syncing with the city’s drainage upgrades or masterplan zoning.

The fragmentation extended to project operations as well. Assets created under SPVs were often not integrated into the municipal operations framework. Questions about who would maintain, staff, and fund these assets remained unresolved. Cities struggled with handovers, and responsibilities remained ambiguous between SPVs and municipal departments. This structural disconnect made even successful assets vulnerable to neglect.

Furthermore, cities did not always build institutional capacity for project management. Many relied heavily on consultants, with limited knowledge transfer to municipal staff. Once the Mission ends and SPVs wind down, the responsibility for maintenance and upgrades will fall to city governments. Without reforms, the systems created may struggle to be sustained.

In Surat, which was among the better-coordinated cities, the municipal corporation leveraged its existing transit and environmental programs to complement Smart City initiatives, but such synergy was the exception, not the norm.

More commonly, there was tension between the centralized vision of the Mission and the de-centralized reality of city governance. Smart City SPVs answered upward to the central ministry for funds and to state capitals for approvals, rather than primarily to city residents. This top-down orientation could clash with or sideline local development plans, creating conflicting projects and duplication. In some cases, state governments reallocated Smart City budgets to pet projects unrelated to the original city proposals, further muddying accountability. 

A deeper issue lies in the fragmented nature of urban governance in India.

City governments control only a limited number of functions. Key domains like transport, housing, water supply, and urban planning are often under state departments. This means that cities implementing smart projects had little control over complementary services.

For example, a city could upgrade streetlights through its Smart City SPV, but couldn’t improve public transport because the bus service was managed by a state transport corporation. Without functional devolution and integration, cities were forced to work around institutional constraints rather than reform them.

Rethinking the Next Phase of India’s City-Building Agenda

If India is to succeed in urban transformation, the next chapter must go beyond the Smart Cities Mission’s partial successes. The following policy shifts can help ensure future programs are more equitable, scalable, and impactful.

1. Strengthen and empower urban local bodies (ULBs): The Smart Cities Mission bypassed ULBs by design; future programs must reverse that. The 74th Constitutional Amendment needs full implementation: give ULBs control over planning, budgeting, and delivery of core urban services. Capacity-building is essential, training and hiring skilled planners, engineers, and financial experts at the city level. 

2. Sequence technology after foundational services: New missions should prioritise universal provision of water, sewage, roads, street-lighting, and solid waste systems. Smart technologies can follow to optimise delivery, not replace the basics. Evaluation metrics must focus on actual outcomes: water availability, commute time, air quality, not just how many apps or dashboards exist.

3. Ensure sustainable finance: ULBs need financial autonomy. Municipal bonds, better property tax collection, and user charges (with safety nets for the poor) can help. Maintenance funds must be built into project plans, ensuring that new infrastructure is not abandoned due to lack of Operations & Maintenance funding.

4. Promote integrated city planning: Projects should align with city masterplans and state-level infrastructure efforts. Urban transport, housing, water, and land use must be planned together, with coordination across agencies. Empowering Metropolitan Planning Committees, as mandated in the Constitution, could help.

5. Institutionalise citizen participation: Ward committees, city advisory forums, and grievance redress platforms must be functional and empowered. Urban residents need real avenues to shape priorities and monitor delivery. Participatory budgeting could be scaled up beyond a few cities.

6. Create a National Urban Policy Framework: India still lacks a coherent national urban strategy. A formal policy could align multiple schemes,  from AMRUT to PMAY to the new Urban Infrastructure Development Fund,  and ensure systematic, data-backed investment in secondary cities.

Beyond Buzzwords

The Smart Cities Mission may not have fully delivered on its promise, but it has played a vital role in foregrounding urban development in the national imagination. It introduced Indian cities to a new vocabulary - dashboards, sensors, integrated planning - and sparked some useful experiments. Yet it also revealed how little can be achieved without strong local governance, coordinated planning, and attention to the basics. 

India’s urban missions must move beyond a narrow focus on technology. The future of urban India depends not just on digital innovation, but on strong institutions, resilient infrastructure, and inclusive planning that prioritises the common good.

Any evolution of the Smart Cities framework must correct its earlier shortcomings, by strengthening urban governance, building local planning capacity, and embedding technology within a foundation of reliable, equitable public services. The aim should be to make cities genuinely more liveable and institutionally robust, not to chase prestige digital projects.