Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ambitious Smart City project in Jaipur and Udaipur, envisaging availability of modern amenities with improved urban infrastructure in the two Rajasthan cities.
To manifest Prime Minister’s vision, Rajasthan government took earnest steps in a steady fashion to overcome all odds to make Rajasthan a lighthouse city. Amidst all dedicated efforts and strategic moves, there comes an exceptional outcome, validating that all efforts were availed efficiently and effectively.
Pink City Jaipur has become the first in the country and South Asia to join the wagon of “Cisco Lighthouse Cities”. It will now be enabled to monitor and operate smart city infrastructure using a single network. This outcome has bought Jaipur to join the likes of other lighthouse cities — Hamburg, Barcelona and Adelaide.
For this purpose, the government has developed a network operating centre (NOC) at the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) headquarters.
The Jaipur Smart City will be formulated at an ornamental cost of Rs 2,500 crore. Not only this, partnership with technology conglomerate Cisco is another milestone towards accomplishing this mission. Under the project, developments envisaged in the Cisco lighthouse city project have already come into existence. Under the project, IT-enabled services, wi-fi hotspots, installation of video surveillance cameras, interactive kiosks, remote e-governance solutions and parking management systems.
One major highlight of this app was ‘Smart City App’ which enables safety services for citizens-irrespective of their age.
Here are the major highlights of the Smart City App:
The NOC services will encompass smart lights, streetlights which will light in proportion to the real-time population on the street. When the density of traffic reduces in the night, these lights will dim automatically. The Jaipur App is the first-of-its-kind, all-purpose, comprehensive app through which residents will be informed about real-time parking availability, shopping venues, working status of smart lights, pollution levels, and important services like fire, ambulance and blood banks.
Many facilities have been integrated into the newly developed digital infrastructure. Such facilities are namely:
1) Intelligent kiosks,
2) Wireless broadband,
3) Sensor-based dust bins,
4) Smart streetlights,
5) Parking
Another feature is Smart Waste Management in which JDA has installed sensor-based dustbins that blink on NOC when 75% of them get filled.
Environmental sensors on 18 screens in the city inform residents about the pollution level and temperatures will soon be installed at 15 more locations. Wi-fi spots at 56 locations is another immensely useful utility. Parking, a nightmare in most developing cities, will become smarter in Jaipur with digital boards to gauge the parking status on the entire stretch and notifying in real time if there’s a slot to park your car.
Speed meters with night vision cameras that capture images of vehicles-at-fault. These cameras are supported by display screens on the roads, thereby aiding the driver.
Digital Rajasthan
Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco (India and Saarc), believes digitisation is essential for cities, communities and countries to maintain global competitiveness, increase GDP growth, foster innovation and create new jobs. Malkani said, “The foundation for ‘Digital Rajasthan’ will be intelligent networks which will transform the delivery of citizen services. The future of competition will be between cities. At Cisco, we are committed to partner with the Rajasthan government to lead in this digital transformation.”
Vasundhara Raje has invested her efforts and resources towards accomplishing Prime Minister’s vision and inspirations in nexus with smart city initiative. The Chief Minister is highly optimistic about the outcome of this project. She said, “Rajasthan is the best equipped state when it comes to embracing digital economy. It stands out for making Digital India a reality.”
At the same time, smart city experts have huge hopes from this project. Pradeep Padode, Director, Smart Cities Council, India has spelled out his conviction that Jaipur has joined the league of Cisco Lighthouse Cities globally such as Hamburg (Germany), Barcelona (Spain) and Adelaide (Australia). “It will be the first such city in South Asia. It is aimed at advancing Jaipur’s vision of becoming a global model and standard for sustainable urban development.”
Future Roadmap and odds to battle with
“The focus obviously is to ensure that their main economic lifeline tourism revenue is secure and greatly enhanced. Building a backbone infrastructure which enables multiple applications on the same platform is the sustainable way of growth for the city as each service is a “plug & play,” Padode added.
The concerned officials are watching the progress of the projects in Jaipur, which ranks third in the Smart Cities Mission. Depending on the success of the Jaipur project, other cities of Rajasthan too will be included in the envelope of Light house city project- Udaipur, Kota and Ajmer.
As all good news has hurdles, so is this. There are a multitude of odds to be combated to ensure that the project renders optimum results. These hurdle are namely: 1) information dissemination: to communicate the initiatives to cross section of citizens, tourists etc; 2) Maintaining city clean 3) keeping at par with technological changes.
Jaipur is popularly known for flaunting an exceptional architecture which has been woven with detailed nuances of ‘vastu shastra’ into it. Adding to the heritage and grandeur of Jaipur city, will be these unprecedented developments in fields of technology and lifestyle advancement.
