With the launch of the Centre’s flagship Smart Cities Mission, the urban development and city planning in India has seen a transformation, opening arms to adopt technology interventions to optimise city operation and services. Highlighting Indore’s development, Rishav Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Indore Smart City Development Limited, spoke at the Elets Knowledge Exchange summit, Goa.
In the Swachh Survekshan 2021, Rishav Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Indore Smart City Development Limited, said that Indore, the commercial capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh, became the first city to attain the ‘Water Plus’ status. ‘Water Plus’ status is accorded to cities under the Swachh Survekshan survey on the basis of their performance in tapping the polluted water and preventing its flow in the rivers and other freshwater bodies of the region.
Talking about sludge disposal solution, Gupta said the only solution for sludge disposal is to use it as manure. But this sludge contains a lot of pathogens which are typhoid, cholera causing and due to this, there have been many incidents of epidemics and diseases. “Bhabha Atomic Research Centre came up with a technology, in which, by using the radioactive cobalt 60, we can have gamma radiations which can then be used to treat the sludge, making it innocuous and a perfect substrate, upon which we can add bio NPK fertiliser and then use the final product as a commercially viable fertiliser,” he said.
“That technology has been adopted in the past year by Indore smart city,” he further stated.
Highlighting another initiative by Indore Smart City Development Limited, he said, “Indore smart city has been the first city in the whole South-Asia to have earned carbon credits and by selling those credits, we have earned revenue on the tunes of around Rs 10 crore, per year.”
Gupta said that Indore smart city has come up with a business aggregator model. It is inviting all the cities which are having some eco-friendly projects. “We are clubbing these to make a single project and the projects which were not economically viable initially, to be participating in such kinds of markets, now by the means of aggregation, are becoming economically viable,” he said.
Talking about technology interventions, Gupta said, “GIS-based property tax collection has been a hallmark of Indore smart city. Just by the click of a button, we can know what is the expected amount of revenue that we will be getting from every zone.” He further said, “Just by this technology intervention, we have increased the revenue of Indore’s municipal corporation tax collection by more than Rs 100 crore.”
“Technology is really proving beneficial in governance of cities like Indore,” he concluded.
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