The year after the inception of a new union government brought many promises along with it. One of them was building Smart Cites, an ambitious promise that was ready to kick off.
Smart Cities Mission, a flagship scheme of the Indian government, was launched to promote sustainable and inclusive urban development by focusing on technology, innovation, and improved infrastructure to enhance the quality of life for the residents in a hundred selected cities.
The need for these cities arose with increasing migration patterns from rural areas, precursor to which were the famous Liberalisation Privatisation Globalisation (LPG) reforms, introduced by the Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh.
As per statistics, the urban population is estimated to increase by 600 million in 2031; the high-powered expert committee set up by the government of India to analyse urban infrastructure and services by the Indian government stated that the urban share would rise to 75 per cent by the year 2050. This rapid acceleration of the urban population has made it pivotal to improve urban infrastructure with smart technologies. Thereby, contributing to the development of Smart Cities.
Amid these promises, the question came up: What is a smart city? What is the vision? This prompted deliberations and debates to define and personify the idea.
The smart city is explained as an urban environment in which various electronic systems for data collection are used to improve urban management, optimise resource organisation, and ensure economic services reach the people. The collected data is further used to improve the overall city operations. This concept has already been applied in different parts of the world.
Other scholars defined a smart city from a technological perspective. Explaining how such cities use tools like wireless sensors, smart meters, smart vehicles, smartphones, mobile networks, and data storage. But can these tech changes alone fix the urban issue of India? Or it needs to be tweaked according to the needs of the local and longstanding structural issues. Does one size fit all?
Not so smart cities
Despite grand planning, the execution of the Smart Cities Mission reveals deep structural and administrative gaps. In Gurugram, a few hours of rain is enough to choke arterial roads and cause kilometre-long traffic snarls. It is a city that boasts multiple “smart” projects under the national mission.
That’s the fundamental contradiction: while smart city plans emphasize sensors, Wi-Fi zones, and data analytics, basic urban planning and drainage infrastructure remain neglected. As one viral X post aptly remarked:
“₹1.5 Lakh Crore pumped into India’s ‘Smart Cities Mission.’ Yet roads in Tier-1 cities—Mumbai, Gurugram, Bengaluru—are pathetic. The only thing that became SMART? Contractors, politicians & babus’ bank accounts.” — @YeThikKarkeDikhao, Sep 25, 2025
A deeper urban crisis
Urban flooding, the most visible face of this failure, has become an annual disaster. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) estimates that over 60 per cent of Indian cities are vulnerable to flooding. Despite numerous early-warning systems, Integrated Command Centers, and “smart” flood alerts, the root causes, including the encroachment of wetlands, poor drainage design, and corruption in construction, persist.
The Delhi floods of 2023, caused by the Yamuna breaching embankments, displaced thousands, while Mumbai’s 2021 rainfall, the heaviest in four decades, shut down transport networks. Even smaller cities like Varanasi and Surat have reported similar chaos. One user tweeted on X:
“It rained damn 3 days ago in the smart city (so-called) – Varanasi. The uncountable potholes just make this worse.” — @singhrahulkumar, Oct 2025
Another tweet says:
“Glimpse of the 1st Underwater City. Condition of Gujarat Model, Smart City – Surat, just after a rainfall.” — @Polytikles, Jun 24, 2025
These posts reflect the public’s growing frustration: when even a single downpour paralyses cities that claim to be “smart,” the failure is not in nature but in planning.
The truth is, we’re still using drainage systems designed for the 1800s, built when the rain came slower and in smaller bursts. Today’s monsoons regularly bring downpours more than twice what those old systems were built to handle.
What’s worse, we’ve choked off the city’s natural breathing spaces. We’ve built over floodplains, squeezed buildings into every inch of space, and let garbage clog up the few remaining drains. The result? Water has nowhere to go but up, into our homes, streets, and lives.
We’re not just building smart cities, we’re building flood traps.
Every monsoon, the script repeats: pumps come out, schools shut down, officials rush to clean blocked drains. These are band-aid solutions, not real fixes. We need proper response centres, but we also need to stop reacting and start planning. While the response centres help in management, they can’t prevent the floods, for that matter.
That means real-time flood alerts, open lines for people to report issues, and most importantly, holding contractors accountable when infrastructure fails. But even all that won’t help if we keep ignoring nature. Lakes, wetlands, and old storm channels are used to absorb floodwater. We buried them under concrete. We need to bring them back.
The overlooked basics: roads, drains, and transport
The Smart Cities Mission seems to have prioritised digital solutions over physical infrastructure. But no amount of sensors or control rooms can compensate for crumbling roads and outdated drainage networks.
Take Panaji, the capital of Goa, a city under the Smart City Mission, for example. As one resident posted:
“This is not the moon’s surface. This is Panaji, the capital city of Goa. Potholes here are bigger than moon craters. Smart city is one of the biggest jumlas of the century.” — @mohitlaws, Aug 30, 2025
In Mumbai, 2024 data from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) showed over 15,000 potholes reported in a single monsoon season, despite massive allocations for road repairs. Meanwhile, Chennai’s long-promised stormwater upgrades remain half-finished; Gurugram’s master drainage plan hasn’t been implemented since 2016.
Public transport, another pillar of smart urban living, is equally neglected. In cities like Lucknow and Bhopal, half-built metro lines operate with limited connectivity, while buses remain overcrowded and unreliable. The promise of integrated mobility has largely failed.
We need more than tech
“Smart” doesn’t just mean “digital.” True intelligence in urban planning means designing with foresight, not just flashy dashboards. Roads should drain water naturally. Public transport should still work in a storm. Cities must be built with climate change in mind, not just population projections.
Look at places like Tokyo or Singapore: they’ve built massive underground tunnels to divert floodwater. They use data, but they also respect the landscape. That’s what makes them resilient.
Here in India, we’ve focused too much on tech and too little on the basics. The World Bank warns that by 2036, India will face an $840 billion gap in urban infrastructure if we don’t change course. That’s not just a number, it’s a flashing red warning.
Also read: Hyderabad’s broken roads make Revanth Reddy’s ‘Future City’ goal hard to believe
What now?
The Smart Cities Mission started with big promises. A decade in, it’s hard to ignore the cracks, especially when they’re filled with rainwater. Citizens are asking the right question: how smart is a city that floods within hours of rain?
We don’t just need shiny control rooms and dashboards. We need cities that work even in a storm. That means long-term investment, better planning, and yes, community involvement. People need to be part of the solution.
Without a keen commitment to deliver the objectives of the smart cities mission, along with active community participation, monsoon flooding will continue to be a recurring disaster.
Unless India’s cities learn to build resilience before they build technology, the Smart City Mission will remain a shiny façade, where a single downpour can expose whether we have truly built ‘smart cities’ or merely smarter flood zones.
Karti P Chidambaram is a Member of Parliament for Sivaganga, and a Member of the All India Congress Committee. His X handle is @KartiPC. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)