Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal has said that the development of the smart cities or towns need to be done smartly and the work will have to be customized to the Indian context while leveraging on economies of scale, to make the requisite technology affordable . While addressing Smart Cities India Expo, he said that the concept of the smart city should be practical, feasible and affordable, which can be planned, discussed and then implemented if it were to be scaled up and leave an impact in the country.
Goyal said that “Pilot projects are not the right way to go about implementation as it is time consuming and has a high chance of failure. We need to look at economies of scale and faster implementation”. He added that the power of economies of scale, the power of leveraging billion plus aspiring individuals, ensuring affordability to make a programme self sustainable, practical application in the Indian context are the keys to the implementation of smart cities.
He said that we got to think smart when we think of smart cities or smart technologies playing a role in India. Citing an example of energy efficiency programme, the minister said that 83% cost reduction in LED bulbs was possible due to massive roll out of programme and the people of India will save 6.5 billion dollars every year in their electricity bills. The centre is running a 770-million LED bulb programme, which will cost less than $1 billion with no government investment.