Achieving Sustainability in Smart Cities Mission in India through Universities’ Innovation in India

BACKGROUND. As per the global trend, the Government of India has also designated 98 cities in India as smart cities to manage them more efficiently with technology. While the definition of Smart City is ambiguous and evolving, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal -11 talks about making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilience and sustainable. The preventive methods during the pandemic COVID-19 have used technology for better implementation of the lockdown as Drone surveillance, work from home, e-teaching, e-meeting etc. OBJECTIVE. In this background, objectives of the paper are: RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA. A mixed method has been used. Spearman’s Rank correlation has been calculated for first and second objectives on NITI Aayog, Department of Science and Technology and Government of India data. Descriptive statistics and case study method have been used for third and fourth objectives on primary data. FINDINGS. The paper through Spearman’s Rank correlation shows that economically developed states of India may not be sustainable and even all innovation may also not be sustainable. So, there is a need for special attention for sustainable innovation for the Smart Cities. Continuous demand for such innovative technologies can be met by innovation at engineering colleges. India has experienced an exponential growth of engineering colleges during last three decades. However, from the study of engineering colleges of Delhi, it can be said that so far they are not concentrating their innovation for the development of smart cities. They need to take clue from the ‘living lab’ experience of Barcelona where engineering colleges and universities are playing a central role in the framework of the smart city. There is a need to sensitise these colleges and their students regarding technological needs of the smart cities. At the same time, they need to know about the special needs of marginalised groups of people and women for their safety and security etc. Like Unnat Bharat, a flagship programme of the Ministry of Education, the engineering colleges can work on the development and dissemination of social innovation under their university social responsibility (USR) initiatives. The institutions need to collaborate with other institutions and organisations to integrate their work with the CSR of the corporate sector and social sector activities of the government to achieve SDG Goal 17 of collaboration. These will ultimately help in achieving SDG 8 and 10 as will reduce inequality by creating decent work which will ultimately lead to economic development of the people in the lower segment of the smart cities.