Venkaiah chants smart mantra

Union Minister inaugurates ‘Centre for Smart Cities’ at Sri City IIIT

Tirupati: ‘Smart Cities’, one of the ideas of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had caught the imagination of people of our country ever since he floated this idea during the Lok Sabha election campaign, said Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu. He inaugurated ‘Centre for Smart Cities’ at Sri City IIIT campus here on Saturday.

Speaking on the occasion, the Union Minister said the time for making our cities smart had come really at a time when it could not be delayed any further. “It is because the cities are the prime locations of economic activities and major engines of economic growth,” he added. “About 32 percent of the country’s population live in urban areas and soon this is going to be 50 percent making our country no more rural dominated,” he said adding that to make people live better in urban areas was really a big challenge that needed to be addressed in all seriousness and sincerity.

Saying that economic development was all about making the best use of available resources, particularly, the human resources, Naidu said keeping this in view, the Prime Minister was focusing on making the cities and towns more livable so that they could further contribute to economic growth of the country. The unplanned and haphazard urbanisation in the country had made living in cities and towns a hostile experience, he said and declared that his government was keen on changing this scenario through new initiatives, aimed at ensuring basic infrastructure and other amenities, while at the same time taking city governance and service systems to a new level.

Venkaiah Naidu said that they were going to launch two major urban initiatives next month. “Under the new Urban Rejuvenation Mission, all basic amenities will be provided in 500 cities with a population of one lakh and above. The other one is building smart cities, which is more ambitious and wider in its scope, reach impact and implications,” he added. The Union Minister further said technology was a crucial element for realising smart city objectives but building smart cities was much more than technology integration.

He lauded Sri City management for coming up with the idea of a ‘Research Centre for Smart Cities’, focusing on promoting smart technologies and added such initiatives were the need of the hour to further the goal of improving the way our urban areas were governed and managed. Sri City chairman Srini Raju, managing director Ravindra Sannareddy, IIIT Chittoor (at Sri City) academic head P Ramachandra Reddy and others were present.