Following the 2015 launch of the Smart Cities Mission, this project aims to create a framework for monitoring and evaluating smart city projects across India for their transparency, accountability and participatory inclusion of citizen views and concerns.
In 2015, the government announced that 100 cities had been shortlisted to compete for funds under a new urban development initiative called the Smart Cities Mission (SCM). Since then, 20ncities have won the first round of funds based on their proposals for an area based project and city wide plan. The goal of the SCM is to create cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to their citizens as well as a clean and sustainable environment and the application of “smart “solutions. However, the guidelines, structure, and implementation of the smart cities projects raises concerns over the inclusivity and transparency of these projects as well as the ability of citizens to hold those responsible for the projects to account.