The Confederation of the Indian Industry today signed two separate Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with Hitachi India Ltd and Siemens Ltd to spearhead the conceptualization and implementation of pilot projects in Smart Cities .
The MoUs were signed by Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII with Mr Ichiro Iino, Managing Director, Hitachi India Ltd and Mr Sunil Mathur, CEO and Managing Director, Siemens Ltd in the presence of Mr Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) and HE Mr Takeshi Yagi, Ambassador of Japan.
India is at the cusp of urbanization development and it is imperative that we focus on innovative and sustainable solutions, said Mr Kant adding that the Smart city initiative will be driven by technology. It is imperative that India embraces the global best practices in the management of cities and DIPP would be happy to collaborate in the roll out of the initiative, Mr Kant said.
“CII would handhold a few select Urban Local Bodies in India through the preparatory phase to give a boost to the Centre’s flagship ‘smart cities’ scheme”, said Mr Banerjee.
CII has set up a “National Mission on Smart Cities” under the Chairmanship of Mr Ravi Parthasarathy, Chairman, IL&FS and the objective of this Mission is to play the role of a facilitator and a thought leader to assist the Government in the process of the development of 100 Smart Cities by 2022. The MoUs are part of the implementation strategy to take forward the Cities initiative.
Speaking at the occasion, Mr. Parthasarathy said, “The Mission would like to focus on 3 pilots to begin with, which can be internalized and used as a common template for scalability.”
Since a Smart City initiative in any city would entail a host of sub components including transportation, responsive public services, infrastructure for employment, ICT, etc, it would be beyond the scope of any one organisation to deliver seamlessly across these requirements. The National Mission on Smart Cities has therefore decided to create industry-led consortia, which could render the full range of services for the development of a Smart City, in which Hitachi India Ltd and Siemens Ltd have consented to be the lead industry partner for the Japanese and German consortium.
Japan looks forward to contributing to the Government of India’s initiative on Smart Cities, Digital India and Make in India, said HE Mr Takeshi Yagi, Ambassador of Japan.
He added that the signing of the MoUs is the first step to the translation of plans into concrete action. Mr Iino added that Japan too has had a long association with India and the signing of the MoU is the first step to the implementation of the Smart City initiative.
Siemens Ltd looks forward to rolling out the initiative as it has been in India for over 150 years and has the technical know-how to develop technologies suited to the local needs, added Mr Mathur.
17th March 2015
New Delhi