India is pushing ahead with plans to build 100 Smart Cities in an effort to drive development and improve living standards across the emerging nation. However, last month’s devastating flooding in Chennai has raised an intriguing debate; Should nations who are largely developing, be focusing on smart development in cities, rather than creating basic protection and services for all their citizens? The government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a vision of developing 100 smart cities as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernising the existing mid-sized cities. A total of ₹98000 crore (US$15 billion) has been approved by the Indian Cabinet to finance the strategy, which is said to bring more digitisation to 100 of the cities nominated by all the nation’s states and union territories. However, almost one third of the country’s 1.1 billion population continues to live below the poverty line, and a large proportion of poor people live […]