Pune’s smart city dream gets a UK thumbs-up

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Cameron said that the UK would enter a five-year partnership with India to develop the three cities.”We want British companies, with their world-class consulting, project management and engineering skills, to help you plan, design and build these new cities. So I am delighted we’ve agreed a new five-year partnership to develop the three cities : Amravati, Indore and Pune,” said Cameron. Explaining this announcement, a joint statement issued by the office of British PM said that the country will support India’s ambitious urban development goals through technical assistance, expertise sharing and business engagement.

According to this statement, this also means that the UK Department of International Development and the Indian Ministry of Urban Development will partner for a national and state-led support for the development of smart and sustainable cities that are drivers of inclusive growth and job creation.

Welcoming this announcement and explaining what it means for the city, Municipal Commissioner Kunal Kumar said, “It entails collaboration on three aspects. One, technical assistance from the UK on issues which the city of Pune faces and over the issues related to urban development. UK PM Cameron said experts from Britain including town planners, transport planners, environmental experts will visit Pune to help and guide those working here. The exchange of officials between India and UK will happen frequently. The second aspect is funding, while making the announcement, the UK government has announced an aid of 1.5 lakh pounds (1.5 crore INR). In future, the aid will be quite high. They have asked us for a funding plan which we are in the process of preparing. Third aspect, is to set up a programme management unit that will supervise and evaluate the smart city project.”Explaining how the city made the final cut to three cities that were chosen across the country, Kumar said that the process was on for over 40 days.”We were working closely with those selecting the cities for the partnership.

The cities were selected keeping in mind various criteria, including the promise a certain city holds, its needs, regional importance, among others. Union and state government too worked closely on this project,” said Kumar.City MP Anil Shirole has welcomed the move and congratulated PM Modi for the achievement.”The British companies will help will us in planning, infrastructure development and execution of the smart city schemes. It will greatly benefit our aim to make Pune a holistic and low cost city,” said Shirole.Side story: A part of Cameron’s speech stated – “Under the new UK-India Skills pledge, 11 UK companies have committed to support skills development in India. Together, the UK government and UK businesses will establish new Centres of Excellence’ in key sectors, starting with a centre for Automotive and Advanced Engineering in Pune.”

Commenting on how the city can benefit from a Centre for Automative & Advanced Engineering and what kind of an ecosystem does the city offer for such a system to flourish, Anant Sardeshmukh, director general of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA), said that the city offers the right atmosphere for such a Centre. “Almost one-third of the total automotive industry is in Pune, including major manufacturing plants like Mercedes Benz, Tata Motors, Volkswagen and others. Besides, the city also has institutes like ARAI that offer a solid ground for this sector. There are talks of British firms planning to start a skill-development institute here. The city is not far from places like Ahmednagar and Aurangabad that have big automobile units,” he said.
According to Arun Firodia, chairman of Kinetic Engineering, the city has a good strength of auto and IT firms. “In the recent past, in automobiles, electronics too has started playing a major role. There is a unique possibility of combining auto and electronics. Pune can become a leader in auto-electronics. Since England too is good at it, together, we can do a great job in this field,” he added.