Four major Indian cities knocked down in global smart cities list; outdated technology to blame

The lack of updated technology amid the coronavirus pandemic led New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, to a sharp fall in their rankings in the global listing of smart cities. In the Smart City Index 2020, Hyderabad was placed at the 85th position (67th in 2019), New Delhi at 86th rank (68th in 2019), Mumbai was at 93rd place (78th in 2019), and Bengaluru at 95th (79th in 2019). The report said that the cities in India suffer significant drops this year due to the detrimental effect of the pandemic, where technological advancement was not up to date.

Indian cities have suffered more from the pandemic because they were not prepared, the report added, which was prepared by the Institute for Management Development (IMD), in collaboration with Singapore University for Technology and Design (SUTD). Hundreds of citizens from 109 cities were surveyed in April and May 2020 and asked questions on the technological provisions of their city across five key areas — health and safety, mobility, activities, opportunities, and governance. The report also considered how technology played a role in the coronavirus era.

“It is of course too early to draw the lessons from COVID. However, it is clear that we are at a critical juncture, where the sanitary crisis is still very much with us, while the economic and social crisis that it will entail has hardly started,” said Bruno Lanvin, President of the IMD Smart City Observatory. This year’s Smart City Index suggested that the cities that have been able to combine technologies, leadership, and a strong culture of ‘living and acting together’ should be able to better withstand the most damaging effects of such crises, he added.