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Revenue Generation &

Procurement Workshop with

1st July 2016, Jaipur

A Report

Local Self Government Department,Government of Rajasthan

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Interestingly, every existing city, which will retrofit under the Central government’s ambitious programme of Smart Cities, has been engulfed with challenges.

But as they say, “every challenge brings an opportunity”; the advent of Smart Cities in the country seems to be a major boon for citizens. This is mainly because, when an entire city is retrofitted, the citizens may be tasting a new wine in an old bottle, but the end results are likely to be better than the bitter pills they were swallowing earlier.

In a recently concluded Smart Cities workshop —“Revenue Generation and Procurement Agenda”— by the Smart Cities Council India, decision makers and solution providers closely examined what cities should do today in order to enable a vibrant city operating platform. This workshop also examined what needs to be put in place in order to capitalise from innovation in other cities. The workshop was a great learning experience and threw up many opportunities for the Council’s partners.

Inaugural session The inaugural session was an amalgamation of profound

ideas from Pratap Padode, Founder & Director, Smart

SMART CITIES WORKSHOP: REVENUE GENERATION AND PROCUREMENT AGENDA

How do you unleash innovation in your city? How can you benefit from innovation in other cities? Cities that can enable vibrant business ecosystems and find the best ways of serving their citizens will succeed in digital transformation. There is a digital divide between cities that make the right choices today versus cities that are unaware of the opportunities or oblivious to the risks.

From L to R: Pratap Padode, Founder & Director, Smart Cities Council India (SCCI); Dr Manjit Singh, Principal Secretary,

Government of Rajasthan and PurshottamBiyani, Director-Local Bodies, Government of

Rajasthan in discussion.

Urban profile:

urban population in the

with population of 1 lakh & above

in the State

Major initiatives:

-nation and Urban Trans-

-

-

Phase IV.

Road Under Bridges

Projects

Raj” Project

-

From L to R: Anil Singhal, Superintendent Engineer, Jaipur Smart Mission Ltd; Priyavrat Pandya, Municipal Commissioner, Ajmer

Municipal Corporation; Arunkumar Hasija, Commissioner, Jodhpur Municipal Corporation; Pratap Padode, Founder & Director, Smart

Cities Council India (SCCI); Sanchita Bishnoi, Add. Director, CMAR, Jaipur in panel discussion

Solid Waste Management (SWM)

preparation

Transportation of waste started in 2010 wards in

plant in other cities in progress.

containers.

levied for Solid Waste

increase revenue.

Cities Council India (SCCI), and a realistic picture of India’s Smart City plan was presented by Purshottam Biyani, Director-Local Bodies, Government of Rajasthan. The workshop witnessed a full house, packed to capacity.

emphasised on the need for smart and quick solutions for implementing Smart City projects. Padode also highlighted the need for sustainable projects and a mechanism in urban local bodies for revenue generation. In his address, Padode pointed out the need for error-free and transparent procurement strategies by the newly formed Special Purpose Vehicles, created by winning Smart Cities.

A session which witnessed a free flow of views was hosted by Dr Manjit Singh, Principal Secretary, Government of Rajasthan, who cleared the air on what exactly does the Smart City concept mean for a state like

basic infrastructure, where a city can minimise the losses on

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public utilities, and at the same time gain maximum from it. Also, his remark on the need for sustainable projects depicted the impeding challenges that stand before various other cities in India.

financial requirement for implementing 100 per cent water supply, sewerage and drainage system, green areas and improvisation of public transport, would be not lesser than Rs 15,000 crore.”

Panel discussion: Smart City Development Plan

This session gave an opportunity to city authorities for discussing the challenges and opportunities that they are facing while developing a city development plan.

Anil Singhal, Superintendent Engineer, Jaipur Smart Mission Ltd, was of the opinion

common in nature. In fact, most of the challenges are on the

roads and suggested that for easy movement of vehicular traffic, road width, instead of length, should be increased.

digitisation front, he suggested that all project functional areas should be integrated under one command centre for better monitoring, management, and cost control.

corporations face similar issues, the city of Jodhpur has a different challenge to tackle — increasing ground water

Anil Singhal, SuperintendentEngineer, Jaipur Smart Mission Ltd

Priyavrat Pandya, Municipal Commissioner, Ajmer, Municipal Corporation

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levels. According to Arunkumar Hasija, Commissioner, Jodhpur Municipal Corporation, the situation is mainly due to lack of water disposal systems and interconnection of drainage system in the city, which has led to the ground water level increasing to 12 metres. And since the city receives 200 mld water supply every day, and is likely to get an additional 200 mld in the near future, it looks like the ground water situation would spill over in coming days.

all set to tackle this issue. The municipal corporation roped in

Corporation to build a four-way underground tunneling system that can divert the sewage and drainage water to the collecting point, and enable the same to be treated for further use.

instead of increasing road length, the municipal corporation should construct signal-free elevated roads that can stretch up

of an SPV will not be fulfilled unless it has absolute power with

job, and importantly, he has to manage the existing basket of projects along with the new ones in the pipeline.

Priyavrat Pandya, Municipal Commissioner, Ajmer Municipal Corporation, had a different challenge to face in his corporation. According to him, unless and until a corporation has an efficient citizen engagement programme, no plan would work properly. Sharing his experience, the commissioner mentioned that when Ajmer first submitted its Smart City proposal without any involvement of citizens,

they submitted the fresh proposals, around 2.69 lakh citizens participated in the Smart City proposals.

In the citizen engagement programme, Pandya said, the

AMRUT 2015-2020

projects in Bhiwadi, Alwar, & Sikar

Swachh Bharat Mission:Achievements:

Application

Community Toilets- 1,900

Target:

4,91,105, Community

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making it the first civic priority, giving it more importance than initiatives like solid waste management. The next to

remaining suggestions were for safety and security, and quality water supply.

How to generate revenueThis seems to be a big question for every urban local

solve this impeding issue. In a session, “Revenue Generation Strategies for smarter development of the city”, the private players gave solutions for revenue generation projects in property tax, water management, waste to power, renewable energy, smart parking, e- governance, smart lighting and water

city authorities understand innovative ideas for maximising revenues in the cities through projects and strategies, inclusion of PPP in revenue generation, etc.

In his session, Manik Sethi, Manager-Strategic Marketing, Thomson Reuters, presented an integrated land administration solution. In his brief presentation, he

helps provide governments foundational level automation of internal office functions. Also, with this solution, a city corporation can manage land & property ownership rights,

duty collection.Interestingly, Sethi showcased a comparative analysis of

city of Cape Town, South Africa, three years back. According

can only happen, as explained by Sethi, through a citizen engagement programme.

Dr Niraj Prakash, Director-Applications Sales Consulting, Oracle India, explained the digital intervention process in the form of an example that the

single point technology intervention rather than cities developing separate solutions for their Smart City plans. According to him, a state must create a single digital hub and its services should be made available to all present and

particular public utility service. In his session, Rushab Shah, Partner, Responscity,

government authority in the audience raised concerns over irregular property tax collection, inadequate surveys, lack of competent tax collecting staff and conflict between public

digital infrastructure to overcome these impediments, on the lines of Vapi, Gujarat where every house has been equipped

digital address.

Procurement strategies and processThis session discussed procurement strategies with focus

on integrated development and aggregation, e-auctioning, e-procurement, specification, standardisation, technology, life-cycle costing, transparency, governance and specifications.

As far as efficient project procurement is concerned, the Central government has advised winning corporations to

Officials from Rajasthan Government shared their views during the workshop.

highlighted the Central government’s strategy to form a joint venture between Indian and foreign consultants who have the experience in implementing Smart City projects.

country. And by doing so, the capacity building of the Indian companies can also increase.

Saravana Kumar, the CEO of Jaipur Smart Mission, a newly formed SPV, suggested that municipal corporations

various case studies on technical solutions that have been applied in other cities.

Devesh Shukla, Business Development & Solution Sales, Public Sector, Microsoft emphasised on the monetisation of procurement which is likely to take place in the entire Smart City plan. Shukla explained the importance of using ICT for procuring materials for road

project implementations and to improve transparency in the overall process.

In his detailed presentation, Rajeev Dholakia, AVP-Smart Cities, Essel Infra Projects, suggested three procurement models to the august gathering. In his remarks,

management and financial organisation. In addition, he emphasised that the SPV should have strong monitoring

bundling of a fewer number of contracts to help minimise managerial tasks at the SPV level and to improve contract management.

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Gokul Venkatraman, Business Development Leader, Owens Corning, was of the opinion that the procurement risk can be minimised by proper material selection.

The road aheadAt the end, cities in India are currently under quick

transition towards a low carbon environment, high quality of living, and resource efficient economies. Urban performance depends not only on the city’s endowment of hard infrastructure, but also on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure. There is a growing importance of Information and Communication

profiling the competitiveness of cities.Information and communication systems play a critical

role in building Smart Cities and supporting comprehensive

wide range of enabling information and communication technologies, including cloud and network infrastructure, wireless and sensing technologies, mobile crowdsourcing, social networking, and big data analytics for Smart Cities.

ICT brings together citizens and integrates technologies and services such as transportation, broadband communications, buildings, healthcare, and other utilities. Advanced communication and computing techniques can facilitate a participatory approach for achieving integrated solutions and creating novel applications to improve urban life and build a sustainable society.

The main purpose of this workshop was to bring together decision makers and solution providers in the field of systems, networking and communications, to discuss major challenges, research problems, and potential applications to support Smart Cities and urban informatics.

Date: 1 July 2016 Venue: Jaipur, Rajasthan

The workshop was attended by IT companies, utility companies, government officials and more.

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The Rajasthan government has taken a lot of initiatives in the last couple of years on many fronts that include Swachh Bharat Mission, Smart City Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and

Urban Transportation (AMRUT), GIS-based mapping project, Housing for All, HRIDAY, National Urban Livelihood Mission, urban infrastructure projects, sewerage & water supply projects, e-governance and energy-efficient street lighting project.

To begin with, our Smart Raj Project is here to improve the delivery of government services to citizens and business. This is a state-wide e-governance project initiated by the present government to cover all urban local bodies (ULBs) and their municipal services. The government has allocated Rs 125 crore to improve service delivery mechanism, transparency in governance and better information management covering all ULBs. We expect this to be completed by March 2018.

Under the Smart Raj project, we have included 23 IT modules that will take care of all the municipal transactions, building permissions and plans, fire safety NOCs, and so on. The Smart Raj project will be integrated on a GIS platform under GIS-mapping project. We have also deployed a state-

“WE ARE DEPLOYING PROJECTS WORTH MORE THAN RS 10,000 CRORE IN RAJASTHAN”

Dr Manjit Singh, Principal Secretary, Government of Rajasthan

Slum Redevelopment on PPP mode.

(under RAY/IHSDP/BSUP) out of which 40,000

allotted within next three months

Prime Minister Awas Yojna, (MoHUPA, Gol)

houses)

Yojna received for 4 cities

under process

to be constructed in 2016-

L to R: Dr Manjit Singh, Principal Secretary, Government of Rajasthan explaining the government’s future course of action on

various projects.

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RUIDProject - Phase III & Phase IV (ADB Assisted)

Implemented

of US$ 250 million with project size of US$ 360 million including State share of US$ 110 million

projects to be covered - 6 Towns

execution - Single mega contract, performance

bidders to form company before contract, reuse & recycling of treated water and quality audit through third party

Project size of Rs 4200 Cr

State to cover - All towns with> 50,000 < 1 lakh population + 10 Heritage Towns + 2 District Hq. Towns, likely to be started

Supply Projects to be implemented

level dedicated call centre, which has addressed more than 1 lakh complaints till March 31, 2016.

Now, I must highlight our initiatives in Housing for All. The objective is to provide housing for all by the year 2020 in all ULBs of the state through slum rehabilitation, affordable housing in partnership with the private sector and financial subsidy for individual houses constructed. Till now, we have

out of which 40,000 houses have been allotted and possession

For this programme, a timeline has been prepared and issued for construction of about 5 lakh houses in next four years.

This bring me to a major issue that every municipal corporation in the country is facing — open defecation and solid waste management.

Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, we have constructed

government has already uploaded applications for 2.60 lakh individual toilets on the website. As far as community toilets

targeted to build 11,000 more.For solid waste management, the government has already

started door-to-door collection of waste in 2,010 out of 6,000 wards. Our government has prepared detailed project report for

processing plants (RDF/Compost) in eight cities. We have also invited tenders for mechanisation of transportation and work is under progress. We have also finalised tenders for setting up of biomedical waste plants in the remaining 15 districts, and have

tippers and 1,300 containers.

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Meanwhile, we have a goal to become an energy-

streetlight project, the objective is to save electricity without reducing brightness levels on streets and roads. Rajasthan has become the first state in the country to sign a memorandum

crore, to be made from saving in power consumption, without extra financial burden on the state or ULB. About 3 lakh lights have been replaced in 15 cities and work has been completed in 14 ULBs. Currently, work is under process in 16 ULBs. We have a target to complete 5 lakh points by December 2016.

this programme. The mission components are water supply, sewerage, urban transportation, drainage and green spaces.

Under this mission, 16 cities will be equipped with sewerage systems where we will be spending Rs 1,300 crore. Since we are planning to provide adequate water supply, under this mission we will be spending Rs 540 crore on strengthening the water supply situation in 12 cities. As far as green space is concerned, four cities have been identified so far under this mission.

We have already issued LOI for sewerage projects in

Interestingly, Rajasthan was the first state to get approval under AMRUT. Meanwhile, all administrative and financial sanctions are proposed to be issued before October 2016, so that enough time is available for implementation. Under AMRUT, all the ULBs are mandatorily to take GIS-based mapping project that will enable them in planning, creation, and development of various infrastructure initiatives in a

Dr Manjit Singh, Principal Secretary, Government of Rajasthan addressing the officials during panel discussion

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planned manner, through a secured and user-friendly Web

headquarters and sub-division headquarters. Phase three will cover the remaining cities.

Under Rajasthan Urban Infrastructure Development

Development Bank to the tune of $250 million with project size of $360 million including the state share of $110 million. Work on six cities under this has already started and will be completed in the stipulated timeframe. RUIDP is likely to

Now to make all these schemes work and to have long-term benefits, it is important that the ULBs become autonomous, generate their share of finances and depend on their own revenues to operate and maintain infrastructure. Apart from this, the accounting of municipalities has to be improved. The objective is to shift from a cash-based accounting to an accrual-based accounting system, to update the accounts and get them audited.

Hence, to improve the accounting and audit of ULBs,

which have been accomplished after signing the MoU are: empanelment of Chartered Accountants for providing division-wise accounting and audit services and a Municipal Finance Reform Cell.

The 13th Finance Commission had recommended that the ULBs should shift from cash-based accounting to accrual-based accounting system. Since 2010, an effort has been made in this direction. But it gained momentum with

were empanelled division-wise and were allotted accounting and auditing of ULBs. This will ensure that all the payment is

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through RTGS, e-tendering exists for every tender and will give financial powers to ULBs.

Meanwhile, MFRC was constituted with the aim to bring about reforms in the financial management of ULBs. The MFRC will review progress of accounting services and audit of annual accounts. It will also organise workshops and training sessions for ULB staff and empanelled CAs. MFRC will co-ordinate, compile and review MIS formats and convene review meetings to take appropriate action in respect of revenue enhancement, funds and budget management. Here, MFRC will have an uphill task for the current financial year as the total grant allotment to ULBs is around Rs 65,000 crore.

In the interim, MFRC will also coordinate with the Smart Raj project team to ensure that accounting, budgeting and reporting modules are as per the requirement of ULBs. We have a target to increase revenue from the current 20 per cent to 50 per cent.

At the end, I personally think that this one-day workshop will definitely benefit our state’s ULBs for initiating new ideas.

I am thankful to the people of Smart Cities Council India for organising this workshop.

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Name Designation CityPriyavrat Pandya Commissioner Ajmer

ML Meena Commissioner Bharatpur

RK Sinha Bhiwdi

Brijaham Singh Burli

Shaswat Sharma Commissioner Dholpur

Ramnarain Badguju Commissioner Fur

Sourabh Sindal Commissioner GHC

Dhumpal Jat Commissioner Hanumangarh

JP Sharma Commissioner Hindaun City

HR Pawar CAO DLB

Anil Singhal

Amardeep Singh Project Coordinator

KK Sharma

Shubham Sharma Urban Planner

Amit Sharma

Arjun Pal

Prateek Nama

NK Aggarwal

R.K. Vijayvargia

Sarvana Kumar

Arun Hasija Commissioner

Narayanlal Meena Commissioner

Kirti Kumawat ROMC

Rajesh Sharma Nagaur

Jairam Sharma Commissioner Pali

Matwa Kumar Sikar

Praveen Kumar Sikar

Devilal Dochazya Commissioner Sujangarh

Dinesh Goyal Tonk

Manish Arora Udaipur

HBR Saini Commissioner

Essel Infraprojects Rajeev Dholakia

Itron Pawan Mathur

Oracle Niraj Prakash

Owens Corning Gokul

Responscity Rusabh Shah

StudioPOD Sarfaraz

Thomson Reuters Manik Sethi

Xylem Melvin Abraham

PARTICIPANTS

16Website: India.SmartCitiesCouncil.com

CONTACTSPratap Padode

Founder & DirectorPratap.Padode@India.SmartCitiesConcil.com

Deepti KhannaAssociate Vice President - Corporate RelationsDeepti.Khanna@India.SmartCitiesCouncil.com