Germany is set to help India turn Kochi, Coimbatore and Bhubaneshwar into smart cities as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project to build 100 such cities across India.
Senior officials of Germany and India on Monday discussed bilateral cooperation in Smart Cities Programme in New Delhi on Monday. “Germany is committed to helping India make a success of its Smart Cities Programme,” State Secretary Gunther Adler of the German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety said in New Delhi. He said that Germany would contribute to India’s Smart Cities Programme – particularly to projects in Kochi, Bhubaneshwar and Coimbatore. “Germany wants to support the ambitious Smart Cities programme. Here, the German Building Ministry also supports German companies that want to cooperate intensively with Indian partners in order to assist Indian cities in implementing their plan,” said Adler, who is currently on a two-day-visit to India.
Adler led the delegation from Berlin in the second meeting of the India-Germany Working Group on Urban Development in New Delhi on Monday. He was also joined by Berlin’s envoy to New Delhi, Martin Ney, and other senior German officials. The Indian delegation was led by Madhusudan Prasad, Secretary in the Ministry of Urban Development, and Nandita Chatterjee, Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. Adler also had a meeting with representatives of the Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi. “Germany is an ideal partner in India’s endeavor to create smarter cities. We are very strong at smart planning for urban centres. We have developed the technologies to make life in cities easier,” said Ney.
Ney also noted that Germany had already been engaged in various fields related to Smart Cities – such as sustainable urban mobility, water and waste-water management, renewable energies and energy efficiency.
