Shekhar Singh, Municipal Commissioner and CEO, elaborates on the plans of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) to monetise the city’s infrastructure under the smart city framework, integration, and more…. Benefit of events like SU to India’s Smart City Mission I think it's a great platform to bring all the stakeholders together. There's a lot of cross- learning, networking between the government and technical experts, and interaction between cities as well. It is a good platform for us to plan for the future, to make sure the infrastructure we have developed is utilised meaningfully and to deliver better services to citizens. Dream project One of the good things PCMC has done well is a GIS-based ERP system. Many cities take up property tax platforms, water tax platforms and many more but this system integrates it completely into one. A lot of decision variables can be taken going forward where we can have cross-connectivity between departments. Integrated command centres are implemented in all smart cities but this is a bit different. The monetisation of the fibreoptic cable leveraging 5G on the backbone of the city’s infrastructure is a readymade solution for the industry as it often faces ROW issues. Upcoming tenders and projects in the city More than tenders, the monetisation I mentioned is something we are very kickedup about because no one has really thought about monetisation in the smart city framework. Our physical infrastructure of fibre laying and ducting is already at 600+ km. We are coming up with monetisation of the fibre, ducts, smart poles and kiosks, and VMDs. Biggest achievement and challenge in the Smart Cities Mission One big achievement is that we started off with a project no one expected. Of course, there are some teething problems; we see it every day in our cities. It is also about the way cities have grown. It was a smart strategy to push cities towards a head-start.