E-Dialogues 25.0 | Addressing Urban Issues With Innovation
Innovative start-ups can lead the way towards smart cities Team Urban Update
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ll India Institute of Local Self-Government partnered with Smart City Gwalior, Bilaspur Smart City, and Dream Hatcher Incubation Centre to organise the twenty-fifth edition of the webinar series titled ‘E-Dialogues’. The topic of the webinar was “Addressing Urban Issues with Innovation”. Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update, moderated the webinar and said that it would try to address and understand how innovation has been, and continues to improve governance and quality of life of people in cities and how giving space to startups can give a new push to cities to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The first speaker, Kakul Mishra, National Programme Head, National Institute of Urban Affairs, said that the topic is pertinent during these COVID-19 times and has showed how innovations are the backbone of recovery. Innovation is no longer an isolated event. Innovations hold the potential to effectively address the
requirements of urban governance and highlight how urban is a multitude of sectors in one sector, and therefore requires all aspects to come together for it to function properly. She talked about the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM), launched in February 2021. Its goal is to “use technology as a backbone to foster innovation and contextual solution to address various challenges of the urban sector across India.” The platform is trying to create shared digital infrastructure which can enable cities to build capacity by meeting guidance framework. “The
Cities now have start-ups, innovations, technologies, government regulation orientation, all working towards improving quality of life of people in cities. Deepti Raj Senior Project Associate, WRI India
44 July 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
aim is to bring transformative power of collaboration and innovation into the urban domain,”said Mishra. Under the NUDM, there is key focus on engaging with startups and it is their goal to collaborate with over 500 startups by the end of 2025. Urban development and quality livability in cities, Mishra believes, can be attained through a proper model of partnership and collaboration, which simultaneously leverages needs and opportunities. Deepti Raj, Senior Project Associate, World Resources Institute India, started her presentation by mentioning how the COVID-19 pandemic prompted digital adoption to happen, which highlighted the importance of start-ups in terms of bringing services within reach of people. However, the disparity in access to internet in urban India also surfaced during the pandemic, she said, while citing reports. Digital literacy, socio-economic divide and gender divide in the world of internet counters the expectation of height of development in cities. She said that cities now have start-ups, innovations, technologies, government regulation orientation, all working towards improving quality of life of people in cities. However, low-income group
