Handholding for Smart Cities and Theme Cities

On Thursday (29th Oct), we will hold a workshop with NASSCOM. All four smart cities of the state (New Town, Bidhannagar, Durgapur and Haldia) would participate. This would be held at Utsari Glass Hall in Eco Park. NASSCOM has already brought out, jointly with Accenture, a comprehensive book outlining possible uses of ICT in various sectors of city development from power to water supply. Now they are helping selected states in bringing experts and stakeholders together. Mr Manojit Bose of NASSCOM's Smart City Vertical has already held a detailed discussion with me. We are expecting a fair turnout of experts on Thursday meet (see http://www.nasscom.in/nasscom-smart-cities-initiative for more details)

On Friday 30th, we will hold a seminar with CII. Here too all four smart cities would participate. We have discussed with their National Mission on Smart Cities and we expect good support from the experts that they would bring in. The seminar will be held at CII Suresh Neotia Centre of Excellence for Leadership, Bidhannagar. CII is supporting some other states too.

We are getting positive results in getting support of various chambers of commerce. AmCham India has shown positive interest in the Smart Cities as well as Theme Cities. Some have agreed to act as Hand-holding Agencies in the matter of specific theme cities. All such support is purely honorary on a pro-bono basis. Some example: FICCI  for the theme city on Health and Education (Siliguri), BCCI for Analytics City (Kalyani), CII for Industrial City (Asansol), CREDAI for Wellness and Senior Living (Baruipur) etc.

Indeed, networking is expected to help both the investor/service-provider and the city /citizen.

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Clippings:

Asian Age dt 26 Oct 2015

Khabar 365 dt 26 Oct 2015

Ei Samay dt 26 Oct 2015

Ajkaal dt 26 Oct 2015