In the Smart City Challenge (competition) cities had to prepare their plans in the form of a Proposal . The Proposal was a template to be filled-in by all cities participating in the Challenge and was based on principles of integrated planning as applied to the context of Indian cities.

CSIR-Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) India’s premier national laboratory, a constituent of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) continues to break fresh ground in increasing road safety in India by aiming to minimise road fatalities through research.

The announcement of the National Health Policy 2017 is one of the many progressive strides being made by our country. It is one of the several long due activities that has fructified under NDA Government’s mandate of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ under the visionary leadership of Shri. Narendra Modi ji.

Prime Minister Modi during his Civil Service address on 21 April 2017 focused on five ideas – pursuit of excellence, ‘anamika’, burden of experiences, out-of-box thinking and focus on outcomes. The book, Hourglass Management Paradigm: Pathway to Excellence in Leadership (Bloomsbury 2014), also propagates similar ideas. Let us see what the hourglass paradigm says about these ideas.

Saturn wears many beautiful ringlets, Mars is red and ornamented with volcanoes, canyons and craters, Jupiter is big and has a bright red spot but no planet is as beautiful and bountiful as Earth. The present state of time when we are inclined to focus on the hazards facing the Earth—a large number of them—it also becomes imperative to take some time out to rejoice in the assorted loveliness of nature that is around our homes.

In yet another move depicting that citizens are the foremost priority of the Narendra Modi Government, it has been announced that VIP vehicles in India can no longer have red beacons atop. This decision will come into effect from 1st May, 2017 onwards.

The most frequently asked question is: What is a Smart City? The response is that even though the idea of a Smart City has been around for some time there is little consensus on the idea of a smart city or its definition and the way to make a city ‘smart’.

The Smart Cities Mission aims to address the gap in city-wide basic infrastructure; additionally, it applies IT enabled solutions to city services and does a make-over of ‘Areas’ in cities. In the Smart City local areas are developed in three ways – retrofitting, redevelopment and Greenfield.

Over three months ago, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched BHIM - Bharat Interface for Money - he provided India a tool that can be a one-stop solution for all digital payments.

The Smart India Hackathon 2017 promoted innovation, out-of-the-box thinking in young minds, especially engineering students. It was focused on the problems of social importance as identified by 29 Ministries/Departments of Government of India.