Smart Cities: Mission Accomplished Or Promise Unfulfilled? The monsoon season is the best time to gauge a city. You instantly get a complete picture — the good, the bad and the ugly. If you are in Mumbai, you get a taste of all three, from poor housekeeping to infrastructure deficits. Come to think of it, only some parts of Mumbai — Marine Drive, Peddar Road and Nepean Sea Road — are clean as a whistle. The rest of the city is an eyesore: dirty, filthy, strewn with garbage, accompanied by a constant stench and perennial waterlogging in several pockets. Not to mention the open gutters. Slums, which occupy nearly 24% of Mumbai's land area, house more than 50% of its population. For years, successive chief ministers of Maharashtra promised to transform Mumbai into another Shanghai. We are still light-years away from Shanghai. Mumbai is deteriorating and degenerating on almost every front. Every time a plane lands or takes off, the aerial view is depressing — endless stretches of blue plastic sheets covering slum settlements. It is certainly not a pretty picture. Greening the Future 23 Jul 2026 - Vol 05 | Issue 30 Securing a sustainable India The international media loves such images — anything that portrays India in a poor light. If the country's so-called financial capital continues to deteriorate and hit new lows every year, what must the situation be like in other Indian cities? More importantly, how successful has PM Narendra Modi's Smart Cities Mission been? When PM Modi announced the scheme, it dominated front pages for months. But over time, it appeared to peter out and virtually disappeared from the media's radar. So, I did a bit of digging and discovered that the government has actually covered considerable ground. It even released a detailed note marking