European Union (EU) has committed 1.5 billion euros for various developmental projects in India. The largest chunk of this funding has gone to Lucknow metro project.
Talking about EU projects in India, Sachin Gaur, Project Coordinator, India EU Cooperation, gave insights about the one million euro International Urban Cooperation project.
After working closely with various countries, the project has now come in India.
“The aim is to match Indian cities with EU cities. EU cities nominate Indian cities and discuss the challenges they face there and similarly Indian cities select EU cities and discuss the challenges there,” Gaur said.
The major outcome of this project has been that 12 Indian and 12 EU cities have collaborated with each other to make themselves smart.
Another outcome is that 12 Indian cities will work with 12 EU cities together to make themselves smart.
“The project is also building a mayor’s convention whereby it will train mayors,” he added.
“The ICT project is bringing the Indian Standard Organisation and European Standard Organisation together.”
The project brought Indian and European cities, projects together to discuss the new standardisation aspects while building Smart Cities.
While mentioning that the progress in Smart Cities projects is still in infacny stage in India, Gaur also gave a detailed vision of European Union’s ‘Horizon 2020’ project. The project is worth 15-20 billion euros which is used to fund exciting research projects.
“India can also look at something similar.” he added.
