Smart Cities – The conundrum of positioning a city either smart city or liveable city, contributes towards the larger question, could smart cities lead into smart urbanization.

“Urban Ethos and Pathos”, a book written by Raj Liberhan, former Director of India Habitat Centre, has delved into this crucial issue and urged the policymakers to look beyond bricks and mortar, and also a “heartless land development having no regard for the human need”.

“Are we going to be smart and do the right thing, or will be smart by not doing the right things,” a very crucial choice, which underpins urbanization — has been explored in the book that was launched earlier this month.

The book emphasizes democracy is not feudal rule of the elected; instead it is the formulation of law to serve the common man.

The author emphasizes there has to be a continuous interface with the providers of civic amenities and the residents to ensure the ease of good living, which generates a dynamism for the prosperity of the city.

In a land which saw the marvel of the Harappan civilisation at the beginning of major human imprints into the world of urban development. “The ease of good living should drive cities to create iconic spaces to reflect the aspirations of the geography, and its settlers for a harmonious coexistence”, the book says.

The reasons for uncontrolled expansion of cities usually – education and employment-trigger influx of people seeking a better future in urban centres, which has a cascading effect on house and then bad planning lead to urban growth, which neglects civic infrastructure, water, waste management, energy supply, health and culminates into environmental degradation.

Delhi-NCR and many other cities are already beset with these issues.

The author advocates foreign capital and expertise is badly needed to transform infra structure. He says the foreign expertise on road engineering layouts will show the way roads should not be planned.

The author also highlights the role of women in planning urbanization and deplores that cities have largely been designed for and by men having scant consideration for women’s needs. The planners often miss the cultural and social preference of women, “the city intimidates single women, single mothers”, and we are yet to recognize the housing needs of working women.

“The long road to better cities for women must start now”, says the author.

Land is a vital resource in the process of urbanization, and there is no alternative other than using this precious resource sensibly, argues the author insisting on better land management for cities.

The builder-led expansion in cities have blown out planning, design and aesthetics — resulting in urbanization — an outcome of builder-politician-bureaucracy nexus. The author says unregulated urban planning and absence of foresight has plagued Delhi’s cityscape. “Who anchors and who navigates the ambitions of the capital — the LG; the Chief Minister; or the municipal corporation,” asks the author.

The book is also a collection of writing of the author, published in newspapers, focussing on contemporary urban issues.

The author concludes unless the governments and the corporation unanimously believe that governance is beyond party and partisan considerations, there is no chance that the capital’s woes will be addressed.

Therefore, planning for each zone should begin at the entrance.

5G  – With fifth-generation cellular network technology (5G) round the corner that allows data transfer at a 10 times faster rate than 4G, India is set to witness major disruptions across industries in 2020 — with greater adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and advances computing at the edge, leading industry experts said on Tuesday.

Although the 5G technology that is gaining momentum fast globally may take at least another 5-6 years to reach the masses in India — for the simple reason that even 5G spectrum allocation is yet to take place for full-fledged trials — the enterprises are bullish on more real-life use cases emerging from the country.

“With 5G around the corner, greater adoption of IoT devices, and a need for faster decision-making, advanced edge computing that converges AI, IoT and 5G will be the key to realizing business value from data,” said Prakash Mallya, VP, and MD – Sales and Marketing Group, Intel India.

In the past 12 months, the integration of AI and IoT at the Edge has rapidly increased, allowing businesses across industries to design automated and more predictive systems.

Coupled with 5G services, edge computing requirements will accelerate exponentially.

“Harnessing these growing opportunities requires products and tools that are interoperable, computer vision enabled for the unique demands of the edge, software that is open and easy to deploy, and investment in the next generation of talent that can build, operate and effectively leverage new technology,” Mallya elaborated.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), commercial 5G deployments have begun in many regions and while 2019 is very much an introductory year at best, 2020 looks to be the year where 5G begins to ramp up.

“Although technologies will continue to evolve and find application in business processes, the mixture of 5G and IoT can be expected to dominate the foreseeable future. Staying competitive will ultimately mean adapting, and there will be plenty in 2020 and beyond for companies to catch up with. So, it’s time to get started,” said Sameer Mahapatra, Country Sales Head — India and SAARC, Aeris Communications.

However, the entire 5G ecosystem, which involves original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), infrastructure, spectrum and edge devices, is currently missing in India and in such a scenario, various 5G-enabled devices that are now set to see the light of day are redundant for the Indian consumers.

“We expect 5G to reach mainstream in India in 2023 and mass market starting 2025 or so,” said Neil Shah, Research Director at Counterpoint Research.

“This will, however, be much earlier compared to 3G and 4G era which took at least seven to eight years in India since the first global commercialisation for each generation of tech curves,” Shah told IANS.

According to cybersecurity firm Forcepoint, While 5G appears to be a promising service for organisations, the more reliable connectivity and lower latency of 5G will also work in favour of determined employees wishing to transfer swathes of corporate data.

5G will also bring new cyber threat scenarios in place.

“With the roll-out of 5G continuing in 2020, cybersecurity stack needs to have visibility and control of such data movement else organizations risk being unable to identify data theft at the speed necessary,” the company said in a statement.

Seqrite, the Enterprise Security solutions brand of Quick Heal Technologies Ltd, expects the threat exposure to increase substantially.

“Cybercriminals will look to capitalise on the new potential entry points that will open up within enterprise networks as everything from internet cars to smart refrigerators connect with them.

“The increase in threats to confidentiality and privacy will be unprecedented, with organisations and institutions required to monitor a much larger landscape for attacks,” said Seqrite.

Smartwatches do tell the time — like smartphones that still make and receive calls — but this particular wearable segment has come of age with real-life use cases in areas like health and fitness along with a connected app ecosystem that has made them a preferred choice for the Indian millennials.

According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) “Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker Q3 2019”, 3.07 lakh watches were shipped during the third quarter into India — registering 47 per cent growth quarter-on-quarter and 127 per cent growth year-on-year.

Among the watches, the country saw the arrival of 1.87 lakh smartwatches in the third quarter, registering 28 per cent QoQ growth and 93 per cent YoY growth.

With a strong millennial base with rising disposable income, India now offers immense growth potential for the smartwatch players, currently being dominated by the Apple Watch Series.

Here, one has to understand the difference between a true smartwatch and a basic one.

Apple, Fitbit and Fossil are true smartwatches while the rest of the crowd comes under the basic watch (with smart features) category.

To make it simpler, a basic watch is like an entry-level smartphone — brands like Huami’s Amazfit, Huawei etc. — while smartwatch — that can run third-party applications on the device itself — is considered truly ‘smart’.

“Basic watch includes devices resembling traditional wrist-worn watches and/or devices where timekeeping is a primary function. Timekeeping and a default watch screen, or watch face are a requirement for a device to be considered as a basic ‘watch’,” Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India, told IANS.

In a price-conscious market like India, several brands have entered the basic watch category with smart features, especially related to health and fitness.

“The mid-range segment or entry-level watch (basic watch) segment is growing very fast as more and more Indians realise the importance of staying fit. People who wore fitness bands for years are now switching to such watches, and, eventually, true smartwatches. We will see more brands entering this segment in 2020,” elaborated Singh.

Earlier, in the second quarter of 2019, the India market for wearable devices grew 30.9 per cent sequentially — reaching an all-time high of 30 lakh shipments in a single quarter, according to the IDC.

Smartwatches saw a healthy 99.6 per cent (YoY) and 42.9 per cent (QoQ) growth in the second quarter in the country.

At the rate of 30-40 lakh wearables each quarter, we can easily see India consuming in between 1.2 crore and 1.5 crore wearables in a year which is still small compared to globally but the growth is stupendous.

The wearable market is expected to reach global shipments of 222.9 million units in 2019, with earwear and watches accounting for more than 70 per cent of all wearable shipments by 2023.

According to Ramon T. Llamas, Research Director, wearables team, IDC, smartwatches “will move deeper into health and fitness and connect with multiple applications and systems, both at work and within the home.”