EatSmart Cities and Transport 4 All Challenge: An inspiring Civic Engagement

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EatSmart Cities and Transport 4 All Challenge: An inspiring Civic Engagement

India’s Union Minister for Housing & Urban Affairs Hardeep S. Puri launched the EatSmart Cities Challenge and Transport 4 All Challenge at an online event.

“It is a matter of pride that today, we see the Eat Right India approach being scaled up to the smart city level,” Hardeep S Puri said at the launch of the EatSmart Cities challenge.

Speaking at the launch of the Transport 4 All Challenge, the Minister, said that COVID-19 has brought the entire world to a halt, with transportation being one of the worst-affected sectors. He also said that the Transport4All Digital Innovation Challenge would assist cities in regaining mobility.

Aim of EatSmart cities

The EatSmart Cities Challenge aims to encourage Smart Cities to create a strategy that promotes a balanced, safe, and sustainable food ecosystem through institutional, physical, social, and economic infrastructure, using smart solutions to address food-related issues.

India has a unique opportunity to lead the way in advancing the idea of incorporating food systems into city planning and growth in order to provide people with balanced, clean, and nourishing diets.

Hardeep S Puri further added that this movement will nudge the urban populace to make better food choices resulting in a healthier and happier nation. This will complement the remarkable work being done in the Smart Cities Mission.

About EatSmart Cities Challenge

The ‘Eat Right India’ campaign, launched by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has gone a long way in raising public consciousness about eating safe, balanced, and in sustainable manner.

The EatSmart Cities Challenge is a competition between cities to recognise their efforts in implementing and scaling up various Eat Right India initiatives.

This unique challenge, in collaboration with Smart Cities Mission, will foster healthy eating habits, improve the food safety and regulatory climate, raise customer awareness, and encourage them to make healthier food choices in India’s major cities, setting an example for other cities.

Transport 4 All (T4All) Challenge
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs initiated the Transport 4 Everything challenge. Under this Cities in India have a unique opportunity to invest in public transportation as a social good, fully revamp informal transit, and prioritize digital innovation to enhance user experience.

Citizens to come up with problems and solutions themselves

At the core of the Challenge, citizens will not only define the problems but will generate solutions simultaneously that will help start-ups and cities to refine the solutions to meet their needs.

The first edition of the Challenge focuses on digital innovation. Cities and start-ups will be driven in developing and testing different strategies, learning from them, and scaling them to increase public transportation and mobility.

All the Smart Cities Mission cities, capitals of states and union territories (UTs), and all cities with a population of over 5 lakhs are eligible to take up the Challenge.

Three Stages of the Challenge

● Stage I- PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION: Cities, with the support of NGOs, identify key recurring problems that citizens and public transport operators face

● Stage II- SOLUTION GENERATION: Start-ups develop prototypes of solutions to improve public transport with inputs from cities and NGOs

● Stage III -PILOT TESTING: Cities engage start-ups for large-scale pilots and refine the solutions based on citizen feedback