The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial corridor project attracts 4.5 billion dollar worth of investment from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).

This investment has been made in the first phase of the project and Japan holds a 26 percent stake in the same. Japan is constantly in coordination with the Indian government to track the progress of the development .Japan is also in working in sync with the Indian government for other industrial corridors and a special management team called “Japan Plus” has been set specifically to fast track Japan’s investment proposals to India. This team has been set up by the department of industrial policy and promotion and consists of officials from both Japanese and Indian government.

The DMIC project consisting of a plan to build 100 smart cities is gaining momentum as the first smart city of Dholera Special Investment region has been sanctioned Rs. 3,000 crore for development of trunk infrastructure. Work has already started on a strategic area of 22 kilometers and the first phase should get completed by 2019.

Of the seven cities that shall be developed in the first phase of project, master planning for majority of them has already been completed. While Dholera shall be built over a whopping 920 acres area, 747 acres of land already have been transferred to special purpose vehicle for development of smart city in Greater Noida. Similarly 32 square kilometers of land has already been acquired for Shendra –Bidkin smart city out of the 84 square kilometers on which it is planned. Another 8 square kilometers is expected to be acquired shortly.

Funding remains a major challenge as the government has allocated a sum of Rs. 100 crore (approximately) per smart city per year for next five years; an amount that seems largely insufficient to complete the project. About 30-35 percent projects are trunk infrastructure and central government is arranging for funds for the development while the rest 60-65 percent projects shall be developed on account of public-private partnership deals as and when it shall materialize.

Talleen Kumar, CEO of DMIC Development Corp.stated that “We have held several meetings with various governments and investors from different countries in the past many months including Germany, the UK, US, South Korea, etc,” These discussions should result in inflow of foreign funding into this project.

DMIC was sanctioned by the government in 2007 and has been planned as a 2,700 kilometer corridor spanning the length of India –a mammoth project which is one of its kinds. Modi’s development of 100 smart cities, few of them along the corridor shall boost India as a manufacturing hub to the world and incentivize “Make in India “vision.

The Golden era” of India seems to be returning back and if executed as planned, there shall be no looking back for us Indians.