The new Model Economic Township (MET City) in Gurugram is a smart city as well as a Japan Industrial Township (JIT).
A wholly owned subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) is in the news for a new development project. Adding to the list of smart cities in India, RIL’s Model Economic Township Limited or MET City is now building a world-class Greenfield Smart City in Gurugram, Haryana.
RIL’s MET City project is aimed at revolutionising the real estate and infra landscape of Gurugram. As per the available information, MET City is a Japan Industrial Township (JIT) and at present, houses four leading Japanese firms. This includes Nihon Kohden who recently performed a ground-breaking ceremony at their plot in MET City.
According to an official release by MET, the facility of Nihon Kohden will also be the company’s largest manufacturing facility in India. This is expected to enhance MET City's position as a leading industrial location in Haryana. Additionally, other big Japanese names in MET City include Panasonic, Denso and T-Suzuki.
At the ground-breaking ceremony, Anil Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer, Nihon Kohden India Pvt. Ltd., said, “With the opening of this new manufacturing unit, our focus continues to be providing the latest Japanese technologies and quality products in Indian market. This facility will allow us to further expand our manufacturing capabilities and meet the growing local needs of haematology reagents. This step is building on Nihon Kohden’s long-term commitment to the Indian market.”
Since RIL’s MET City is touted as a greenfield smart city as well as an JIT, it is important to understand what that entails.
Greenfield Smart Cities
Smart cities are often newly-developed urban spaces that are enabled with the latest technological innovations to cater to its fast-paced developed. Since it is not easy to enable such innovations into cities that have already existed for a long while, new cities are often built from scratch to make it a smart city. Such a smart city is a greenfield project whereas retrofitting an older city with advanced technologies to convert it to a smart city would be an example of a brownfield project.
Greenfield smart cities usually juxtapose eco-friendly elements modern infrastructure to achieve the goals of sustainable development. However, such cities are ambitious projects and come with its set of challenges, the foremost being huge assembling of framework and finding appropriate land. They are often developed by private companies and sometimes state enterprises pitch in with the required land or other resources.
As per several reports, the Gujarat International Finance Tech City (GIFT), situated on the banks of Sabarmati river, is considered to be an emerging greenfield smart city of the country. While it is now operational with more than 200 entities, the smart city is reportedly also considered to be an International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) where banks, financial service firms etc., set up their global operations.
MET City as a Japan Industrial Township (JIT) – Explained
In April 2015, the Government of India and Government of Japan entered into a deal to develop JITs under the India-Japan Promotion Partnership. Now, as of December 2021, India has 114 Japanese companies across all JITs, as per the data of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry India.
According to the official release, S. V. Goyal, CEO and WTD, MET City, said, “With 400+ industrial customers, walk-to-work masterplan and world-class infrastructure, MET City today is one of the fastest growing Greenfield Smart City in North India. Being a Japan Industrial Township, we are very happy to have more Japanese companies coming to us and selecting MET City as their partner in India.”
Besides MET City, other JITs in India include Neemrana and Ghiloth in Rajasthan, Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, Mandal Industrial Part in Gujarat, OneHub Chennai, Origins and Sojitz Motherson Industrial Park in Tamil Nadu, Supa Japanese Industrial Park in Maharashtra, Tumkur in Karnataka, and IIT, Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh.