4. E-Democracy in New Delhi Municipal Council: A Case of Smart City Planning Processes

New Delhi Municipal Council is one of the rare urban local bodies of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, which is governed by Government of India through an organizational arrangement led by senior civil servants who are assisted by professionals like engineers, architects, city planners and others. Normal democratic regimes and routines such as elections and re-elections are non-existent in the working of the New Delhi Municipal Council. As is well known, in the rest of the country, democratic processes are well and truly established since the early 1950s hailing India as the world’s largest democracy. With the declaration of the area under the jurisdiction of NDMC as the first smart city in Delhi, the highly planned and designed city by Edwin Lutyens aspires to become a benchmark for the global smart capitals. Covering the geographical area of 43.7 km² (2.95% of the total area of Delhi), and population of only 0.3 million (1.79% of the entire city state), NDMC expects to achieve the smart global capital status when one also considers that huge investments per person are being made year after year. The key issue that I would like to answer in this chapter is: Can New Delhi Municipal Council unleash e-governance including e-democracy, and pave the way for e-democratic governance in the future for its citizens. I would like to answer this key question by analysing three empirical cases apart from an examination of the NDMC Smart City Proposal with a view to assessing how far the smart city processes have promoted democracy in general and e-democracy in particular (citizen engagement) in the NDMC area leading to transparency, accountability, and ease of doing business. All these are core pillars of Government of India’s urban and economic policies. In the end some concluding are made.