India, May 11 -- With the Smart Cities Mission - a flagship initiative launched by the Narendra Modi government in 2015 - coming to a close on March 31, the future of one of its most prominent features, the Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs), hangs in the balance.

The success of the mission, spread across 100 cities, has been mixed. But ICCCs - high-tech control rooms equipped with a network of cameras, sensors, and IoT devices - have emerged as a common and visible infrastructure backbone over the past five years. These nerve centres have played a key role in urban governance, enabling traffic monitoring, crime tracking, flood and disaster management, and public health response during the pandemic.

But now, with 7,545 proje...