Wipro Chief Azim Premji on Saturday said the implementation of smart city project in India unfortunately has been shallow, despite catching a lot of attention from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"It is very unfortunate that the smart city project has caught a lot of attention from Prime Minister etc, but its implementation has been shallow," Premiji said in an interaction with the students at the celebrations of Wipro's 2016 earthian awards here.

The smart city mission is one of the flagship programmes of NDA government, which was announced on June 25, 2015.

However, the company has been actively participating in terms of providing IT solutions for smart city project, Premji said.

"We have been actively participating in implementation process of the smart city project by p[providing IT and lighting solutions," he said.

Replying to a query, Premji said per capita income of the people is mostly taken as a parameter to gauge the developed status of a country, but there are many qualitative aspects which get ignored in the process.

"Per capita income is mostly taken as a parameter to gauge the developed status of the country, but there are also many qualitative aspects which get ignored in the process," he said.

Elaborating further, Premji said the quality of education system and social values are her criteria to gauge the developed status of any country.

"Some countries are less developed, but their education system is of high quality, and some others are very developed but, they have very low quality education system. So, education is an important criteria for development and lack of development," he said.

"There are very many developed nations which have social values that are significantly inferior, so this is also a criteria for gauging the developed status of any country," he said.

On energy consumption and utility, Premji said alternative energy like hydro and green energies should be used than using coal-based energy.

"More green energy should be used, instead of using coal-based energy. Hydro energy also could be used, which is done scientifically and not at the cost of environment," he said.

Premji said rural development has to be at the grassroots level and has to involve local population.

"Rural development has to be at the grassroots level and it has to involve the local population. It cannot be thrust from the top," he said.

As far as the company's role in rural development is concerned, Premji said it is doing a lot of work including financing NGOs to take up developmental works in villages.

"There are a lot of NGOs, we are financing to work with the farmers to extend the cropping patterns, to assist farmers in procuring material at cheaper rates and enable them to sell their produce at better price," he said.