2.0 Social sustainability of smart mobility Sustainability has been described as“…development that meets the needs of the present without compromis­ing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” in'Our Common Future'(Brundtland 1987), a report—submitted to the United Nations by the World Commission on Environment and Development—which stated that social equity, economic growth and environ­mental protection are simultaneously possible based on the three concepts—social, economic and environmen­tal sustainability. They are the three pillars of sustainability. Of these, historically, environmental sustainability has been given more priority simply because of increased mass awareness about continuing environmental degradation. Social sustainability has remained largely ignored. According to the United Nations Global Compact, “Social sustainability is about identifying and managing business impacts, both positive and negative, on people”(UN Global Compact, n.d.). Many actions by businesses to achieve social sustainability unveil new markets, new business partners and are the cornerstone of innovation for new products and services. Smart mobility is one of those innovations. It reinvents an existing business model using technology. However, does it have social sustainability built in? Hemani and Das(2016) reported that even though sustainable urban development is widely accepted as a balance between social, economic and environmental dimensions, environment and technological advances dominate the thinking of sustainable cities in India as evidenced by the rating system in the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat in 2010; or the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, more commonly known as LEED-INDIA, adopted by the Indian Green Building Council in 2011. In addition to LEED certifica­tion for buildings, there is also LEED certification for neighbourhoods and city plans. The social dimension is, however, almost always under-represented and restricted to poverty alleviation or slum up-gradation programmes. India has a poor Human Development Index(HDI) record. It was ranked 136 amongst 187 countries in 2013(UNDP, 2013); this ranking changed marginally but more or less remained the same at 132 out of 191 countries in 2021(UNDP, 2022). They also say that social sustainability can no longer be seen as social tolerability of environmental policy measures, expanded to cover social equity, social design and environmental justice. Priya Uteng, Singh and Helen Hagen(2019) assessed the social sustainability of smart mobility in theory: an assessment based it on many indicators including social equity(accessibility), safety considerations, and health impacts. Of these, social equity can be expanded to be about: access of services to different income groups (accessibility due to affordability); access to different age groups(children, the young, the elderly); access to different genders(male, females, others); and access, irrespective of education or literacy(in this case, regular as well as digital literacy). India is a large country and every state has vastly different demographics, and different transport services. Culture plays a large role in mobility of people—the selection of modes, and when they go mobile—so it is not possible to speak for the entire country in one tone. However, this paper assesses social sustainability of smart mobility in India using parameters on social equity as described above. 2.1 Assessing smart mobility in India on parameters of social sustainability In this section, the social sustainability of smart mobility in India will be examined from the perspective of different user groups—age groups, gender groups, income groups, digitally literate groups; and also geographical access to these services. To begin with, it is important to understand who is using smart mobility services. It is clear by now that out of the many smart mobility services, ride sharing(bike-sharing and car­sharing) is not all that popular in the India. The most popular is ride-hailing, a taxi like service. The second most popular, by quite a large margin, is ride-sharing. Ride-hailing services are also called cab-aggregator services in India. The following section in this chapter reveals the findings of a study of users of smart mobility services in Kolkata, India: it will give us a sneak peek into smart mobility user demographics. 4 Smart mobility in India from an equity perspective