AMARAVATI, India—The government planners now dreaming up India’s first “smart city” realize they have a problem.

To solve it they are planning to dispatch a fleet of drones, bury the power grid and link a biometric database to every square foot of land here in India’s newest state capital.

The problem is that none of India’s modern-day planned cities have lived up to their hype. Instead, they have succumbed to slums, crowding and chaos.

Amaravati was named the new capital of Andhra Pradesh after the Telangana region broke away as a new state in 2014. Since then, $1 billion in loan pledges from the World Bank and Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, alongside another $2.3 billion from state and federal government agencies, have breathed life into the project.

Planners envision a city of 3.5 million people on land currently home to 100,000 farmers and rural laborers living in 29 villages.