Will Smart Cities in India Benefit the Common Man?

In today’s increasingly specialized and cut-throat world, a person needs in-depth knowledge and extensive domain expertise to handle a particular department even in a small company. But it is highly unfortunate that people with no qualification or expertise become Prime Minister, ministers, and bureaucrats in India to manage highly complex domains of governance. That’s why India continues to be a poor, underdeveloped country. ~ Rakesh Raman

India’s Minister of Urban Development, M.Venkaiah Naidu, asserted Friday that smart city development is based on the shared vision of citizens and respective city governments and not imposed by the central government.

Rebutting the criticism that Smart City Mission is elitist, he spoke about the objectives and design of Smart City Mission at a National Workshop on Urban Transformation in New Delhi on Friday.

Naidu clarified that the mission guidelines do not impose any restrictions on the extent of area in mission cities to be selected for area-based development as it is left to the city governments and citizens.

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He said that on account of limitations of financial resources and inadequacies of planning and execution abilities, mission cities are choosing relatively small areas to start with for addressing infrastructure deficit.

Naidu said in case of Vellore in Tamil Nadu, the area chosen for development accounts for 55% of total city area, 24% in case of Dharmashala in Himachal Pradesh and 20% in case of Kalyan-Dombivili and in several cities it comes to more than 10% of total city area.

In terms of population, people residing in area chosen for development account for 85% of total city population in Dharmashala, 38% in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh and 33% in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

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Explaining how smart city development benefits the common man, Naidu stated that of the 30 smart cities announced Friday, 26 of them have proposed affordable housing projects benefiting the urban poor, 26 cities will be taking up school and housing projects while 29 intend to take up smart road projects for widening besides enabling cycling and walking that help the common man.

All the 30 cities will develop Integrated Command and Control Centres that enable better coordination among various city agencies for better service delivery and effective management of scarce resources like water and electricity.

He said smart city projects are not mere real estate projects meant for just cosmetic changes. The Minister said that for the first time in the country, Command and Control Centres of Pune and Nagpur will become operational on the 25th of this month on the occasion of second anniversary of launch of Smart City Mission.

The Minister also rebutted the criticism that smart city mission is only a playground for global technology players. He said that the mission guidelines have prescribed that less than 25% of the cost of smart city plan shall be spent on technology based pan-city solutions precisely to prevent the mission becoming primarily technology driven.

Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau