Make people,
not just the city, smart
There are 33 urban agglomerations that have made a successful bid to become
“smart cities”. Cities in India are yet to meaningfully address
basic issues such as walkability, public transport, waste management and
pollution. The 20 cities chosen in
the first round are expected to spend Rs. 48,063 crore on projects, and the 13
in the second round, Rs. 30,229 crore. Intelligent parking could be one way to
mobilise funds and cut congestion by integrating IT.
A smart city
should look at robust IT connectivity and digitalisation. It is an excellent idea of government to make the cities smart but it
is more necessary for the inhabitants of those cities to be smart before
cities. Until the inhabitants of any City will not change their mentality or
they will not behave like well civilized and well managed civilians, a city can
never remain smart for a long period.
Government
should make plan to make SMART VILLAGES with all the facilities including
employment opportunities and industrialisation. Then no villager will want to
migrate to city.
Urbanisation
and technological development should supplement the comforts of ordinary
people. The slum-dwellers are being evicted and displaced on the pretext of
making cities ' smart' thereby giving impression that smartness is for
corporates only.
The smart
cities need people friendly civic services and infrastructure development to
reduce transport congestion and waste management. The pivotal parameter is to
regulate constructions in such a way that the rain water recedes automatically
and causes no stagnation. The lacunas in funding perspective with private
partners, performance of the contractors, people’s coordination and
bureaucrats' sluggishness are the key issues for the city administrators.
Before
execution the pulse of the people should be felt to get the coordination in the
right perspective. Above all political intervention could spoil the soup in
execution.
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