Clean water, 24x7 power: Modi's 'smart cities' should be about progress, not phone apps

In its please-all budget, perhaps focused more on political expediency, Modi Sarkar has also taken a few steps intended towards fulfilling its pre-election promises such as the proposition of 100 smart cities.

For India to emerge-out of the rut of the third-world-syndrome this single idea, if implemented holistically, has the biggest potential to lead that turnaround.

A smart city will spur all-encompassing development within and around the city including infrastructure, civic amenities, transportation, education, manufacturing, services, communications, technology, recreation, security, disaster-management et al…a fully integrated work-trade-life ecosystem sustaining the city and its denizens. A network of interconnected smart cities would be a vital cog in the country’s development wheel.

However this writer could not fathom the extent of the smart cities from the budget speech of the FM. Are Rs 7,060 crore allocated for this initiative, enough? Hope government is working on a robust model rather than just satellite-towns to metros, with a few knee jerk implementations of “smart city” amenities like transportation, utilities and e-connectivity.

More from Economy

Inflation likely to be a big focus area for budget 2024, say sources Explained: Will the Bank of Japan break tradition and raise interest rates?

What exactly is a smart city? Without going into the socio-technological and town-planning jargons of a completely integrated Smartpolis with Green Energy, Smart Water Management, e-Governance, Smart Transportation, e-Commerce/ Mobile Commerce, Smart Logistics, Smart Housing et al or romanticizing the popular imagery of futuristic high-tech homes with touch panel control displays, appliances & gadgets, etc.; driver-less automated transportation; intelligent civic utilities systems; humanoid robots doing low-end/ hazardous jobs in the future etc., let me raise a human perspective of what should be the essence of a smart city.

The real barometer of a city’s “smartness” would then be how “friendly” it is to its denizens. It’s all about the vision and processes running the city with technology playing the enabler, not the be all and end all of a smart city. Best of technology will fail if the processes and more importantly the people arming those systems are not people-friendly (a trait rarely seen in our civic genes).

If even a kid, a senior citizen or a differently-abled person can survive on his/ her own due to intelligent design of the “smart city infrastructure” then only can we say that the city is really smart. If, what I just mentioned makes you smirk, then imagine living in your city alone as a senior citizen or a differently-abled person and you will realize what I mean.

Let’s start your day: Can you wake up on a happy morning without worrying about the daily chores, reach your workplace, return back safe without any harassment (hassle) and can look forward to your next day cheerfully. If yes, then that could be a good parameter of a smart city.

Usually you wake up and worry about filling up your water tank (if power is not out), wait for your milkman/ house-help to turn up and pray till s/he is out of the home that you are not robbed/ harmed, then get ready painfully as neither the home nor the amenities are designed smartly.

Next as you venture out, you encounter footpaths, streets, roads & traffic as if you are putting foot on a battlefield. The streets/ transportation infrastructure is hardly designed ergonomically, let alone friendly. You are even afraid of asking help from authorities let alone aloof citizenry. God forbid if you encounter an accident, you stand a bigger risk of dying due to city’s inefficient, apathetic emergency response system than actual injuries. Everything is a struggle…I can go on and on. In short, every hour of the day is spent thanking God that the last hour passed peacefully.

Now envision life in a smart city: you wake up with no worry about civic amenities. Clean water available 24x7, with uninterrupted power-supply. Home is secured with intelligent alarm-cum-safety systems. You are enlisted with the community watch as well as the police. Your gadgets like mobile, cooking system, car etc. are intelligently monitored and synchronized with the emergency response system. Your garbage is collected as a precious commodity to be converted into power, daily groceries are available at your beck and call with security-cleared workforce. Your house-help is enlisted by authorities as safe, home & amenities are designed to help you finish your daily chores without hassles. Every information you need or need to share is on your control panel centrally connected with the city management servers.

When you step out, the central control room is automatically informed that a specially-abled person is on the street. The footpaths, streets, crossings and traffic signals, public transport are designed keeping you in mind and so are the offices, market places, buildings etc. The civic authorities are trained to help you with humane touch and accountability is part of their KRA. The street lighting is intelligent to make optimum usage of power as per lumens needed at any given time. God forbid, you meet an accident and immediate intelligent help is available from emergency response team…A complete article picturizing life in a smart city could be written, but that is not the scope of this piece.

Creating an entire network of such smart cities requisites humongous investment of time and money. The token amount allocated by the govt will have to be supplemented by Rs 50,000 crore allocated for Urban Infrastructure and much more. A smart city is a composite economic unit and will generate a big chunk of its own revenue for self-sustenance but till such time the govt will have to generate some innovative investment for this initiative with public-private partnership. Govt cannot burden the people with more direct taxes hence it will have to widen the net of the indirect taxation, and yet narrow its mesh, to maximize the tax mop-up.

Piecemeal approach of sexing up satellite towns may not lead to the desired outcome. A big idea of creating multiple modern cities like a Silicon Valley or a Las Vegas or a Shenzhen was missing in the budget speech. The closest, though not exactly, that India has come to a smart city is ironically, Lavasa, controversial due to politico-environmental reasons.

If India has to grow and provide dignified living to her citizens, it needs at least 200 modern cities. The misplaced socialist romanticism of rural India “Asli Bharat Gaaon Mein Basta Hai” will have to give way to “Naya Bharat Nagaron Mein Vaas Karta Hai”.

We need to dream big. So next time we hear “Smart ban raha hai India”, I hope it will be about the real progress about smart cities and not about some smartphone or app.

The writer is a management technocrat currently working with the government on National Policy on Electronics. Views are personal. Follow him on Twitter@kapildsharma