While the smart city project has its heart and mind in the right place, one can’t help but wonder if it is a pipe dream, Mala Bhargava writes
Looking at the hornet’s nest of cables that hang above an electricity junction box, which somehow remains standing on a side of the road that’s been dug up by the sewage workers and left to languish as-is until further notice — I can’t help but wonder what it would take to make my city “smart.”
There are few places in India that aren’t in the same unholy mess as the nation’s capital. But fortunately or unfortunately, New Delhi as a whole may not be on the list of 100 cities said to be chosen by the Modi government for transformation into smart cities though apparently it’s up to citizens to choose what is selected for project as they work with authorities to bring the standard of their spaces up.
On the one hand, the only way forward is smart. That India’s cities are both imploding and exploding with over-population, abysmal infrastructure and non-existent basic resources. Patching these up bit by bit isn’t going to take them very far into the future. And yet, leap-frogging with new green tech, high-speed technology, smart financial planning and governance seems such a pipe dream. It’s a project that seems to have both heart and mind in the right place, looking at cleanliness, inclusivity, transparency, and a bouquet of other laudable values. If cities can demonstrate they can implement development as per guidelines, they stand to be designated smart. Love the concepts — but the problem is no one really knows what the end results will look like. If it is anything like the model GIFT city in Gujarat, it may not be within everyone’s reach. There are a few that can help comparing that utopia but the reality they see around them today and wondering just how are you to get from point A to point Z. So deep is our cynicism and scepticism that the most common reaction is to point out that we need water, electricity, toilets, food that doesn’t have worms in it, and more of the basic stuff of every day life. My power has switched to inverter even as I write this — and that is the ironic truth.
Smart cities will also call for smart attitudes, a letting go of that “jugad” and “chalta haï” philosophy that underlies the very making of our living and working spaces today. These don’t belong in the lexicon of smart cities. How are leaders and bureaucrats and administrators ever going to take time off from corruption and the pursuit of the trivial like what film should be banned and what book hurts somebody’s sentiments, who said something they should take back etc. enough to get down to the hard work that would be required to develop transformed cities. Where would we put away the scam culture that feeds the current mess while we build smart cities?
There are experts who think the government does not know what it’s doing and has no specifics and that the prime minister now has one slogan too many to handle.
There are also those who are attracted to the opportunity and indeed to the digital India dream. But no matter what school of thought you subscribe to, you know where the taxpayers’ money is headed, that too in the midst of warnings of a slowing global economy. We’re in it for the long-haul.
While I gaze on into the heart of the maze of wires obstructing my view of the only tree around here, I get the sinking feeling that my city is certainly not about to get smart in the duration of my lifetime.
(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 27-07-2015)
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Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
