The
leapfrogging of Indian Smart Cities
B.Chandrasekaran,
works in public policy
Indian cities were
evolved as a driving force for development and growth in the last thirty years
by infusion of mass migration for education and employment opportunities. Most
of the Indian cities are not developed in a particular design with an order
either by the State or by the societal norms or market forces which evolve
spontaneously. Hence, most of the urban population in India lives not in orders
with designs of civic amenities and public services. In other words, the cities
are facing huge challenges in dealing with social equity, economic viability,
and environmental sustainability on access to the services and facilities of
common utility.
The pace of
urbanisation has been increasing in recent decades without the basic livable
amenities which are more threats in the short term than opportunities. India
has 4,041 cities and towns. According to Pratap Padode, Founder of Smart Cities
Council India Chapter, "China has developed
30 cities in the last thirty years with over 1 million population. India has 53
cities or rather urban agglomerations with over 1 million population while
China has over 160. The municipal act needs an overhaul if we expect a
commitment for building sustainable cities that will last centuries." Even
after more than two decades of passing the 74th Amendments in 1992
which empowers urban local bodies to govern its affairs with autonomy is yet to
be realized fully.
Further, according to
UNDP’s Research Paper (2000) titled “Decentralisation
in India Challenges & Opportunities” which revealed that “it is not surprising that most
municipalities were and still exist in a financially precarious position. In
1986-87, the income of all municipal bodies in Class 1 towns exceeded their
expenditure only by Rs.311 million. The overlapping territories and
responsibilities between ULBs and Development Authorities led to problems of
non-co-ordination, and more seriously increased corruption and lack of
accountability".
The main impediments
faced by cities across India are Municipals Acts which are redundant in many
ways resisting to change its bureaucratic mindsets towards the aspirations of millennials.
Any city qualified to be the best in its quality should have excellences in
services delivery in basic services like equitable access to roads, potable
water, sewage systems, street lights, footpaths, power supply, and proper
education and healthcare facilities with the precision of compliance systems to
the residents with open and transparent governance systems. Without the above,
the tweaking here and there will only help short-term gains of social attention
and political gimmicks to the vested interests groups of which the larger
public are not a party to.
It would be interesting
to see the outcomes of major projects initiated under India's Smart Cities
Mission because the structural reforms which were said to be prerequisite were
not carried out to make concrete efforts to improve the basic amenities for
better living of all. In the process, though much has gone into the
underpinning challenges faced in the reorientation of the process for urban
planning and designing which are no less than the age-old red-tape system yet
to adopt new changes.
The Union Ministry of
Housing and Urban Affairs had launched targeted programmes to improve the basic
amenities in 100 cities through Smart City Mission in June 2015. Now, it has
been more than four years eloped since the launch of Mission. Out of 100
cities, 90 of them were selected between January, 2016 and June, 2017. The
under the Smart Cities Initiatives, the involvement of critical masses was
often faced with the dilemma of expansion of existing cities or the creation of
new ones. Mostly, the existing cities are decided to repair it instead of
building new cities.
While launching the latest
Progress Report 2019 on Indian Smart Cities, the Secretary of the Union
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs informed that till now total projects
completed in various cities are 1,100 only which is worth Rs.201 billion. Also,
Pratap Padode said that only “10% of the planned projects have been
completed in the past three years.” This is very minuscule compared to
what has been aimed to achieve by end of March 2019.
However, more on the
pipelines, out of the 5,000 projects taken up across 100 cities, nearly 3,880
or 78 percent of the project proposed were given tenders for implementation.
The tendered 3,880 projects are worth Rs.1,418 billion and projects under
implementation are 3,100 which is worth Rs.1,004 billion. Also, the Progress
Report highlights the cities which have tendered for various projects are 12
Smart Command and Control Centres for the comprehensive city-centric data
management system, 92 public-private partnership projects, 107 smart road
projects, 10 Smart Solar projects, 31 wastewater treatment projects, and 46
Smart Water projects. It could be possible that many of these projects were
designed in the pretense of OUTCOME based approach for the sustainability of
assets created.
It clearly shows that
the present urban local body’s capacity to scale up the initiatives with smart
solutions are stuck with its bureaucratic mode of planning, designing and
implementation with little or no space for public participation. Urban local
bodies have to constantly upgrade the skills and capabilities to their
functionaries to overcome emerging challenges. Though, the current systems of
urban local bodies are under tremendous pressure from stakeholders to change its
styles of functions with more transparency. They should strive to involve the
private agencies which have high creditability among the public to develop the process
and designs to implement the projects in a time-bound manner.
The framework of
Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) for Smart Cities was said to be well-thought-out
plan but very little has been grounded to effect changes. For example, out of
11 Smart Cities in Tamil Nadu, only Chennai Smart City had appointed CEO and
other staff under SPV. All other cities are functioning without CEOs and
thereby the SPVs are ineffective. Moreover, many Smart Cities are yet to
appoint the subject experts from the private sector as Directors in their SPVs
to have an inclusive process of decision making. Therefore, the foundation for
building cities of the 21st century nature is still far away from
the foreseeable future.
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