Even as population growth poses the greatest challenge to our policymakers, efforts to aid urbanisation with the help of the Smart Cities Mission initiative is welcome
While conducting a live Facebook chat for soliciting ideas on a smart cities project for Dehradun, I was surprised by the deluge of responses. R Meenakshi Sundaram, Indian Administrative Service and nodal officer for the project, was equally ebullient at responding to the volley of queries which came from the young and old alike. Over a period of 16 weeks, under the stupendous guidance of Sundaram, we made wonderful efforts on citizens engagement, and Dehradun emerged as one of the leading cities in generating online responses, which includes inputs through the MyGov portal.
This had two clear messages for me. Other than highlighting the growing embrace of technology in governance, for which we all owe to our Prime Minister, this also indicated the anxiety and yearning of people for better urban facilities. This is quite understandable, given the strain on our urban centers caused by burgeoning population and large-scale migration from rural areas.
Migration is a natural phenomenon and sociologists have described how it helps many to escape from traditional bondage to embrace new freedom in the form of opportunities in employment, education, health and better lives. It comes as little surprise that the United Nations has predicted that by 2050 about 64 per cent of the developing world and 86 per cent of the developed world will be urbanised. According to the United Nations Population Fund, it is equivalent to approximately three billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will be concentrated in Africa and Asia.
India will have one of the largest chunks of this. In this backdrop, the case for smart cities in India could not have been better timed, especially when seen along with our population at 133 crore people with a growth rate of 1.2 per cent. This past World Population Day on July 11, one did come across some nice reiteration to bring family planning yet again to the fore and which, experts say, will eventually get good dividends. India is working hard on bringing the Total Fertility Rate (which is the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) from 2.3 to 2.1, after which the population begins to decline.
While the need for population stabilisation and negative growth is intense, one must also focus simultaneously on addressing the aspirations of billions who have begun to move to the strained new India, an urban India characterised by weariness, crowd, and chaos. We are all familiar with the traffic snarls in Bangalore and Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai. The garbage heaps of Patna and artificial floods in Guwahati are notorious too. The plague of Surat still haunts us.
That is why when people in cities — from Dehradun to Danapur, Gandhinagar to Guwahati — cling on the idea of change, and yearn to become smart, we understand our infrastructure needs massive sprucing up. The urge is also aspirational as is evident from the way cities across the globe are embracing new ideas, and technologies. New York is deploying intelligent street lights that talk back, engage with you and provide weather and traffic information, besides finding you a free parking. Copenhagen is working on an ambitious target to become a carbon neutral capital by 2025 through setting up 20,000 networked lED street lights that will reduce energy use by 50 per cent, cut CO2 emissions. Further, grappling with overflowing trash on the streets, Seoul is deploying a high-end waste management solutions.
Back home, Dehradun proposes to transform itself into a green, clean and vibrant city with a blend of environmental and economic vibrancy by leveraging engaged citizens and infusing technology. Bhubaneswar, which was ranked first for its proposal on smart city by the Ministry of Urban Development, is implementing what it calls e-municipality services, besides focussing big time on smart transport, smart waste management and smart district. Many cities are similarly working on a host of new ideas and innovations, which promise to alter the face of this strained new India.
To me, the Smart Cities Mission is a bold initiative by the Government to drive economic growth, enable local development and harness technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. Smart solutions riding piggyback on smarter technologies are impactful and will strengthen physical, social and economic infrastructure of cities. The new-look cities will also, hopefully, infuse new dynamism into cities' cultural and social milieu. And more than anything else, one hopes this will also trigger “the urban ability to create collaborative brilliance”, a phrase borrowed from Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, and make India a better place to live.