Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday called the national Capital an “unplanned city” and asked the corporates for innovative ideas to improve the living standards in the city. Addressing Assocham’s national conference on Innovation To Make Cities Financially Sustainable, Sisodia said the city planners of this “unplanned city” forgot to plan where the newspaper vendors, washermen etc. would go. “We are living in an unplanned city where there are several highrise buildings having flats for at least Rs20 lakh, but city planners, while developing it 20 years back, didn’t think where newspaper vendors, washermen and others would go… Due to their mistakes, we are today living in the unplanned city where we are alive, but living for the sake of it,” he said.
Stressing on the need for quality education and health services, Sisodia also mentioned that they form the basic foundations of any smart city. He said that in any smart city, a common man should be able to afford health and education expenditures in good hospitals and schools respectively. Else, it cannot be called a smart city. “Health and education are basics of any smart city. In order to make Delhi a smart city, we will need three things - honest politics, visionary brains and courage. The people of Delhi have given a historic mandate to innovative ideas. We are open to best innovative ideas to make Delhi a smart city,” he added.
Sisodia said that Government is working towards promoting the role of a teacher as the pilot of the education system with everyone else, including the Education Minister and other senior officials in the Education Department, to be the support staff. “We need to make education as the foundation for development of Delhi. Presently education is imparted in a very unscientific manner. We are working towards changing that, which is a big challenge,” he said.