https://thewire.in/government/the-elusive-smartness-in-indias-smart-cities
The National Smart Cities Mission was launched amidst much fanfare in 2015 by the Union Government of India. The Ministry of Urban Development was made responsible to develop hundreds of Smart Cities under the mission.
Dehradun Smart City mission was one such mission that deployed Rs 1,400 crore (nearly $200 million) between 2015 and 2022, to transform the capital city of Uttarakhand into a ‘smart city’, from whatever its status was earlier. But in 2022, the chief minister of the state held a critical review of the mission’s progress and was unsparing to conclude that the city is yet to become “smart”.
Environmentalists, experts and historians of the city claim that the smart city mission has hardly made a dent to the city’s dwindling ability to manage waste, rapidly rising urban population and of slums, check pollution and protect biodiversity. The city’s freshwater streams that were once the source of the famed basmati rice cultivation on the city’s periphery have all but vanished. The city does not have a working master plan but the only industry that is alive in the city is the real estate sector. So, what has the Smart City Mission been working on for the last seven years? And, more importantly, what is a smart city, and did the mission rightly scope the smart city plan seven years ago?
Indian “smart cities” will need to take lessons from city like Venice that now impose a tourist tax to stop “over tourism” or municipalities in Sweden that own and run waste processing plants as a public good. Hyderabad and Bengaluru that surrendered to one spell of rain shower last year and New Delhi that saw only one day of air quality under healthy limits in the whole of last year stand in the company of Dehradun, while they all search for elusive smartness quotient after spending millions for over the last seven years. More importantly, no Indian city can claim to be smart if more than a third of urban India lives in slums and subaltern housing.
by Ankur Bisen
24/02/2023