Smart, but costly

It is heartening that the Centre has moved with a sense of purpose towards creating a hundred smart cities. It has ‘selected’ a list of the first 20 that will receive about ₹200 crore each to begin with, against their entitlement of ₹500 crore for five years. Smart cities — an idea that has perhaps received more than its fair share of criticism — have the potential to improve the quality of urban living for all. They are not merely about applying the so-called ‘internet of things’ — connecting computers and smartphones, refrigerators, cars and traffic signals, so that they can ‘talk’ to each other to coordinate and monitor every little activity in the public space. (This admittedly has a ‘Big Brother is watching’ undertone.) They are more crucially about using Big Data to promote sustainable urban living — in other words, improve waste management, enhance the efficiency of power use and distribution, and promote recycling. Urban India is a picture of squalor and anarchy; this cannot continue. The focus, however, should be on ‘retrofitting’ or redeveloping existing urban spaces, rather than acquiring land for smart cities. Erstwhile industrial townships such as Davangere (part of the list of 20) or, for that matter, places such as Modinagar, Rohtas, Durgapur, Naini, Kanpur and Asansol (which do not figure in it) can be turned around with lower cost and less socio-political headaches than carving spaces out of the hinterland. If these become urban magnets, they will take some of the pressure away from the metros. Smart cities, conceived as living and working spaces, can promote a more balanced, orderly process of urbanisation than purely production-oriented enclaves such as IT, electronics, food processing or apparel ‘parks’ have done so far. They should be seen as integral to the larger idea of making India an easy place to do business.

But for this to work, the costs must be kept in control. Here, the government is on shaky ground. In a tacit admission in its policy document that ₹1 lakh crore will not be enough — Deloitte has estimated a requirement of about ₹10 lakh crore ($150 billion) — urban local bodies and States are expected to raise funds from user fees and debt, besides public private partnerships. This can lead to exorbitant rentals and service costs, reducing smart cities to exclusive enclaves rather than thriving hubs. Private capital cannot be expected to fork out large sums at this stage, given the indifferent investment climate in India and the rest of the world. Hence, there will be no getting away from paring the bill.

It is also not too late to revisit the drawing board to fine-tune other aspects. These include examining our capabilities to manage Big Data without its posing a security risk. There has been little discussion on how these spaces will integrate with the older townships around them. Taking a technocratic view of a city can be a limiting approach. Cities, smart or otherwise, are about people, above everything else.

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