By Ruma Dubey

What is “smart?”

As per the dictionary, it has many meanings but what it means is clean, tidy, well-dressed and it also means smart, witty and intelligent.

And it is a combination of this smart – clean and witty that we mean by Smart Cities. Well, we know cities which are dirty and full of smart and over-smart and not-so-smart people; so what gives the city the adjective of being “smart?”

It basically means cities which are clean (which will be a wonder in itself) and will also be intelligent- modern ways of transacting business. Here, ease of doing business will give it an edge over the other not-so-smart cities. So being tidy alone is not enough, the city has to be clever also.

This is probably the thought which has gone into the top 20 cities which have been earmarked for a makeover as a ‘smart city’.

The list comprises of

The smart cities will ideally have: (taken from the Govt’s smartcities website)

• Advanced infrastructure – IT will be the core of all infra facilities
• Adequate water supply (notice – not 24/7)
• Assured electricity supply (again, not uninterrupted)
• Proper sewage and sanitation facilities
• Efficient public transport
• Digitization and robust IT connectivity
• Affordable housing
• e-Governance with citizen participation
• Health and education
• Sustainable environment
• Safety and security for citizens, mainly women, children and elderly.

This does sound almost Utopian – a world which we Indians do not even dare dream of and now there is a possibility that we might actually have cities with these facilities?

India is not pulling out the trick out of thin air – the Govt has done its research and is studying the ‘smart’ solutions from other countries around the world – Thailand - In the early 2000s, many of Thailand’s poorest citizens were living in slums that lacked basic infrastructure and services. The Central and local government called on citizens and communities to co-generated solutions, improving thousands of households in cities across the country. Or for that matter, Barcelona in Spain – it was heavily dependent on costly and environmentally damaging fossil fuels with emitted many pollutants. The city government of Barcelona issued a Solar Thermal Ordinance, which reduced energy consumption and benefited the environment. London, Istanbul, China, many cities of India and New York are the other case studies.

This is a great plan but we hope that for once the politicians and leaders involved indeed implement it with least corruption (notice, we do not say, “no corruption” as that is impossible). Or else we will have smart cities but with the adulteration in cement and other building material on account of corruption, everything will come crumbling down with a couple of years – forget sustainable environment, we will not have even a sustainable smart city!

The other big challenge is the finance. How are these cities going to be funded? In fact most of the “winners” in this Top 20 have made it there because they have presented concrete financing schemes and most have adopted a PPP model – private and public JVs.

There are many who have criticized this smart city plan, saying that we need to first overhaul our ageing existing cities. But that can happen gradually – but if we develop other cities, won’t the need for migration reduce and each city became its own hub? That way, we will have a balanced urban development.

The worry here – hope this does not increase the greed of politicians and builder lobby – they might have started salivating thinking about the kind of realty development that they can fish under this smart city pretext. That is one huge risk….entire country will become one big realty venture. Affordable housing – will that become a reality?