Example of Smart City

The practice of open urination and defecation in different parts of our cities does not help the situation. After all, who can forget the outbreak of plague in 1994 in Surat resulting in the deaths of many people? More than anything, Surat brought a negative publicity to the entire country which became a greater cause of concern. Surprisingly, the same Surat within a year turned out to be the cleanest cities in the country. And mind you, the authorities did not have to undertake any highfalutin initiatives but to focus on bare minimum things. This is what we need to do while visualising our ‘Smart Cities’. So, we emergently need to ensure a proper system of solid and liquid waste management including house to house garbage collection, a planned network of well-connected drainage system, availability of a network of paid and free public conveniences, arrangements of scientific slaughter houses for ensuring availability of hygienically processed animal protein, clean streets as well as ensuring sale of covered food/street food stuffs.

The latter should be coupled with a regime for selling the same by the hawkers, e.g., making it mandatory for the street food vendors to sell their stuffs only wearing gloves and head-caps to pre-empt contamination. There should be a corresponding provision for enforcing these sanitation and hygiene norms among the people who should be penalised for violating the same as is the practice in most of the advanced countries.

The wanton throwing of garbage at public places, open urination/defecation or spitting should be made punishable offences. Use of plastic bags for day-to-day purposes should be discouraged as far as possible and practicable as it is one of the important factors playing havoc with our drainage system. Again, unavailability of parking spaces in our cities lead to private and public vehicles being parked on the roads itself, leading to traffic snarls and inconvenience. Hence, there is not only an urgent need to do a customised traffic planning for each city including provisioning of notified parking spaces but there is also a need to enforce traffic discipline among the people. The latter should include strict compliance with the traffic rules, zero tolerance for unauthorised parking or placement of household/shop stuffs on public space, roads streets and footpaths. Construction of decent footpaths and public parks/community man for recreational and utilitarian purposes should also be a priority for the authorities.

National Policy on Urban Street Vendors 2009 should be strictly enforced for bringing a a semblance of sanity on our roads and streets. This would also ensure the pedestrians to safe and free movement. Availability of better and safer means of mass rapid transport system (MRTS) is also a desideratum. Given the increasing menace of extremism, it is high time that we have a strong of city surveillance system to protect and secure the lives of our citizens, more so of increasing urban crimes and terror activities. Proper street lighting shall definitely prove quite helpful here. The entire towns should be duly divided in identifiable zones with public display of layout maps and proper road/street signages for citizens’ convenience and for better policing. Identification of water aquifers and identification of highly fire-prone areas should also be a priority with proper awareness regarding disaster management regime for all the stakeholders. Enforcement of building rules also demands serious attention of the municipal authorities.

There should be an emergency planning for all the old and ramshackle buildings as well as fire-prone areas. Besides, intelligent effort should be made for natural beautification of our cities. All the municipal authorities should come out with their citizen charters and ensure mandatory compliance with the same. Online deposition of municipal taxes and single window system for getting licenses/permits and various services should be made functional immediately. A strong public grievance system should be an inalienable part of the overall planning. While one knows that finances would be a major hurdle while trying to realise these goals, but with intelligent planning and smart execution, the municipal authorities can actually generate more revenues than they might need for the purpose. It is good to know that both the central and state governments are already synergising their urban planning to be on the same page. If these concerns are factored into the ‘Smart City’ project, then we can actually ensure bare minimum services to our citizens in pursuance to a uniform template. Our ‘smart cities’ should first guarantee bare minimum amenities for ensuring a decent standard of living to our citizens.