Can You Help India Build Better Smart Cities?

The Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu recently said that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is committed to accelerating reforms and urbanisation in India. M. Venkaiah Naidu said that India's success is greatly dependent on the pace at which the country urbanises. The Smart City Mission, a central government initiative, has brought the discussion on urbanisation to the forefront.

Recently, municipal corporations of different cities have started inviting suggestions from people on the smart city project to encourage greater participation from citizens. Municipal corporations such as Chennai Corporation and Trichy Corporation have invited suggestions from people through government websites and social media platforms. If your apartment in India is under the jurisdiction of these municipal corporations, you can give suggestions on the infrastructure projects that would be built under the smart city mission.

So, how important is your feedback to accelerate urbanisation in India, or in other words, build smart cities? What are the challenges in store for the government and municipal corporations?

• It would be difficult for the government to formulate urban policies for a large population based on a simple feedback by a few citizens. To formulate comprehensive policies, municipal corporations should ask deeper questions to a larger group of people. This, however, can be a challenge task.

• Governments and local authorities can ascertain the needs and preferences of citizens by inviting suggestions and conducting social surveys on people. But, governments may selectively look at your suggestions. For instance, a person who lives in an informal settlement in Dharavi may claim that he would love to live in a formal settlement. But, this feedback does not tell us where this formal settlement should be. Moreover, such answers often ignore the costs of, say, building formal settlements. The questions authorities formulate should take these factors into account. 

• By asking you individual questions, it would be difficult for authorities to estimate the collective needs of a city. The questions municipal corporations ask citizens should address the collective needs of a city. 

• If you are professional or an expert, you may be quite capable of solving specialised problems. But, this need not necessarily mean that you can arrive at comprehensive answers for any particular problem. For instance, engineers are capable of solving certain aspects of the problem of shortage of homes in India while, architects, economists and sociologists are capable of solving complementary aspects of the same problem. So, suggestions municipal corporations receive from professionals might not be a comprehensive solution to the problem.