June 25 2015 - would be a historic day and important day for the urban development sector. It is on this day the Prime Minister of India will formally launch the 48,000 crore Smart City project and unveil the roadmap, which is an attempt to transform the urban infrastructure in India.
Recently, the plan for 100 Smart Cities have been cleared by the Government Of India; out of which 20 cities are likely to be shortlisted for the Smart City project in the first phase, 40 will be selected in the next stage to be followed by 40 more later.
As per governmental official sources, the project will be implemented through an area based approach comprising retrofitting and redevelopment. Each Smart City aspirant will be selected through a ‘City Challenge Competition’ which intends to link financing with the ability of the cities to perform to achieve the objectives. Each state will shortlist a certain number of smart city aspirants as per the norms to be indicated and they will prepare smart city proposals for further evaluation for extending central support (http://computer.financialexpress.com/news/pm-modi-to-unveil-rs-98000-crore-smart-city-amrut-projects-on-june-25/12312/).
The biggest challenge is going to be for the state governments and urban local bodies as to how to effective and efficiently spend the huge proposed investments to be announced by the Centre Government. The key would be to put in place a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the money spend is rightly and appropriately spend and there are no project overruns which are a common and typical problem faced by Government initiated projects in India.
Secondly, if the Smart City project needs to be successful then there needs to an atmosphere to bring in transparency in the functioning of the Government and the urban local bodies and here e-governance initiatives and solutions will help in bringing the same.
Maybe the Government could consider a "Government Citizen participation (GCP)" model rather than the now famous "Public Private Partnership (PPP)" business model for the Smart City project. I believe that the Government should consider and evaluate ways and means to get the Citizen involved. It is important to do so as all that will be done under the Smart City project would be impacting the common citizen and his/ her involvement in how they would like to have their city managed is very critical; decisions on governance of the Smart City and the solutions to be deployed perhaps should not be left to only a "elite" and "smart" few.
For example, the Government could consider announcing the initiatives / changes to be made under the Smart City project and making them known to the common citizen with clear and defined timelines and milestones through public sources and public notices or even on a governmental portal that can be accessed by any common citizen even through yr mobile. The "citizen portal" can accept the point of views on the progress of the initiative awarded to a shortlisted smart city aspirant; should then calculate a "satisfaction" index for the awarded project and then the payments to the shortlisted smart city aspirant could be linked to that "satisfaction" index for the initiative awarded and undertaken them. This will do two things - ensuring active involvement of the common citizens and would act a "check and balance" mechanism for monitoring the project execution status, hence minimizing project cost overruns and actual progress on ground within a stipulated time frame.
I believe the "Government Citizen Participation (GCP)" model definitely needs much more work and thought process if the citizen truly needs to get involved, but then we can now take baby steps to a "citizen-centric" planning approach for ensuring a sustainable urban development in the long-run.
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