Is There A Place For Slum Dwellers In India's Smart Cities Mission?  

Dinkar Swaroop was only 22 years old when he left his village in Uttar Pradesh to move to Noida. Income from farming was not sufficient for him to make both ends meet; the best of his efforts earned him only pittance and supporting his family seemed difficult. He got started as a construction worker and ended up living in a slum nearby as he hopped from one job to another. 

People like Swaroop form a large pool of the rural population moving to India's urban sprawls every year in search of employment. Data show a third of the country's 1.25-billion population already lives in cities, and this is estimated to rise to about 40 per cent by 2025. It means more people like Swaroop would become part of an urban India that does not have a system in place to house a population living in ghettos. Official estimates show about 65 million people live in India's slums while unofficial estimates point to a much higher number.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious plans of creating 100 smart cities and providing Housing For All by 2022 are, in fact, not in sync. Uninterrupted supply of power and water and providing Internet connectivity are all part of the 'smart' plan Indian cities are making. However, the question on how they plan to accommodate the slum dwellers in the new setup? Mind you, metropolitan cities such as Mumbai and Delhi are not alone in their struggle to provide shelter to this population; a close look around the railway stations of these cities would show— you will not have to go far to find out —Tier-II and Tier-III cities are no better.

Evicting the slums dwellers of their shabby little homes and provide them with a better living is an option cities across India are exploring but without much success. Slum redevelopment plans in Mumbai and Delhi have met with opposition and as well as criticism and the two cities do not have any example to prove they can do the job successfully. 

"Most cities that have submitted development proposals in order to be picked up as a Smart City plan on spending more than 70 per cent of funds on developing an area for the benefit of only about four per cent of the city's population. It's a very exclusionary plan that doesn't take into account everyone who makes up an urban space. Simply monetising the land and building fancy enclaves does not make a city inclusive or sustainable or smart," a report by Reuters quoted Bhanu Joshi, a researcher at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, as saying.

In their quest to turn smart, Indian cities will have to give a rethink on how to accommodate its poor.