Why Smart Cities Mission Has Many Admirers & Critics
Some of the most ambitious housing and infrastructure projects are being implemented in India right now. Among all, the two most ambitious projects are — the goal is to build smart cities across India (Smart Cities Mission) and the mission to build houses for everybody (Housing For All by 2022).
Understandably, the smart cities mission of the government has many admirers and critics. This is not surprising. On one hand, it is undeniable that Indian cities need better infrastructure and amenities. On the other hand, nobody really knows what a "smart city" is. This is because it is a vaguely defined concept. When no one knows what a phrase means, it usually ends up being whatever people want it to mean. Since Independence, many such ambitious plans have failed. So, it is not fair to blame the skeptics.
Smart cities, it is expected, will be driven by technology. There is, of course, nothing wrong with cities being technology driven. Technology has already changed the way cities function, and this will happen forever. The best cities across the world are more technology driven than cities in developing countries. But there is something really wrong with seeing technology-driven cities as a goal in itself. Technological progress is not a static process, just as industrialisation is not a static process. Many of the problems with the goal to make India an industrialised country after Independence was precisely this. Industrialisation cannot be planned top-down. The society industrialises day in and day out. But, in India the domestic firms were prevented from accumulating capital, and foreign companies from investing capital in Indian markets. This is why Indian cities lagged behind most global cities in technological process. Many detractors of the Smart Cities Mission justifiably noticed that there is a tendency to blindly worship technology, without understanding how the process works.
Another reason why many urban policy experts are uncomfortable with the idea of technology-driven cities is that much of the problems that confront Indian cities are not technological in nature. This is not because technology is not involved in solving the biggest problems that Indian cities face. These problems cannot be solved without using technology. But, the technology that is needed to solve many of the basic problems of cities like water supply, sanitation, electricity and transportation are already there, and is continuously evolving. However, cities are not able to make use of existing technology to solve problems because of political constraints. For example, the technology needed to provide clean water has been around for very long. Politics is not up to the process. Similarly, the technology needed to build tall buildings has been around for very long, and is continuously evolving. But, urban local authorities do not allow real estate developers to make housing affordable by building tall, because there is not enough support among voters and urban planners.
Such arguments, however, should not prevent critics from seeing the truth. Soon, half the people in India will live in cities, a ratio which according to official Census figures, stands at one-third at present. This is, however, an underestimate because the Census data do not count recent migrants, who are not permanent residents of cities. Census figures also ignore people who live in informal settlements or on the pavements. Moreover, official figures ignore people on areas that need to be reclassified as urban areas. It is estimated that by 2050, 70 per cent of the people in the world will live in cities. Indian cities are in a bad shape. Most Indian cities and towns do not even have a partial sewage system, though Gurgaon is usually blamed for being a skyscraper city that does not have a citywide sewage system. Water supply is not yet universal, or even close to being universal. Most city-dwellers in India do not have access to clean water. Even though the private sector can provide all these services really well, it is likely that such services will be provided by cities, at least for the next few decades. So, it really matters how Indian cities evolve. Indian cities really need better infrastructure and better housing to make sure that more and more people move to urban areas, and live longer, more prosperously.