With the Central Government all set to announce the selection of Coimbatore for the Smart City project, expectations are flying high that the Coimbatore Corporation will take along the public in rebuilding the city.
The expectations are also that the civic body will not do things the way it executed projects under the multi-crore Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) scheme.
Bureaucrats and experts closely associated with the JNNURM projects say that after having spent crores on solid waste management, storm water drain, underground drainage and a few other projects, the city has hardly improved.
The waste continues to be collected and managed in mixed fashion, streets continue to be flooded while sewage flows in storm water drains and underground drainage system is yet to be completed.
They also point out that on the water supply front, even after the execution of the Pilloor II drinking water supply scheme, there are areas that continue to receive water once in 10 days or more. Therefore, the Corporation should implement the projects in such a way that the objectives are met and not just the expenditure target.
S. Baskar of IC Centre for Governance, an NGO, says that outcome-focussed projects and not output-focussed projects should be implemented and there should be accountability as well. For poorly implemented projects, the officials concerned should be taken to task.
His suggestion is that rather than saying that the city wants this or that project under the Smart City, the Corporation should change the way the project is executed. And, in doing so it should rope in experts in various fields. Plus, the civic body should not adopt projects executed in other cities or attempt solutions tried elsewhere as what works for one city need not work for Coimbatore.
The Corporation will do well to improve the transport in the city as the transport component was not implemented under the JNNURM scheme. It may also look at developing a satellite town and providing a mass transit project, says architect and former City Technical Advisory Group member D. Arun Prasad.
Urban transport expert S.P. Palaniswamy says that smart city has to be smart in that real-time information should be provided for planners to take the right decision.
This will hold truer in the case of transport management where real time information will help plan road development and fleet management.
There are models and studies available from which the Corporation can draw ideas, he adds.
