Is Coimbatore ‘Smart’ enough?

Coimbatore is in the top 100 cities considered for the Smart City project. That is a matter of pride. As a people we are known to participate in community and city-related initiatives wholeheartedly for example, the cleaning of the Periyakulam and the Marathon, both of which saw unprecedented response. Curiously, the buzz is missing this time.

As part of the Smart City project, the Central Government says there has to be extensive engagement with the public. These include dialogues with non-governmental organisations, important institutions, the elderly, disabled and even those with contrary views. They should all be drawn into the discussions on strategy and planning. The government also wants to know what the civic body has done to take the message to the people. Did it use social media platforms such as twitter/facebook, or television and radio or the conventional posters, pamphlets and hoardings to reach out?

Not really, feel the public policy experts who are working with the Coimbatore Corporation on this mission. They say the public responses are not what they should have been. The interactions with NGOs and residents’ welfare associations were hurried affairs, they say. The Corporation hasn’t engaged as much with the public as it should have by its own admission in a review meeting held recently.

One can't help comparing this with another chosen city, Madurai, that saw tremendous people participation. Almost every locality had kiosks for suggestions, and corporation officials explained the initiative to the man-on-the-road, distributed pamphlets and put up hoardings. Not much of this is evident in Coimbatore.

Sources in Coimbatore Corporation say the special sitting of the Council too revealed lack of preparation and turned out to be no more than a grievance meeting. The civic body is worried about the 400-odd responses for its online poll and fewer than 1,000 written submissions. But they also say that it is not the number of responses that matter but the quality. And Coimbatore has fared well in this.

There is apprehension that the Smart City project could go the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission way, where public participation was minimal and civil society did not have a say in the progress or the quality of work. Those working closely with the project say that the city should get its act together in the next few days, otherwise it will miss the Government’s November 15 deadline.