The smart city plan being worked out by the Centre and the State government has a set of precedent conditions. The selected cities, Visakhapatnam, Ajmer, and Allahabad, will have to strive to achieve specified benchmarks on a range of services and enter into an MoU with both the governments to take up the smart city project.
Cities have a long way to go since they are still battling with addressing the basic tasks of a civic body.
For instance, reliable utility services are one of the important components of a smart city.
Round-the-clock water supply, drainage and solid waste management are among them. Visakhapatnam experimented with 24X7, metered water supply in only two, three areas of the city with varying degrees of success. It still has to achieve local, zone-wise disposal of the nearly 1,000 tonnes of solid waste generated to avoid sending to a landfill about 25 km away. The underground drainage project taken up under JNNURM with Rs.244 crore is yet to be completed.
Municipal Commissioner Pravin Kumar at a citizens’ forum here has said technology integration cannot be taken up unless basic infrastructure is in place.
Senior IAS officer M.T. Krishna Babu, who worked as Commissioner and Special Officer GHMC, says still sending solid waste to Kapuluppada is unsustainable.
The pre-conditions for Smart City include a regular IT-platform based citizen interface to take them on board, transparency and keeping all decisions in public domain, online clearances and services in a time-bound manner, viable tariff structures that are affordable to the poor, revenue generation and financial sustainability.
On funding, the ideas mooted include own resources, grants and viability gap funding and public private participation.
Civic bodies by and large found it difficult to raise their share of 30 per cent in the JNNURM funding pattern. GVMC had borrowed to meet the commitment.
Technology integration cannot be taken up unless basic infrastructure is in place.
Pravin Kumar
Municipal Commissioner
