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. 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.
Sources 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. Corporation sources also say that there were differences of opinions and that the Mayor and Councillors seemed disinterested in the initiative. But both the Mayor P. Rajkumar and Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan denied any differences. 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.
