Smart and Clean Cities For India

This article is about the state of our cities and how we can improve. As nation's people what changes we need to adapt to make it happen. There is a bit of sacrifice, there is a bit of service, there is a bit of fighting spirit required from all of us to make it happen.

Filthy Cities of Today

Transportation is the backbone of city. Our cities have become filthy by perennial traffic jams. The average speed has become 10-12KM per hr in the city. Pollution is the order of the day. Noise & Smoke fill the air from dawn to dusk. Excessive production & selling of cars, bikes has certainly made the country rich in money circulation. But it has made the cities ugly. Families buying private motorized transportation feel rich. But are they? Middleclass families have more private vehicles. But that has not made them rich but retained them as middle class only. That has not made them reach their office, schools, market faster. The upper class has got more luxury cars. But that has not made them reach their destiny any early.

There was very less or no slums in yester years. But a city today cannot grow further without the slums contributing to its wealth! Every major city in India has at least 40% living in filthy conditions. How can we boast of progress achieved? They lack clean water, air, sanitation. Where did they come from? They were driven from rural environs where they had at least clean lake, river, hills, forests, desert, plains, to laze, graze and live on god given natural resources.  Money was not a need to live. Why were they driven or opted for slums? Because the government snatched their environment & land and auctioned it off to businesses. For what? For the development. But that development has made our cities neither fast enough nor beautiful. Rural environs and people are also destroyed. Is this what is development?

So much of coal, petroleum, gas, minerals extraction; cars, bikes manufacturing has pushed people to be slaves at pittance losing their land and environment. It makes country rich on paper. Currently Economy is important. People are not. Large dams, coal mining, aluminum, iron, manganese all metal mining at a rapid pace is important for the country. Production of large quantities of cloth, metal, vehicles, phones, and its export are important for the country. Large consumption of milk, cereals, meat, vehicles, metals by few lucky city dwellers is most important for the country. Left out people of this luck are not important. This over production & over consumption brings down hills, creates artificial hills, concrete jungles, sucks up lakes, creates filthy rivers. Large dams have submerged many forests, villages. People still survive. Where will people go? They migrate to city slums. Few lucky get into apartments.

Number of people living in apartments and number living in slums are equal almost. So what development achieved?

The main thing is to imbibe and educate “ಸರ್ವೇ ಜನಾಃ ಸುಖಿನೋಭವಂತು” (Sarvey Janah Sukhino Bhavanthu: Means let all people be happy). It is not correct to say someone has to sacrifice for someone’s development. Those who “have” should control their consumption to leave something for “have nots”.

Smart City Concept

For a smart city, we should have very good public transport. Metro, Bus connectivity should be improved for long distance commute. Metro especially will be safe and fast. But metro doesn’t reach your home and office. The last mile connectivity is the key. Lack of it is one of the main reason for high number of private vehicles on road.  

For last mile connectivity we need to have shuttles. How shuttles should serve the locality?

• They should be electric non-polluting or non-motorized vehicles. Something like buggies in golf field. Or maybe something more robust.
• They should keep running in locality covering 1-2 kms radius continuously. It should connect people from near door to nearby main road corner
• High frequency connectivity; But low speed for keeping up safe environment.
• Hop on hop off service to be provided;
• Ease of ticketing, multi-mode payment, seamless smart card integration with metro & bus services

Apart from this, city should encourage and adopt cycling mode of transport. It is all possible and not a fancy story. Most of the European cities have become safe with zero road fatalities by adopting cycling as a chief mode of transport. http://www.copenhagenize.com/

And especially in India it works. Because Indians are civilized, obedient & tolerant by and large.

Owning and driving private motorized vehicles should be made extremely expensive in cities. That much reduction in vehicles will lessen that much burden on earthly extraction of aluminum, iron, petrol, gas. That will retain our beautiful rural environs.

To limit Consumption, Limit Production

Another most important factor is to make private vehicle production prohibitively costly. Because actually it is costly. Since we treated environment & people as cheap commodity, we have reduced the cost of production. We have shown apathy to environment and people, getting environment clearance, giving false assurance to people about job generation, the production goes unbridled. A Factory gets clearance for one million ton ore production but goes on to produce 100 tons. They get clearance for paper, plastic, rubber, vehicle production, many such things only to flout the clearance guidelines, brazenly producing more than approved. River pollution, lake sucking, canal diversion goes on unbridled. When a strict officer occasionally comes and hits at it, people get divided and oppose the closure. Because they feel they lost jobs. But jobs can be generated if they work for themselves and not for someone else as slaves. But that needs a very long education.

One solution is to treat the mineral rich lands as ones belonging to those local villages & not to the government. The current system of auctioning off the mineral rich hills, forests by the government to individuals, companies, foreign companies should be stopped.

So when government identifies that area is mineral rich, then it should educate and enable villages to join together to form cooperative societies. Cooperative society should constitute all sections of people from land owners to landless laborers, tribals etc., And they should be given education, equipment, technology to do the mineral extraction and provide to the industry/ factory.

Who should run the factory? That needs entrepreneur. Highly educated, specialist or a scientist will generally become entrepreneur. But again, if he is all and sole owner, however nice person he is, the power corrupts that person. So government should enable policy to make villages to be stakeholders of the factory. So that the decision process is democratized in favor of people of locality, and not in favor of the productivity.

All these will put delays in production, initiation, clearance. It will limit production too as the stakeholders are the dwellers around the factory. And they take decisions people centric and not productivity based. But that is fine. What is the hurry?

Or like America, we should also outsource all manufacturing, mineral extraction, mining industry to other hapless countries.

Production of military equipment, nations security related, railways production should take priority in getting government clearance and building consensus with the villagers.

Education

If government doesn’t interfere in rural people’s lives, they do live happily. They don’t need government subsidy, food card, PDS, etc., to live. They just need to be left alone. They find their way by utilizing what god has given them. They make indigenous solutions to their life problems. If at all they need anything from the government it is Education & Health care. Even disputes, quarrels, violence breakouts can be quelled within themselves by their own indigenous set up.

Education should teach them about their environment and surroundings:

• To be proud of their surrounding and protect their surroundings. It should teach them that they are the collective owners of their hills, lakes, river, forest etc.,
• Government cannot and should not snatch it from them without their share or consent.
• Government should not auction it off to some individual or a company or a foreign state for exploitation

While we cannot put blanket ban on urban middleclass consumption, we can certainly educate children. Right things taught in early age will mend their brain and will remain a habit through their life for long. For example there are chapters for children today on deforestation, wildlife destruction. The causes for deforestation are taught as cutting trees, poaching, polluting industries etc., But why cutting trees, why industries? That is not taught. The root cause is over consumption, over indulgence on luxury & creating high demand on the environment. The linkage between the consumption based economies to the ecology destruction has to be simplified and educated in young minds. Growing up they themselves will resist their parents in indulgence. And also they become good citizens.

On the one hand controlling consumption, on the other hand, community ownership of our surrounding will be the right recipe for controlled growth and development. Villagers, tribals have to be taught to own their surroundings. They need to be educated from primary levels to involve in decision making process of their area. If factory, mining, dams are coming up they need to be able to question and own that themselves.

Swami Vivekananda says “The national ideals of India are renunciation and service (ತ್ಯಾಗ ಮತ್ತು ಸೇವೆ). Intensify her in those channels and the rest will take care of itself”