Lindsay Pereira: What's smart about this city?

How well do governmentfunded WiFi zones work after their PR campaigns endI find it absurd that a government would consider coming up with something called a Smart City Mission This automatically implies the presence of a place managed with some modicum of intelligence And yet when was the last time you looked around any part of your city and thought Thats an intelligent move by the government I think a less lofty objective and name the Common Sense City Mission for instance would be more agreeable simply because its something our cities have to aspire to firstFor proof consider any aspect of governance that impacts your life How you travel the building you live in the garbage disposal facilities in your locality the quality of healthcare access to decent education or recreational opportunities outside the private sector Its a long list that will yield no signs of intelligence whatsoever unless youre looking for the devious sort that enables some government employees to become very rich very quicklyYou dont need to be very smart to understand that the BMC has access to an annual budget that is larger than what some states have You dont need to be very smart to see that there are very little signs of this money ever making its way towards infrastructure that works for the common good Interestingly the BMC recently decided not to be part of the governments Smart City mission anyway They did this not because they believed they had already created a Smart City for residents because the opposite is closer to the truth but because they allegedly wanted to retain complete control of the municipal bodyThe BMC wanted a say in the proposal and one spokesperson went on record to say that Bombay was already a Smart City This came as a surprise to millions of us obviously because we all assumed he was referring to some other city in a whole other country He was being serious though which is frightening because it means there are others like him who believe there is no room for improvement in our city These are presumably the same people who believe they can turn us into Shanghai within a few months and that what we really need for a better life is a penguin enclosure at the zoo and a large statue in the seaIt doesnt take a genius to figure out what can make Bombay a Smart City It does take education though which is in short supply if one decides to check the credentials of the men and women who make these decisions for the rest of us This is probably why we cant figure out how to sort out parking issues make railway stations as clean as Metro stations or ensure that public toilets are cleaned every hour as opposed to every monthThe world looks at the definition of Smart City rather differently It refers to the Internet of things for instance where information and technology come together seamlessly to sort out a citys problems and make the lives of its residents easier Keeping this in mind consider how seamlessly your current Internet service provider and mobile service operator function How do their customer service departments treat youHow well do muchpublicised governmentfunded WiFi zones work a few weeks after their PR campaigns end Now use this data to try and imagine a city where this happens at a much larger scale without any hiccups If you dont see it happening join the clubMaybe Im just an awful cynic of course I have only decades of experience with how the government of Maharashtra functions to base these assumption upon Its why I laugh at published deadlines for infrastructure projects avoid downloading any socalled apps promoted by the government and stay away from government websites too because none of these things mean a thingWe dont need to be a Smart City We simply need to be a city that recognises its many problems and works with residents to fix them We can start with roads that work more public toilets betterrun hospitals for a change and work our way up from there We can rework our priorities and allocate more money to infrastructure than statues that help no one We can prevent criminals from becoming politicians if we have the will to do soWe can cut more red tape amend outdated laws and care a little more about the truly marginalised Even a child would think of these as the truly smart things to doWhen he isnt ranting about all things Mumbai Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet He tweets lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom