CHENNAI- A city considered SMART

As Fredrick II,who was the king of Prussia in the mid 18th century pointed out "A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in",the roads of Chennai too stand affixed with the board "The roads serve not just for transport but also a bog house when it rains".

True.City planning, in which the Indus valley civilisation knitted their township infrastructure  is now a legacy that never got re-booted for a millennium.Three days of rain and the city considered to be the "Detroit" of India had its automobiles rendering a free wash of its engine parts.The civic life almost had its "modern technological era" extinction when certain pockets of the city had its power shut down for 48 hours.The later rehabilitation measures and the responsible(!) declaration of holidays of the schools are the normal chores of the post disaster consolation measures that any government would normally offer.The moot point of this article is not to highlight the broadly concerned city planning of the Chennai corporation but the proposal the city batters for calling itself a "Super Smart City"

SMART CITIES PROJECT:

As aware to most of us 100 cities are enlisted to submit their claims in the "Smart Cities Mission" which is considered(boasted) as the "pet project" of the ruling Central government.Speaking on technical lines the drafted plan runs with the formal introduction,the content,the proposed allocation and the conclusion like the form of a traditional academic essay.But what part the essay misses is the "core subject" content.How do you propose a city as a "Smart City"? When looked deeper I was offered an understanding from the government sites which enumerates the following elements as "core" needs of the Smart City.

The minimum criteria asks for Retrofitting,Redevelopment and Greenfield -area based models and a pan city initiative wherein atleast one smart solution is adopted for the entire city.Taking these core elements as the basis of the city design I prefer to analyse the infrastructure elements as proposed in the drafted "Smart Cities Mission".

Restricting myself to the capital of Tamil Nadu and the recent "flood wash" event,the smart city initiative can be considered as below by analysing 4 out of the 10 elements that are enumerated in the draft plan.

Adequate water supply:

The city where the cleaning of roads is the mandatory habit of "Metro water" lorries actually could harvest more if the regulations for the transport of metro water are made strict.By an estimate in  the year 2013,approximately 2000 lorries of both Chennai metro and private players are engaged in supplying drinking water to the various parts of the city.A statement that was provided a decade back goes the way saying "..a lorry of 9000 litres may spill 100 litres which in case is a meagre quantity".Doing a little math on this, one may arrive at a data which gives you 1,80,000 litres being wasted for a single trip.The wasted water stands statistically enough to meet the daily requirements of 9000 persons as per the math considering the WHO standards ,which is no less than the population of a town panchayat.

With the above point being given a mathematical approximated value,the question 'Is the above element of "Water Supply" need a retrofitting or redevelopment dimensional view?'.With the vagaries of natural and man made disasters that the humankind may face in the recent ahead decades whether Infrastructure alone can be the building brick of a SMART city?? I sincerely doubt it.Mind you,I am offering no solution to the problem but whether the city(government) is dedicated  enough to a non biased approach is highly a point of consideration.

Assured Electricity supply:

With the Discoms facing huge losses all over the country,TamilNadu shares the front row with other states though the state government holds a different manifesto on a recovery mode.As the trend of the day as demanded by the Prime Minister is "Competitive federalism" rather than a "Co-operative" one,the Smart city idea in a synchronous manner promotes this within the states as different cities in the same state may batter for their share in the fast tracking of development.On a positive connotation,I welcome such change but the nation as whole may not be fast tracked as the current spirit of competition happens not in a healthy environment but under a "per capita profit" making score.So when viewed as a non resident of Chennai,one may feel little discriminated when almost the entire city enjoys a full time supply of electricity(ofcourse at a high tariff) when compared to the villages in the deep south east areas of the state.So is the city ready to enjoy on other's grief is a grave matter of concern.Smartness at the cost of livelihood is a not a welcome strategy.How come Chennai a smart city at the cost of discomfort of the majority population of the state?

Sanitation including Solid waste management:

When speaking about Solid waste,the travel routes within the state of Kerala flashes brilliantly in the minds of the South Indian citizens.A state where ban on thin plastics was first introduced and implemented to a certain effective extent.The city(corporation) of Chennai which "echoed" strict enforcement of thin plastic bags ban from August 2015 failed to adjust the "tuner" to the proper note.The result, "Chennai declared as the second largest user of plastics next only to Delhi".Speaking of other solid wastes, the city have no strict enforcement of "NIMBY"(Not In My BackYard) policies and a little less than a 50 lakh population have no united stand on the ongoing compaign as they clean their backyards only to dump into other's.My point here is when a city like Chennai where the deep routed problems are right in the fore front as "blockade", is it even a right way to assure converting an existing city to an all round "Smart" city( no proper definition is provided for "SMART") with the structural flaws in the operating pyramid in a time span of 5 years??.The problem is not with the bid but with the time and approach.

Sustainable Environment:

Perhaps the above "infrastructure element" can be directly linked to the recent flood centric approach of the administration and the citizens response.Three days of rain and half the city looks like an irrigation field where no agriculture can be done.The "floating apartments" as the twitter trended,the city now have no place to promote green covers as the real estate and project builders have covered the entire rope of the city.Added to the green cover is the seepage of the sewage water where Filariasis is a common disease in the Chennai Slums.The above element of "Sustainable Environment" can be achieved not only through the government measures but a must change mindset of the residents is now a "written" mandate.The slowly shrinking green areas of Chennai adds shine to its " corporate photographic" images but in no where a step towards sustainability.The city faces the greatest challenge when it encounters this problem to declare itself a "Smart City"

When the above "infrastructure" elements are given a further detailed research one may appreciate the point that the very definition of "SMART" is not just confined to the Internet boom and shopping malls and the industrial step up available in the city but it concurs deeply with the fact of an egalitarian livelihood of the residents and the surrounding environment that can leave a living stage for the future generations to sustain happily.

As Tom Robbin says "If by the quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.

I can say ”Not just temples are to be maintained clean but so do our surroundings, for temple is where God supposedly is believed to live and  Environment alone is where we can live"