BRICS Urbanisation Forum : ‘Fixing digital divide key to Smart future’

Under the Smart Cities mission in India, which among other things looks at the application of information technology in basic infrastructure and service provision, 60 of the 100 Smart City contenders have so far been selected for funding.

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Professor Philip Harrison, who was involved in drafting the National Development Plan for South Africa, pointed out how Smart Cities implemented in the context of the digital divide may increase social inequality unless the government invests heavily in expanding access to technology. According to World Bank data, only 18 in every 100 people have access to internet in India as against 49 to 70 internet users per 100 people in other BRICS nations.

Talking about the perils of the technocratic Smart City approach, Harrison said that this might make governance less responsive. He added that there is also the danger of investing in technology without corresponding investment in soft infrastructure such as skills and organisational capacity.

“Governance is a complex process and cannot be reduced to technology and command and control centres. Hopefully, countries like India will develop their own Smart City approaches that is more sensitive to its own needs and takes into account the lessons and critiques that have emerged,” Harrison told The Indian Express.

Alvaro de Olivera, a senior consultant to World Bank on Innovation, Living Labs and Human Smart Cities, points out that one of the main critiques of Smart Cities is that it looks for uses for new technologies instead of devising technology to solve the specific local problems.

He describes this approach as one that is “too concerned with hardware rather than people”. Olivera, who represented Brazil at the forum, pointed out that in the face of increasing social exclusion, there must be an emphasis on human aspect of Smart City development through which integrated and inclusive neighbourhoods can be created.

Rajat Kathuria, director and chief executive at the think-tank Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, said that getting the governance right is a pre-requisite for the mission to succeed in India. He also warned against going for mega projects, that cost a lot of money, instead of coming up with simpler solutions that are more suited to the city’s needs. “Everyone likes mega projects because they are visible. There is a need to do some hard thinking as financing is involved. Once you finance X project, you are giving up on something else which could be more important. There are trade-offs in financing,” he said.

While the Union and state government will each give a seed capital of Rs 500 crore to each of the 100 Smart City aspirants, the majority of the funds are to be garnered through private investments in urban infrastructure and service provision. The seed money is released by the Centre through an inter-city competition where cities are selected in each round based on the score on various set indicators.

Harrison warns about ensuring that Smart Cities do not turn into the “playground for transnational corporations”. Experts say that this is another area of concern for India where access to basic service provision in urban areas is already very limited. The Union Ministry of Urban Development’s last available data (2011) for 1,405 cities show that merely half of the population has water supply connection, about 30 per cent are without toilets and 65 per cent of the houses are not covered by solid waste management services. Harrison also points out against a Smart City development model that pits cities against each other to compete for funding. This, he says, “may increase inter-city and inter-regional inequality if mentoring and learning networks are not established between cities”.