On ‘world’s longest canvas’, Bidhannagar residents sketch ideas for their smart city

The canvas has been put up at SAI complex, on the Broadway stretch near the EM Bypass and stretches till the permanent fair ground at Central Park.
Working on the smart city proposals, corporation authorities have been arranging seminars and distributing forms, asking residents for their feedback on their suggestions before they submit a plan to the Centre by the second week of November.

In Salt Lake and the adjacent New Town, authorities are planning to come up with “innovative smart initiatives” —- developing public places into leisure-cum-adda zones with Wi-Fi facilities and street and park furniture, including wooden recycling easy chairs and garden umbrellas.

But by afternoon, the newly elected Bidhannagar municipal corporation’s grand plan —touted to be the world’s longest drawing and writing canvas — remained largely empty. The suggestions remained basic —doctors, affordable housing, clean water and sanitation.

One suggestion for instance included a map for garden, ponds, a connecting road and also “home for the poor” and “road with lights”.
The newly-elected mayor, Sabhyasachi Dutta, had announced that he planned to “embrace digital technologies or information and communication” to improve “performance of urban services, cost-reduction”. But residents pointed out the obvious demographic and socio-economic disparity.
“Salt Lake and New Town is an area of the rich. But Rajarhat remains largely undeveloped. We are here today for the rally to support the government’s initiative to make Bidhannagar smart.

But the village and slum areas of Rajarhat don’t even have the basic facilities like water, clean roads and manhole covers,” said Suprateek Sanyal, resident of Rajarhat.

Apart from the white canavas, the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation also asked for suggestion on the social media.

But here, too, a number of people spoke about the elections for the corporation, that had been marred with violence. “#SmartBidhannagar is an oxymoron. Specially after seeing the poll results”, said Saurav Goyal on Twitter.
Another resident Basab Basak, said, “Without adequate water supply & efficient drainage system a city can’t be smart by bringing it under free Wi-Fi coverage”.