Smart city initiative needs a reality check

Singapore is the smartest city state in our part of the world: squeaky clean roads with spitting and littering being treated as serious, punishable offence. Traffic rules and the sewage disposal systems there are also enviable. These are features of a modern city that call for serious reflection as we enter a new phase of ultra-modernisation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project of building 100 Smart Cities. Singapore is on top of the list of countries that would help India build such cities, a beginning having been made with Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh’s new capital.

We have a tendency to blindly import models of modernisation, but we need to pause and ask whether we can even dream of being as ‘smart’ as Singapore. The country’s emphasis on cleanliness is such that recently a tree in Singapore was cut because of its falling flowers. Even otherwise, it largely has trees that don’t attract birds, automatically avoiding bird droppings. 

Forget about bird-droppings, we do not even mind animal and human excreta, stray dogs, abandoned cattle and a majority of the poor Indians defecating in the open. Even educated urban Indians have no qualms about urinating on the road. For our cities to be truly smart, we need strict restrictions on such practices and an unparalleled emphasis on hygiene. In short, we need a reality check.

Even otherwise, it is hard to imagine an Indian city without animals, birds, flowering and fruit-laden trees. Regardless of how modern we may become, we are a culture deeply rooted in tradition and religion, of which nature is an innate part. Our objects of worship are many and across life forms: peepal and bargad trees in rural and even in posh urban areas are veritable temples as is the tulsi-growing pot in high-rise homes; snakes, bulls, cows and peacocks are among the many holy creatures and cow dung is not only manure and fuel, but also the basic ingredient in the holy fire of a havan.

Advertisements about cowdung/upla cakes have also found their way to internet marketing; we may need cow-dung manufacturing units, walls to be precise, even in a modern city to sun-bake the upla. Gaumutra or cow urine extracts are proving to be anti-cancerous and getting US patents; we may need professionally-run gaushalas. Will our smart city planners factor in these ancient-become-modern features of life?

Roadside jamun and aanwla trees in Lutyens’ Delhi are given to contractors to reap the harvest. Can we have mandirs, masjids and gurdwaras without the scattering of flowers or spillage of milk? And, finally, what about the beggars who survive on the generosity of the devotees and who virtually live around places of worship? The litter and filth created by them may be too big a challenge to the best of planners. Not just nature, but the peculiar Indian nature would also have to be kept in mind for building any new city.

And, finally, we have to look at the positive side of the dirty urban living in India. Without such real-life, real-time laboratories and a peaceful coexistence with germs and viruses, where and how shall we build our levels of immunity? Dirty and not-so-smart living is a vaccination, as proved by the majority of Indians. Look at how immune we are to contaminated food and water, and insanitary living conditions! Foreigners and non-resident Indians, especially from the overly clean countries, cannot even take the occasional bout of air pollution. They would not dare drink tap water, would fall seriously ill by eating street food in India and certainly cannot live in a street that has open drains. 

Who is stronger: the oriental or the occidental Indian? This is a question we need to ponder over while building smart cities.

The author is a retired banker