As 2016 approaches, six cities of Karnataka, and 98 across India, hunker down for the final leg of the race to be developed as one of 20 Smart Cities. Bengaluru did not even enter the fray. Just as well, given the parlous state of the city. But all is not lost. Bengaluru can still redeem itself and become a smart city. What we need is smarter governance, smarter administration, and smarter citizens, says Chandrashekar Hariharan of the Responsible Cities Foundation in an interview with Chandrashekar G. Excerpts.
What should the city focus on, given the level of citizen engagement we've seen on different issues?
In a city as large and growing as ours, it's easy to get specific, but the more serious concern is over the deeper challenges at the root. But for starters, the city should pick on low-cost, high-visibility projects -- pressing infrastructure hassles are a good target, especially to ensure that citizen confidence in the earnestness of city administrators – both elected and appointed – is first established. Then, the city should pick capital-intensive projects on build-operate-transfer basis – for greater accountability than if they are part of city expenditure budgets as it has so far been. This can make a major difference.
Even if Bengaluru is not part of the Smart City movement formally, we must make interventions across the board on compliance with it from government agencies and from citizens. That’s the key challenge for the city commissioner and the rest of the city utilities and agencies. Consultants are needed but they can be only as good as the BBMP Commissioner and the government machinery. I risk generalising by saying this, but usually there's an unseemly rush, with poor inclination to plan. The mindset is still 'unsmart' -- busybody politicians, administrators with no goals, complete lack of management ability and willingness to accept it.
What are the neglected aspects of the city's long-term plan?
That’s hard to say. The city administration works 24x7. Data has been a severe challenge. No solutions can be evolved without adequate mapping of ground realities and truths. Another neglected aspect of the city plan, I suspect, is the human side of the poor citizen and the small entrepreneur, the shopkeeper, the footpath vendor, the kirana store, the small farmer on the city periphery in the largely agrarian economy that the city is intruding into with rapid expansion. Such developments don’t need big money but need smart thinking. So the reluctance among most corporators and city agencies to want to take initiatives. How do we overcome this block?
The city has led many trends for India in the last 30 years. How can it lead and pioneer the smart city movement without formally being part of the national process? It's like any exam! We need to work hard. There has to be much more earnestness than we see now. The commissioner and his team toil for long hours, but without the management process that is needed to bring in healthy implementation.
What should the city focus on over the year?
I recommend a focus on 10 areas -- energy, water, waste, food, education, health, housing, hospitality, transportation, technology. Show your earnestness. Present the city a plan for 5, 10 and 15 years. Present it like a business plan. Show viability, economic efficiency and equity. For example, when cities like Toronto, Philadelphia and Adelaide can have rooftop harvesting as part of regulation, why can’t Bengaluru be a pace-setter? The trick is to balance growth with sensitivity to citizen responses and to the environment. The four cornerstones for city plans should be making Bengaluru Sustainable, Livable, Inclusive and Viable.
The risk of ignoring the poor and widening the rich-poor chasm is high if we don’t address this with hard management objectives and vision alignments that administrators bring to play.
Inevitable to this will be the key shift that will come about in governance and in the rationalizing of tariff regimes for energy, water, and waste management. Worldwide, there are cities where people pay up to 20 cents (or about Rs 15) for every unit of electricity. The story is no different for water. Bengaluru spends Rs 83-85 to supply a kiloliter of water, while you pay only Rs 8! This is surely not sustainable.
The old polemic has been that such vital city infrastructure must be free, or at costs that do not hurt citizens. In many cities of the world, building rents are lower than the costs of water and power and waste management! In Amsterdam, the failure to segregate waste at home can mean a penalty of €10 per day of default by a citizen. The bill for energy and water in many suburbs of London can be as much as £1,200 for a middle class household earning about £4,000. If Bengaluru is today on the world map as the world's backyard of IT, we should reflect that in our thinking on urban living, too.
How should citizens contribute?
Citizen engagement starts with the ballot, and we saw such a sad spectacle of less than half the city turning up to vote this year. What can we do to redress? Citizens must list what they want, not as individuals, but as sub-communities, and then demand good governance. List what you need on your street, in the neighbourhood, in the zone as basic infrastructure. Ask for solutions in your wards for existing infrastructure, not new projects that burn cash. Look for projects woven around things that don't damage the environment and still create employment for every capital investment made. Demand, for example, services that offer you sustainable mobility as well as helplines that work. Remember, it’s these things that make a city smart. And there are many such things that are crying out for attention.
What should citizens be prepared for?
A more proactive role. Get the city to start a gov.in site — if Chennai can do it, what stops tech-savvy Bengaluru? Know that the politician cannot influence the decision on your city being smart or not, you can! You need to speak up, and in the year ahead demonstrate the collective intelligence of residents and citizens. Well, what else should city authorities be prepared for? To bring in management into the city's administration. There have so far been only administrators traditionally in all local bodies. Measure, Manage … that'll be key. SMART is to have goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.
What should the city commissioner and administrators do to win citizens’ confidence?
Apart from selecting from citizen suggestions, their own understanding of infrastructure deficits should come into play. A key input will be: how far are they willing to go on interventions that are non-project and low on financial investments, and therefore the toughest -- because they don’t offer room for graft. These interventions are to do with legislations, directives and rules that the City Corporation and other urban local bodies can implement to enable good governance in the major areas of city infrastructure, new and existing buildings, new business potential that’s unique to the city and not an alien copy from other cities, safety & security, education, health, and so on.
The risk is obvious: it may falter for either lack of political will or the bureaucracy's hesitation to act. Clearly the test is of our city’s ability to bring in transparency, proactive working, the ability to bring a shift in relations both inter- and intra- departmental and agencies of the city.
Citizen activists and leaders will have to take this language to the people. The brutality of public expenditure will stop with greater transparency on public projects and costs. Can Bengaluru offer something that's special, that reflects the city's innovative strengths? Something that citizens will endorse and will make the city livable? That's the question.
(Chandrashekar Hariharan is Member of Responsible Cities Foundation (www.responcities.org)).
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