Mission Smart City should not be seen by States as means for simply extracting money from Union

Some Smartness can be generated even without spending extra money, why should not JSCL do that?

Daya Sagar

Smart City Mission-2015 is being operated as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) where in 2015 it was decided that Central Government will give financial support to the Mission to the extent of Rs. 48,000 crore over five years i.e. on an average Rs. 100 crore per city per year where an equal amount, on a matching basis was to be contributed by the State/ULB. In the first year, Government (GOI ) had proposed to give Rs.200 crore to each selected prospective Smart City to create a higher initial corpus.
After deducting the Rs. two crore advance and A&OE share of the MoUD, each selected Smart City was to be given Rs. 194 crore out of Rs. 200 crore in the first year followed by Rs. 98 crore out of Rs. 100 crore every year for the next three years.
The purpose of conceiving Smart Cities Mission was in a way to improve the quality of life of people through support to local area development, improving the quality & delivery of services by public institutions and harnessing & making use of technologies for smartness.
The process initially laid for selection of a prospective Smart City to be supported under the Mission clearly showed that it was the present money use efficiency and service delivery level of the existing public institutions of the applicant city that mattered for selection of a city to participate in the ‘race’ for consideration as an applicant for Stage -I and then it was the vision & projected commitment of the city as would reflect from the proposals submitted after Stage-I that would matter for being one among the 100 cities that would be selected by Government of India in Stage-II.
There is no universally accepted definition of a Smart City. The conceptualization of Smart City, may vary from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents and above all the commitment level of the government / public infrastructure providing social, physical and economic securities as well services like education & health to the community.
The mission Smart City was in 2015 in a way said to contain a wish list of infrastructure and services aiming at incremental comprehensive development of institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure adding on layers of ‘smartness’ within 5 years (2015-16 to 2019-20).
Anyhow there appear to have been some changes made/compromises done for selection of cities for funding by government of India. Jammu and Kashmir State was given sanction for cities under Smart City Mission by the Union Ministry of Urban Development vide Communication No.K-15016/157/2015-SC-1 dated June 28, 2017 and The State Government had vide Order No.1081-GAD dated August 21, 2017 constituted two Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) as Companies Limited by shares as Jammu Smart City Limited and Srinagar Smart City Limited for implementation of mission smart city.
The mission smart city is in progress in Jammu. Jammu Smart City Ltd (JSCL) hoardings and banners could be seen on poles and road sides. Some vehicles of JMC could also be seen carrying the ‘banner’ Jammu Smart City Ltd.
No doubt looking good adds to smartness but the smartness that had been targeted in Mission Smart City-2015 lies more in the way a city behaves as regards environment, local transport, common facilities to the locals/ visitors , social / material security, response of the public institutions to the common citizen and like. Even without spending money we can add to smartness in case we actively see to delivery of services.
Going by the present state of affairs it appears that those responsible for conducting Mission Smart City Jammu see smartness more in spending the funds provided by government (particularly government of India ) as fast as possible since in Jammu city the civil works are going on for changing the tops of pavements / footpaths, painting / decorations on the walls where ever immediately available and like . Hope works being done will not suffer of lack of maintenance funds in times to come.
To be continued…
(The author is Sr Journalist, social activist and analyst J&K affairs [email protected])