Mission Smart City should not be seen as a means for extracting money from Center

By Daya Sagar
Mission Smart Cities of Ministry of Urban Development – MoUD (as launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 25 June 2015 ) is a bold and ambitious new initiated meant to set examples that can be replicated both within and outside the nominated ‘Smart City’ by developing similar Smart Cities in other parts of the country. The ministry will be offering infrastructural assistance to 100 potential ‘smart cities’ on selective basis picked out of the names of the cities recommended by different states as result of Stage-I of the selection process based on the existing systems and the quality of the existing service delivery status of different core sectors considered for assessment of smartness of a city.
As per the present policy / guide lines after that the selected potential smart ‘cities’ are required to get prepared Smart City and submit to MoUD for a rigorous evaluation at Stage-II by an Apex Committee of MOUD GOI for prioritizing cities for financial assistance under the Mission in lots of 20 cities each based on the score during a financial year and the remaining would be asked to make deficiencies identified by the Apex Committee of for participation in the next rounds of the competition.
That means only the apparently capable cities will be chosen under the Smart Cities Mission through a two state completion . Although in the programme the Urban Local Bodies have been focused as the core reference bodies where for implementation of the Mission at the City level there will a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) with nominees of Central Government, State Government and ULB on its Board but the sectors involved may be presently being handled by many other government departments in states like J&K therefore the service delivery status & quality of other departments too has to be kept in view while processing the cases of applicant states / cities selection and execution of the mission programme. That is why status of law and order, traffic management, efficient urban mobility & local transport , communication, health services , handling of local parking lots and the like has been discussed earlier.
Like ‘smartness’ of the health sector, let us also look at the status of education sector even in cities like Jammu / Srinagar. Here too on the ground it is a case of non-delivery of public services. Government spends crores of rupees on the government institutions and salaries of the teachers in the schools but still even in cities like Jammu / Srinagar hardly any Secretary Educations / Director Education/ Head Master of a Government school willingly sends his / her ward to a government school. Service delivery by government schools and the related administrative department of the government is a so common and visible example of bad delivery of public services and hence it could be taken as a key indicator of the ‘smartness’ of a particular city. It will not serve any purpose in case funds are sought for creating physical infrastructure but the service delivery system does not perform ‘smart’.
It is not out of place to mention here that majority of the parents do not want 5 star physical infrastructure in government schools , they only want qualified and committed teachers. Whenever workshops and seminars are held on improving the condition of government schools very few ‘experts’ express concern for the non- committal managements of government schools and more discussions are held on the facilities in schools, the teaching aids , air conditioning and training of teachers. Very less attention is paid to the fact that even in those government schools where the teachers are holding post graduate degrees (even doctorate degrees) and the teachers there are in regular grades are in general getting salaries much -much better than the private schools / academies ,even in towns and cities like Jammu / Srinagar / Udhampur/ Kathua the students in general belong to only those parents who are financially handicap . The general impression is that government school teachers / administration do not perform even their normal duties in spite of the fact that they are paid better than majority of the private schools and teachers employed there have better job security. Many citizens who may not normally have capacity to pay fee of the private schools but want their children to receive education worth securing some meaningful career are compelled by the circumstances to bear undue burden of taking private tuition since the ‘government servants / Sevaks’ in education sector have lost the faith of the common man. Imagine in case the government schools do perform, how many families will be relieved of the undue financial burden. No any quote is needed to prove that the government machinery in education sector is totally a non performing sector other than the fact that government school teachers / principals / education officers / education directors / administrative secretaries are very rarely found sending their own wards / kids/ children to government schools being handled / managed by ‘them’. Some may talk of involving the private sector , it is good , but here too someone from the public services has to monitor it and if not done so simple ‘investments’ will not make the ‘city smart’. We have many private sector schools in Jammu where parents are paying heavy fee but it may not be a news to many that the students of the 11th and 12th classes in these schools often complain that even many private schools do not have adequate staff and hence the students are additionally taking to regular private tutorials for 3 to 4 hours right from day one before or after normal school hours. The private school managements have to be monitored / reviewed by the same administrative officials of the government educations sector for checking the service delivery of private schools quality who have otherwise been accused of the non performance of government schools. In 2015 Allahabad High Court had even directed the UP Government to see that all public servants send their children to basic / primary schools so that the schools get better attention but as per my information no progress has been made in that direction even in UP by this time.
The mission smart city has to be conducted / monitored by a ” special purpose vehicle ” having on it elements from the government machinery and how ‘smart’ is / would be such elements must be first assessed before taking the city concerned into ‘mission smart city’. Continued
(Daya Sagar is a Sr Journalist and a social activist can be reached at [email protected])