Smart Cities for Dumb People

Guess the concept of SMART Cities is catching traction. Our Prime Minister believes that developing such cities will control rapid urbanization. He could be right, though there are many smart people who feel that his plan may end up just driving up price of valuable agricultural land, make a select few very very rich, and on the whole create more socio-economic problems than it can solve.

Then there are others who are concerned on how Smart the cities would be. The other name for "Too Smart" could be "Big Brother", as in the one George Orwell wrote about in his book 1984. Under the garb of making citizens safer from terror and crime, smart plans include surveillance and data collection. I am kind of reminded of the movie "Enemy of the State". Heavens forbid, if the people appointed to protect or govern us go rogue. There is enough smart technology with even the most backward of governments to cause hell for anyone daring to stand up to oppose it, and moving in the smart direction may end up surrendering more and more of us each day.

credit:
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/india-plans-to-build-100-smart-cities-for-the-elites/

Okay, in a population of some 1.2 billion and climbing, how many really care about privacy in their lives? Nearly 70% of Indian houses have internal privacy issues based on number of residents to rooms available within a single habitable unit. This is true not only in slums, but an issue that affects much of the lower middle class too, be it villages or cities. Now despite the overcrowding and loss of intimacy space, the procreation process seems to be in a thrive mode, and that just is an indicator of how much importance is accorded to personal or private aspects of life.

Credit
http://homesfy.in/blog/smart-city-the-government-of-indias-plan/

Let's then give the PM and his team the support clean, green, self powered, self sustaining, info and logistically connected SMART cities. There is only one issue that wakes up the skeptic in me. Are the people in this country ready to accept the smartness? Each day, when I am off for a walk or go cycling at 6 am, I am a witness to the incessant honking of cars, buses and autoricks (for no real reason except habit I suppose); traffic indiscipline (people in a rush like they need to take an urgent pee or have discovered that they were F1 drivers in their previous birth); trash strewn on the road (not because there are no bins, but inconveniently placed a few feet ahead or behind the spot a person decides to lighten the load, and also because the government collects a "Clean India" tax over and above regular tax - so why not get money's worth - right?); smog of sooty toxic fumes from old polluting vehicles that the RTO fails to seize and destroy; construction dust from work sites selling million dollar homes being project managed by best practise following agencies; street urchins, road dwellers and dogs defecating side by side (not because there are no public loos, but its inconvenient to wait in a line); and many such interesting acts of daily business that just kill the quality of life I am in pursit of. It tells me that India is a land of dumb people who take 3 baths in a day to stay clean, but have no regard for cleanliness or the environment around them nor for other people's rights or property.

I once flew an Air India B-787 Dreamliner only to discover that the dream like aircraft was over engineered for the passengers it carried, given the state of the 2 year old aircraft, that looked like it had flown for 20. Would the newly built smart cities be just as over engineered for the rural folks that the PM wants to halt from migrating to urban ghettos? Going by the plans submitted, there is an obvious disconnect who these Cities are being developed for. Maybe, the idea is that that smart cities will make the dumb Indian smart too.

So, let's just think about how all the new and smart "Modi-Nagars" (trust me, they will all be called by that name) are going to make the people who choose to abandon the dumb urban dream, smart city compliant.

I am told quite a bit of funds collected under "Swachh Bharat" are being channeled to the research institutions for developing or improving the following smart technologies:

1. A wall that bounces back the pee at the person urinating on it.

2. Create a wall material that is anti adhesive and paint resistant to prevent anyone from sticking posters or defacing it with slogans. God would not to protect the walls anymore.

3. A self cleaning road system because even the elite educated illiterate spit on the roads and throw waste on the roads from their fancy cars. What to do - we are like this only. Guys such a system actually exists. Real picture of it happening in Korea. All we need to do is find ways to keep people from stealing the water for homes or cows using the system to cool themselves in summer. After all, with the beef ban, more of them on the streets.

4. Drones that can publicly shame people who spit or litter on the roads or walls. That is entirely possible. Happening in Canada. Honest. But to scare of farm pests.

5. A cost effective way to develop roads made out of plastic waste. India is actually experimenting this technology. Now we need to come up with self repairing roads as either Indian contractors have no idea how roads are built or are hand in glove with the corrupt administrators to siphon off money from public contracts. Isn't the latter obvious?

6. How about non polluting vehicles including a curb on noise pollution?. Can a vehicle be designed to decide when it is appropriate to honk? Or design a driverless public transport system so as to do away with drivers that violate lane and traffic discipline. All entirely possible. Only need to work out how these vehicles will deal with cattle and the cattle brained people invading the roads. Then how about autoricks made out of plastic so that do not damage other people's vehicle and roads with sensors that can auto control vehicular speeds? No need of policemen to run traffic and they can focus more on their actual task of guarding the politicians and VIPs. I am sure this is food for thought.

7. How about paying people to come and poop at public latrines? If the collected matter can be converted to fuel then I guess the raw material provider should be paid in all fairness - right? material handling would be an issue as Indians are clever enough to learn how to shit real bricks if paid by the weight of produce. What are robots being built for?

Guess I have made my point. Building Smart Cities is the easiest task. Populating and maintaining them a totally different ball game. It took New Mumbai and Gurgaon some 25 years to reach a critical population base; and both of them were right next to the two largest cities of India that were and are desperate to reduce the population that has far exceeded the number their infrastructure can handle.

Clean green and smart tags are fine, but what is the business and commerce agenda of these cities being built? Without a clear and established economic motive, these cities will end up as the ghostly glass towers in China. Then again, how will they be governed? If the same lethargic and corrupt systems manned by equally self serving individuals will be in charge, then... guess I don't have to spell out the disaster. Who then will take on the civic duties like manning the public transport, utilities, sanitation services, upkeep of gardens, cultural venues, public spaces, and such things that define quality of life? Guess it will be much the same as now with indisciplined driving, neglect of hygiene, encroachment of valuable open lands; then these new cities will actually end up worse than the older ones for logical reasons - just like the "Dreamliner" I spoke about earlier. Bigger worry; will the residents themselves respect the City? Habits die hard and unfortunately plentiful new money is not necessarily with the ones who either appreciate or understand what good quality of life is other than buying fancy cars, houses, and employing multitude of servants. We don't even appreciate or look after what we already have. (See links below)

I don't want to sound derogatory but the reality is that this is how most of India is across it's geography, and I have travelled across its length and breadth. If SMART cities need to be built, they need to be built around the weakest link - dumb people. Else the several "Dream Cities" like those being advertised each day will be nothing more than just pipe dreams.

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