Mind well, the room was filled with a lot of professionals, businessmen, consultants and developers from the Indian Real Estate fraternity, and for most of them, their life had already "turned" with the service of what the Prime Minister termed his "Bitter Strong Tea" in the hope of making this Nation of ours "Better and Sweet". It's no secret that Indian real estate industry, right from land acquisition to sale of finished goods is run on a heavy dose of unaccounted cash (black money), and, it would be obvious to assume that this industry would be one of the worst hit. It comes at a time when the industry is already struggling with sluggish sales in the residential and retail segment, which in turn has started impacting cash flow and project completion. In addition, the introduction of the "REAL ESTATE REGULATORY ACT" (RERA) Act and the imposition of Goods and Services Tax (GST) has had many developers scramble to the offices of learned consultants, to understand the consequences of the fine print ramifications.
Normally, the mix of people at such a conference by RICS is quite well balanced. This time around there was a visible absence of mid to large size developers (and I am not discussing their physical weight here). One can assume they had better things to do in life, like figure out how to operate the laundry machine; or take a well deserved break from having operated it already. With no news of some well known names checking into hospitals or occupying prominent space in the obituary columns, then, a wild guess would suggest that the latest "surgical strike"; that is now a part of every Indian's vocabulary, was not really the world's best kept secret; and/or the people it intended to net were, as Yogi Bear would say, smarter than the "average bear"; and/or the people being labeled as practitioners of corruption, are honestly not corrupt. It's never good to assume or pay attention to rumors even when it seems like they are laden with hard and undeniable facts, maybe even tbe truth. In India, it's best to behave like the 3 monkeys rolled into one, so as to neither see, hear or speak of the evil prevailing around. So, let me move on to the what I had come to attend this conference for, learn, and learn I did.
Did you know that building construction activity contributes to producing 40% of the global carbon footprint? Or that it chomps up nearly 30% of the energy produced? Or that it drinks up more than 30% of the available fresh water? In a populous nation like India, the consequences of this activity is even much higher including destruction of natural landscapes, consumption of God knows how much wood, forced conversion of agricultural land into land suited for construction, and the release of deadly toxins other than carbon into the air we breathe. Now put this in context of the 100+ SMART cities to be built in this Country. Scary, don't you think?
Today, India has some 40% of its population of 1.2 billion, that is around 480 million people living in Cities. By 2030, that number goes up to a staggering 600 million. That is, assuming the percentage does not go any higher and a hope that the population does not exceed 1.5 billion. A city like Mumbai and Delhi have higher populations than a nation as big as Australia. With a lot of developed nations revisiting immigration policies shipping Indians out may be a concern. I am not sure if even space travel would be evolved enough to ship people out of this planet in thousands leave alone millions. If one was to take a bird's eye view of Indian cities big and small, assuming you could see through the smog, one would notice filth and chaos, not to mention the noise and rage, the lack of basic utilities and broken or abused infrastructure. China built hundreds of cities to contain urban migration, but ended up with ghost towns. In a sharp reversal of policy to create compact self sufficient cities, it s now focused on building "Super Mega" cities to accommodate 100 million + people. Will India's experiment with its 100+ SMART cities end up the same way? I can easily imagine Pune becoming a burb of Mumbai within a decade.
SMART Cities are for those who have a higher than average level of education and a respect for civic sense. Educated in India, there are many; but possession of civic sense is highly questionable even with the rich. Lower down the strata, there are people who need to go back to taking potty training classes, and this is not being said as a bad joke. Any Indian train or aircraft toilet is a testament to this fact. "Sulabh Sauchalyas" (Convenience Public Toilets) use, one cannot fathom it, as it's hard to enter them unless one has lost the use of olfactory senses. Let's be positive, and take it (not assume) that the "Swacch Bharat" (Clean India) initiative will show results, even though it looks like going nowhere as of now, India being a recent signatory to the "Paris Climate Agreement" may have to rethink its plans for such grand scale developments based on commitments given, which may be hard to adhere to given the on the ground reality.
Cities are important. They are social structures, engines of growth and prosperity, and therefore magnets. Do we then need SMART cities or "Sustainable" cities planned intelligently - with the right combination of infrastructure, resource and space management; built with smart techniques that lower scarce resource requirements; are less polluting when built and non polluting when inhabited. Being SMART is just a component of smart planning. If this has to be achieved, there has to be a complete see change in the education process of the next generation to be able to correctly build, maintain, use and not abuse what is being created. In short build smart people first that understand the concept of sustainability and smartness will automatically follow.
In the meantime, I am collecting enough money to buy myself a ticket to the moon.
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