For the moment, Panjim has been selected as the only Goan city intended to be the first smart city of the state. Congratulations to the people of Panjim, as they deserve it more than any other city of Goa. From the finance point of view, Panjim gets extra funds earmarked for this initiative, roughly around a hundred crore annually from the Central Government and an equal amount from the State. As soon as the announcement was made, some noises could be heard from Goan politicians for leaving their cities out. Goans are advised to brush aside these noises, since most of them are sulking at the missed opportunity to siphon off a percentage of the booty that would have come as part of the package from the Central Government. Instead of listening to excessive politician’s talk, Goans ought to keep a hawk eye as to how they go about achieving the goal of transforming Panjim into a smart city.
Although this initiative does not have a black and white definition of a Smart City, the broad focus is going to be building infrastructure, supposedly smarter and environmentally greener if not already. That does not mean we raze the old beautiful architecture and replace them with modern structures, but the challenge will lie into making them smart compliant without altering the construction. Traffic management, sanitation, cleanliness, and restoration work are some of the usual areas that are bound to get high priority from politicians, as they are always under pressure to show tangible results that their voters can touch and see. So great is the pressure that they sometimes even resort to window dressing of projects without paying any attention to maintenance issues or backend support.
In this Smart City infrastructure tangible show, there is going to be one area that will be conveniently ignored, which is, no review of the awfully wretched processes and systems the government has in place while dealing with its citizens and the way it conducts its business. The word ‘smart’ signifies that systems should be fast enough to complete a process that will maximize results with minimum paperwork and time taken. Ideally a smart city system should be all about trying to design processes that are simple and easy to comprehend to the public, thereby leaving no scope for corruption. That is precisely what a Smart City should bring to the table, systems that are a step ahead of the crooks. The fact that wrongdoers are presently ahead of the system, makes it imperative that the current mechanism is overhauled on an urgent basis.
For argument sake let us assume we design a smarter system, Panjim must have a plan to eradicate the corrupt government officials that have made kickbacks as their main source of income. Ok for a moment let’s pretend Panjim crosses that hurdle and brings down corruption to a naught, it still has to grapple with the excess government staff it has been employing over the years. Let’s face facts, most government processes have legacy issues, and many government processes were created, just to please political egos and to create synthetic jobs to fudge unemployment numbers. If the employee strength remains the same or rises post a smart city era, then how can it claim it has succeeded in making the city smart?
Same goes with government paperwork, if introduction of smart digital processes does not bring down the government paperwork by the kilos, it just means the process is running parallel and there is nothing smart about it. Apparently the project has a mission monitoring system, it will be a shame if the performance of the city is measured only in terms of the infrastructure it creates and gives least priority to creating smarter, corruption free systems with the exact number of employees required.
The goal of any smart city should be that its citizens complete their business with the government by keeping the local politician out of the loop. In other words no citizen needs to go to the local politician if their work is legitimate and to the point. A Smart City has the potential to blunt the power politician’s have been yielding on its meek citizens. How much will the politician allow this to happen is to be seen, especially in a place like Goa where the Generation Past due to their ignorance or fear has accepted it as their fate. That explains why cat and mouse games are being played even to appoint a consultant in this project.
If this Smart City project needs to remain true to its name, than Goans in general and the people of Panjim in particular will have learn to look for performance beyond just the infra show. Maybe, learn the art of looking for performance in areas which are not visible, processes which mostly run in the background, that eventually make the place a smart place to live and conduct their business.
Meantime cities that are left out from the initiative need not wait to be anointed as a smart city candidate to get going, most of the above solutions do not need those hundred crore funding that comes with it, in fact if implemented in right earnest above solutions will end up saving money that could be allocated to genuine projects. It just needs sincere and smart thinking.
(Plastino D’Costa is a business consultant)
