TEAM HERALD
NEW DELHI: Minimum educational qualifications for corporators, fixed tenures of mayors and municipal officials, increased FAR (floor area ratio), online services and digital connectivity have been envisioned for the 100 “smart cities” to be developed at the instance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
These holistic ideas emerged at a two-day consultation workshop with the States and other stakeholders, attended by urban experts, industry representatives, principal secretaries and municipal commissioners from 25 States that ended here on Saturday.
The workshop suggested ranking of the smart cities by giving 25 percentage weightage each to self financing ability, institutional capacities and service levels with commitment of action in three years while keeping 15 percentage weightage for past track record of implementing reforms and 10 percentage for quality of vision document.
The Ministry of Urban Development wishes to develop two cities in each State as smart cities, with Panjim and another town slated to be in the loop for becoming smart cities. But the big question which hangs over this prospect is, whether Panjim corporators will measure up to the task of smart cities, when they have fallen well short of the tasks to manage the brass tacks of the city, such as traffic and garbage management. In other words will our corporators be ‘smart’ enough.
It also suggested selection of the cities to be developed as smart cities on the basis of availability of vision and city development strategy, progress under Swachh Bharat Mission, timely payment of salaries to municipal staff, grievance redressal mechanism and e-newsletter.
The most crucial question, however, was the money needed for making the “smart cities” a reality. The workshop threw up several ideas besides the Centre’s plan of PPP (Public-Private partnership) model, such as: Corporatization of services; Engineering procurement contracts (EPCs) and user free-based concessions to promote private sector; Impact fee on organisations benefitting from improved infrastructure; Cluster-based projects to improve viability of projects for private funding; Government support to make projects viable for private investors; Unbundling of services to make projects investment worthy; Creation of a low cost pooled fund with the support of World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Pension Funds, Credit rating of cities and sale of compost prepared from solid waste of municipal to chemical fertiliser factories.
