By: Brotin Banerjee, MD & CEO, Tata Housing
Track2Realty Exclusive: Cities of Ahmedabad and the twin-city of Pimpri-Chinchwad are excellent examples of Smart Cities or city-states and a great deal can be learnt from their planners.
Ahmedabad’s resurrection came about after the earthquake of 2001. Town planners went about doing things the right way. Take property tax collection – by revamping its core team and by introducing greater transparency, Ahmedabad’s property tax collections reportedly ballooned from about 40% to roughly 90%. It also happens to be one of the few credit-worthy cities in India.
Pimpri-Chinchwad has online services right from birth registration to property tax payment, death certificate. The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has a four-phase agenda, spread over as many years to host all services electronically. In fact, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation is said to have generated a large part of its budget through collections from octroi.
From the citizens’ perspective, the UIDAI is a great place to begin with. Once properly implemented, each and every citizen of the country will have all his personal and financial credentials mapped to a unique number. Although, the social service number in the western world is a far greater example, it will take some time for the UIDAI to reach that stage.
Recently, the Bombay Electric Supply Transport (BEST) initiated a service of sending out SMS alerts to travellers on expected time of arrival of its buses. Some LPG service providers too have made the move to online bookings. Payments of utility bills need not require hours, waiting under the sun and requesting a cheque book is done at the click of a button.
If all local bodies, state governments, service providers like banks, blood banks, hospitals take the initiative to switch to electronic modes of operation, it will result in the exchequer saving a lot of the public money and also result in better results.
Some cities are proving that technology can be leveraged to compliment and not supplement. Surat, for example, has an on-line water quality monitoring system; Greater Hyderabad uses GPRS to track solid waste management. In fact, maintenance of parks and street lights is done with the help of citizens, who send pictures via their mobiles. These cities are just a few examples of how e-governance can bring about a change.
The utopian Smart City will have excellent road and rail network, clean water supply, hygienic sewage and waste management systems, equal distribution of power/energy, transportation that is smart and fuel-efficient, pollution levels that are under control, local bodies and government that is operational on all levels and transparent. All this should be at the click of a button and no conditions should apply.
