Smart City Project Selection, Prioritization, Customization and Implementation—Voice of Smart Citizens Case Study of Bhubaneswar and Surat

Abstract

The Smart City Mission launched by Government of India focuses on the comprehensive development of physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure to enhance the quality of life, attract people and investments to a City, setting growth and development in motion and all these happening with a citizen centric approach. And moreover, the selection process of smart city mission trained the City Authorities to adopt a citizen participative approach. The cities which scored high in the challenge were those which had adopted citizens identifying the problems and democratic process for selection of solutions. And what was expected to be smart, was the role of ICT in the entire consultation process be it the social media, mobile telephony or the web based applications, citizens participation was overwhelming. Now the question is do we need to make of citizens smart to make a city smart or is it other way round, a smart city shall make the citizens smart? It is felt that the former approach would yield constructive and sustainable results, where a citizen graduates to a netizen in a smart city. While Indian citizens are vocal and being a democratic set up each citizen have aspiration to be represented in the decision of the Muhalla (vernacular term which means a place where a community stays together), Ward, Zone, City, State or the Nation as the case may be. Smart City Mission guided ULBs to increase participation of citizens to all its functions citing them as City’s Eyes and Ears. The National e-Governance plan of Government of India, states that the citizen engagement has various stages starting from inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower. Under the mandatory reforms prescribed in earlier schemes under the aegis of Central government or the State government, Cities Authorities had undertaken certain e-governance and m-governance initiatives which were to the level of inform the citizens. After being tagged as Smart Cities, many Indian Cities have strived to enhance their citizen engagement activities but to what extent in the engagement ladder is something requires assessment. More importantly, does the system put in place by the Authorities for engagement, provisions for citizens participation making decisions democratic is what this paper has assessed for two Indian Cities, Bhubaneswar and Surat. It also suggests how these tools could be utilized further in engaging citizens from identification of issues, project conceptualization, budgeting, and implementation.