In a welcome move, the Ministry of Urban Development has issued a circular to all 98 cities selected for the Smart City project to ensure that citizens are involved in the implementation of projects.

This is a particularly crucial move since are many examples of development projects not taking off in the past or not yielding desired results for want of public awareness or cooperation and participation. Taking stakeholders on board and keeping citizens in the loop while implementing new projects even is, therefore, imperative.

Smart city projects, according to the note issued by the Ministry last week, will place proposals before citizens and even take into account their suggestions. How is that going to happen? Who will ensure that? Are there any existing forums in the cities to ensure the process of involving citizens? What are the indicators for implementation?

With increased aspirations and expectations and recent claims of transparency in governance, three tasks are essential for the idea of the smart city to take off and make a real difference over the next five years.

First, all user-charge involved proposals and projects should go through a citizens’ consultation process.  Second, all new projects in the name of Smart City should have public accountability provision with grievance redressal mechanisms.  Third, citizen and stakeholder participation in operationalisation and review process should be provided in addition to whatever mechanism the Corporation or Municipality already has in place.

More specifically, the success of Smart City also depends on the kind of provisions made towards taking citizen on board and getting the public involved.  For this, five measures are suggested.

First, formulate a citizen charter at the very beginning with clear timelines indicated for citizens on what to expect from each service related to the project.  Second, provide for social audits with participation of citizen activists and experts. There should be open-house meets for citizens to voice their grievances. Third, ensure complete transparency in terms of project allocations, implementing agency, completion schedule, and so on. Fourth, do not exclude any of these Smart City project-implementing agencies from the Right to Information Act even in the case of a public-private-partnership arrangement.  Fifth, set up a dedicated communication support group for the Smart City project and enlist city-based communication media organisations for two-way engagements with citizen.

Smart City projects should file compliance reports to the Ministry of Urban Development and to local news media annually on their own. Considering the expectations from the Smart City scheme are high, citizen in general, and stakeholders in particular, need to be informed and involved from the very outset and not after or later.

There have been apprehensions about the very idea of a Smart City, its feasibility, who the beneficiaries will be, and so on. If this should not end up as another political move, these suggestions are essential to position the Smart City seriously.