• World
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Central & South Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America & Caribbean
    • Middle East & North Africa
    • North America
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
    • US Election
    • US politics
    • Joe Biden
    • Brexit
    • European Union
    • India
    • Arab world
  • Economics
    • Finance
    • Eurozone
    • International Trade
  • Business
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Startups
    • Technology
  • Culture
    • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Film
    • Books
    • Travel
  • Environment
    • Climate change
    • Smart cities
    • Green Economy
  • Global Change
    • Education
    • Refugee Crisis
    • International Aid
    • Human Rights
  • International Security
    • ISIS
    • War on Terror
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Weapons
  • Science
    • Health
  • 360 °
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice
  • About
  • FO Store
Sections
  • World
  • Coronavirus
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Sign Up
  • Login
  • Publish

Make Sense of the world

Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries

Close

Is There a Role for Citizens in India’s Smart Cities Challenge?

By Florence Engasser & Tom Saunders • Oct 30, 2015
India

© Shutterstock

Technology is helping India overcome its wide range of urban problems.

India faces a wide range of urban challenges—from serious air pollution and poor local governance, to badly planned cities and a lack of decent housing. India’s Smart Cities Challenge, which has now selected 98 of the 100 cities that will receive funding, could go a long way in addressing these issues.

According to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there are five key instruments that make a “smart” city: the use of clean technologies, the use of information and communications technology (ICT), private sector involvement, citizen participation and smart governance. There are good examples of new practices for each of these pillars.

For example, New Delhi recently launched a program to replace streetlights with energy efficient LEDs. The Digital India program is designed to upgrade the country’s IT infrastructure and includes plans to build “broadband highways” across the country. As for private sector participation, the Indian government is trying to encourage it by listing sectors and opportunities for public-private partnerships.

Citizen participation is one of Modi’s five key instruments, but this is an area where smart city pilots around the world have tended to perform least well on. While people are the implied beneficiaries of programs that aim to improve efficiency and reduce waste, they are rarely given a chance to participate in the design or delivery of smart city projects, which are usually implemented and managed by experts who have only a vague idea of the challenges that local communities face.

Citizen Participation

Engaging citizens is especially important in an Indian context because there have already been several striking examples of failed urban redevelopments that have blatantly lacked any type of community consultation or participation.

The Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar area in Mumbai is a good example of these types of practices, where planning is left entirely to private developers, and solutions often make the initial problem worse. For example, a policy that allows developers to build luxury housing on slum land in exchange for providing free housing for the relocated slum-dwellers has seen many high-rise apartments built, which have the minimum legally required living space per capita. The replacement housing that slum-dwellers are offered is also usually high-rise flats.

This is extremely problematic because it does not take into the account the fact that many of them earn a living by turning the ground floor of their home into a shop or workshop.

Anticipating some of these criticisms, Union Minister of Urban Development Venkaiah Naidu recently stressed the need for every candidate Smart City plan to reflect citizens’ aspirations and be built in consultation with local communities.

A New Approach?

In practice, how can Indian cities engage residents in their smart city projects?

There are many tools available to policymakers—from traditional community engagement activities such as community meetings, to websites like Mygov.in that ask for feedback on policies. Now, there are a number of reasons to think smartphones could be an important tool to help improve collaboration between residents and city governments in Indian cities.

Smartphone

© Shutterstock

First, while only around 10% of Indians currently own a smartphone, this is predicted to rise to around half by 2020, and will be much higher in urban areas. A key driver of this is local manufacturing giants like Micromax, which have revolutionized low-cost technology in India, with smartphones costing as little as $30 (compared to around $800 for the newest iPhone).

Second, smartphone apps give city governments the potential to interact directly with citizens to make the most of what they know and feel about their communities. This can happen passively, for example, the Waze Connected Citizens program, which shares user location data with city governments to help improve transport planning. It can also be more active, for example, FixMyStreet, which allows people to report maintenance issues like potholes to their city government.

Third, smartphones are one of the main ways for people to access social media, and researchers are now developing a range of new and innovative solutions to address urban challenges using these platforms. This includes Petajakarta, which creates crowdsourced maps of flooding in Jakarta by aggregating tweets that mention the word flood.

Made in India

Considering some of the above trends, it is interesting to think about the role smartphones could play in the governance of Indian cities and in better engaging communities. India is far from being behind in the field, and there are already a few really good examples of innovative smartphone applications made in India.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (translated as Clean India Initiative) is a campaign launched by Modi in October 2014, covering over 4,000 towns all over the country, with the aim to clean India’s streets. The Clean India mobile application, launched at the end of 2014 to coincide with Modi’s initiative, was developed by Mahek Shah and allows users to take pictures to report, geolocate and timestamp streets that need cleaning or problems to be fixed by the local authorities.

Similar to FixMyStreet, users are able to tag their reports with keywords to categorize problems. Today, Clean India has been downloaded over 12,000 times and has 5,000 active users. Although still at a very early stage, Clean India has great potential to facilitate the complaint and reporting process by empowering people to become the eyes and ears of municipalities on the ground, who are often completely unaware of issues that matter to residents.

In Bangalore, an initiative by the MOD Institute, a local nongovernmental organization, enabled residents to come together, online and offline, to create a community vision for the redevelopment of Shanthinagar, a neighborhood of the city. The project, Next Bengaluru, used new technologies to engage local residents in urban planning and tap into their knowledge of the area to promote a vision matching their real needs.

The initiative was very successful. In just three months, between December 2014 and March 2015, over 1,200 neighbors and residents visited the on-site community space, and the team crowdsourced more than 600 ideas for redevelopment and planning both on-site and through the Next Bangalore website.

The MOD Institute now intends to work with local urban planners to try get these ideas adopted by the city government. The project has also developed a pilot app that will enable people to map abandoned urban spaces via smartphone and messaging service in the future.

Finally, Safecity India is a nonprofit organization providing a platform for anyone to share, anonymously or not, personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. Men and women can report different types of abuses—from ogling, whistles and comments, to stalking, groping and sexual assault. The aggregated data is then mapped, allowing citizens and governments to better understand crime trends at hyper-local levels.

Since its launch in 2012, SafeCity has received more than 4,000 reports of sexual crime and harassment in over 50 cities across India and Nepal. SafeCity helps generate greater awareness, breaks the cultural stigma associated with reporting sexual abuse and gives voice to grassroots movements and campaigns such as Sayfty, Protsahan or Stop Street Harassment, forcing authorities to take action.

Some Issues and Possible Solutions

It would be wrong to believe that smartphone applications have the ability to radically transform participation. Research from MySociety on who uses its technology, including FixMyStreet, found that digital tools usually help the most affluent, educated and connected segment of a city’s population engage with their city government, rather than broadening engagement to new communities. Below are some of the most obvious issues which, if not resolved, might seriously hamper the effectiveness or impact of new methods for participation in an Indian context.

First of all, there is a certain aspect of hype behind any new technology, in the way it can deliver positive impact for processes like citizen engagement, or their potential in resolving market or government failures, particularly in the developing world. This is to be put in perspective against the visible impact these apps have had so far. Studies show that in fact the number of app downloads or active users remain too low to achieve any real impact.

On top of this, there has been a failure in linking up these apps, often created by citizens or small businesses, with the government services in charge. As Eric Bellman justly underlines in his article, of what use is an app to report sexual abuse if it fails to be connected to local police services?

There is also the danger of substituting offline, traditional participation methods, to exclusively online ones, especially in a country such as India, where one out of five citizens (22% of the population) live under the poverty line. These citizens, forming the “bottom of the pyramid” (BoP) are deprived from accessing new technologies, including smartphones, computers or the Internet. In 2014, only 19.1% of the total population had access to the Internet, regardless of the device.

New Delhi Subway

© Shutterstock

These BoP communities often rely on low-tech or frugal solutions. A good illustration of this is the large numbers of text messages exchanged each year in India: over 332 billion in 2013 alone. These communities in particular are the ones who risk being left out by digital and smartphone-enabled consultations, but whose needs in reshaping their cities and communities are the most pressing.

So, how can Indian cities make the most of citizen participation in their Smart Cities Challenge projects?

First of all, municipal governments across India need to make sure traditional channels for participation (public consultations, forums) are in place and ensure citizens are consistently informed of what is happening in their neighborhood and are given the opportunity to have a say in it.

This needs to happen before local governments even start daydreaming about the novelty smartphones could bring. City officials could also start thinking about combining online and offline citizen engagement tools, such as what Next Bangalore has been doing, to enhance citizen engagement, ensuring the inclusivity of the process while modernizing it and improving its reach.

Additionally, municipalities, in their effort to develop a smart city vision, must build on the unique advantages of Indian cities and the great work that citizens, community groups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are already doing, rather than starting from scratch or adopting “best practice” from developed world cities.

Finally, to enable a move toward a greater share of online participation channels, such as through smartphone applications and social media, municipalities need to make sure they invest in smart people and not only in smart technologies. A recent Nesta report on bottom-up smart cities highlighted the necessity for city government employees and citizens to develop a better understanding of data and technology in order to make the most of the new opportunities they offer.

Only then will tools like smartphones and mobile applications have the potential to revolutionize city governance and contribute to the making of a people-centric smart city.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: AsiaTravel / Oleksiy Mark / Gritsana P. / Shutterstock.com


Fair Observer - World News, Politics, Economics, Business and CultureWe bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be a sponsor.

Share Story
Categories360° Analysis, Central & South Asia, Global Change TagsIndia, Smart cities, Smart Cities Challenge, Smartphones
Join our network of more than 2,000 contributors to publish your perspective, share your story and shape the global conversation. Become a Fair Observer and help us make sense of the world.

READ MORE IN THIS 360° SERIES

Defining Casablanca's Modern City Brand
By Samantha North • Jun 13, 2016
Will India Overcome Challenges to Build Smart Cities?
By KnowledgeWharton • Feb 27, 2016
Do We Need Big Data to Create Smart Cities?
By Chye Shu Wen & Tanvi Mani • Jan 21, 2016
Why Delhi is the World’s Most Polluted City
By Prashant Kumar • Jan 06, 2016
Preparing for Natural Disasters is Becoming Even More Important
By Laura Janneck • Dec 06, 2015
Building a Transformer Home in Hong Kong
By Fair Observer • Dec 06, 2015
Business Should Step in on Behalf of Migrant Workers in the Gulf
By David Segall • Nov 11, 2015
The 22nd Century City
By Michael Batty • Nov 09, 2015
Traditional Gulf Architecture Offers Relief From Soaring Temperatures
By Amin Al-Habaibeh • Nov 08, 2015
Sustainable Cities of the Future
By Nilanjana Sen • Oct 28, 2015
Singapore’s Smart City: Securing it From Emerging Cyber Threats
By Michael Mylrea • Oct 26, 2015

Post navigation

Previous PostPrevious Lessons in Refugee Hospitality From the Horn of Africa
Next PostNext Compassion Leads British Family to Help Refugees in Greece
Subscribe
Register for $9.99 per month and become a member today.
Publish
Join our community of more than 2,500 contributors to publish your perspective, share your narrative and shape the global discourse.
Donate
We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Explore

  • About
  • Authors
  • FO Store
  • FAQs
  • Republish
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact

Regions

  • Africa
  • Asia Pacific
  • Central & South Asia
  • Europe
  • Latin America & Caribbean
  • Middle East & North Africa
  • North America

Topics

  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • Global Change
  • International Security
  • Science

Sections

  • 360°
  • The Interview
  • In-Depth
  • Insight
  • Quick Read
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Interactive
  • My Voice

Daily Dispatch


© Fair Observer All rights reserved
We Need Your Consent
We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Learn more about how we use cookies or edit your cookie preferences. Privacy Policy. My Options I Accept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Edit Cookie Preferences

The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.

As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media.

 
Necessary
Always Enabled

These cookies essential for the website to function.

Analytics

These cookies track our website’s performance and also help us to continuously improve the experience we provide to you.

Performance
Uncategorized

This cookie consists of the word “yes” to enable us to remember your acceptance of the site cookie notification, and prevents it from displaying to you in future.

Preferences
Save & Accept