State Editions
Why not go in for ‘Smart Villages’
concept?
By
2050, the world’s population will reach almost 10 billion. This fact presents
an unprecedented challenge that shifts the responsibility to cities as the
United Nations estimates that 67 per cent of the world’s inhabitants will live
in urban areas. The economic, demographic, social and environmental challenges
are likely to be tackled with one and the same concept: Smart Cities.
Governments from all over the globe are, in parallel mostly and in
collaboration in some cases, playing the same card by trying to make everything
“smart” under the same idiotic ideas of smart cities and projects with some
great projects that aim to improve the lives of the inhabitants of cities.
We
reviewed some of them here and concluded that this is a political idea and
nothing to do with real improvement in living standard of the people residing
there in cities. Bhubaneswar’s air is highly polluted, but it is considered to
be amongst best twenty cities of the world!
Instead
of the smart cities concept, our present Prime Minister should have stressed
for a ‘Smart Villages’ concept in a country where the urban population’s ‘smart
requirements’ would have shifted to villages where 70 per cent of the
population lives. Our cities have become congested with unhygienic environment
and stressful life. Peaceful village life has been converted to slums around
cities. Different Governments went for wrong projects and slowly destroyed the
Indian village life. Modern facilities remained confined around cities only;
hence, the mass exodus of villagers to big cities started from the 1970s onward, even the education institutions, hospitals centered inside big cities
on Government lands.
The
Government should have stopped the industrial revolution of Nehru and started
Jai Jawan Jai Kissan projects. The corporate houses should have been asked to
shift their hospitals, big bazaars, and showrooms from big cities to vacant
uncultivated lands. Creation of forests near each village and plantation
projects near highways should be the best way to start the smart village
projects. Multistory residential houses should be built near these smart
villages where doctors, paramedical staffs and teachers could stay. The
population should be evenly distributed all over India. Because of
infrastructures and good roads, there would be no constrains for the Government
to have this new scheme.
Time
is running out due to deforestation and foreign industries in India resulting
in global warming. Instead of reducing vehicles on roads, the Government is
encouraging the automobile industry for financial gains at a cost. Even after
seventy years of independence, villagers do not get good drinking water and
modern medical facilities. Having different projects does not mean the country
will progress. The banks, the airlines and railways run by the Government are
full of corrupt officials, a fact which surfaces from time to time once a
Government goes out of power.
I
think our PM instead of this smart city dream must think seriously about the
“Smart Villages” concept and encourage people to stay away from the overcrowded
cities. Chandrababu Naidu had this “Smart Cities” concept decades back but he
was voted out of power. We hope the present Government does not meet a similar
fate in near future!
(The
writer is a former Joint Director, SAIL)
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