Citizens Consultation for the Smart Cities Mission
On 25 June 2015, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the Smart Cities Mission to enable the holistic development of Indian cities. This bold new initiative under the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) aims to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. According to MoUD, the core elements of a Smart City include: adequate water and electricity supply, suitable sanitation and solid waste management, efficient public transportation, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, e-governance with citizen participation, sustainable environment, and safety and security of citizens with health and education for all. These objectives are proposed to be attained through a judicious mix of retrofitting, redevelopment and greenfield development.
Citizen consultation is an important pillar of the first phase of the Smart Cities Mission. The Ministry encouraged local governments to engage citizens as they worked on their city’s Smart City Proposal, and recommended MyGov as the core platform for citizen consultation. Municipal governments supplemented their online MyGov activities with meetings, discussions, and other public interactions in their respective cities.
MyGov facilitated citizen consultation for the Smart Cities Mission in two stages. During the first round, it offered cities a range of citizen consultation methodologies, such as discussion forums, tasks, online polls, public talks, and blogs. These tools served as a catalyst for citizens to participate in the Smart Cities Mission and the competition, also known as the India Smart Cities Challenge, and offer suggestions for the development of their city.
During the second round of the Smart Cities Mission, municipal authorities from the shortlisted cities used MyGov to collect suggestions from citizens on their vision for a Smart City to incorporate these into draft proposals. Of the 98 cities, 57 put the draft proposals online for further comments and inputs from the public. Overall, the proposals received a total of 1,42,895 comments.
The 98 cities adopted a range of measures to encourage citizen engagement. Municipalities reached out to young citizens by visiting schools and colleges to educate them about the Mission. Municipal corporations used popular social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the mission. Still others created dedicated websites with detailed updates on progress. SMS campaigns, voice message campaigns, and airtime on radio channels helped expand a municipality’s reach. Many cities even created free Wi-Fi hotspots in crowded areas so that people could access Internet and submit suggestions. Advertisements in newspapers, pamphlets, hoardings, and the MyGov app played a significant role in making the Smart City Mission a nationwide phenomenon.
The Smart Cities Mission – MyGov collaboration is an unprecedented exercise in urban planning, which has transformed planning from a top-down centralized activity into a democratic consultative process, taking the citizens’ perspective as the foundation stone on which the city plan is built. MyGov looks forward to partnering with more cities and citizens in the subsequent rounds of the Smart Cities Mission play its part in developing Smart Cities across India.
– Gaurav Dwivedi,
CEO, MyGov
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Instead of acquiring green areas for the construction of Smart Cities, existing cities shall be made smart by widening of city roads, constructing jam free crossings and fly overs, metros, good waste management systems, rain water harvesting, reducing carbon footprint, maximum utilization of solar power, reducing power consumption, creating world class recreational facilities, accessible public places & public transport, sufficient green areas and parks, excellent medical & schooling facilities
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amount ,about 10-20% in hand and rest in their bank accounts to counter corruption they should also b given i cards . This will help in connecting these ppl wid banks. And ppl will get there adhar cards made in this process.this will b gud for all .sir plz do think on this.
Sir i would like to suggest u to plz bring such a scheme that d rag pickers get indulged in d gov scheme of ‘swach bharat’. Y cant d gov open such offices where they buy d garbage collected by these people n do proper recycling.Provide these people wid proper money for dat and proper golves marks and equipments . This will help d gov to clean d cities, proper recycling can b done , employment to ppl . The money should b given according to d amount of scrap they bring and should b given some
For making SMART city of Penugonda,which is birth place of Vasavi Matha,East Godavri district.Andhra Pradesh.Authorise some local teacher, retired/ working, retired banker,President -Rotary club,E.O./Chairman of one of the local temples as group. They will meet once in a week and find out how to make it,SMART CITY as this is a tourist place and piligrimage city.PVENKATA RAO, RETD. BANKER, ALSO INTERESTED TO WORK IN THE GROUP. CELL NO. 9705021145,MAIL ID:PIPPALLAVRAO@YAYOO.COM
SMART CITY..
Please oinvolve the following for making any city as SMART CITY.
Retired bankers settled in that place, looking for social service 2) any other govt. retired people with similar interest. Local temple authorities. President / secretary of ROTARY CLUB . Make a group of five to six people and let them organise meetings locally and have one chariman of the core group to liason with Govt., to get the various works done to make the particular city as SMART CITY.
To complete Smart city project in Real manner please add some mandatory rules like
medical facility,Police Protection,Controlled noise-air pollution (Complete Band on DJ/Load speaker for marriage and other functions on public places like roads, as well as restrict use of Crackers allowed only in Diwali festival etc.)No of schools related to child ratio population.Also start some compulsory course at school level like first ad, fire protection, traffic awareness etc. taught by GOV/PVT ORG staff.
And then the garbage is dumped in the right manner, sessions on benefit of Swach Bharat campaign can be held in schools and colleges so that they can educate their families on the same and in this way contribute towards cleanliness. Last is the safety , everyday or the other rapes keep happening in our Indian society and I wonder why our government never takes any stringent step towards it. Is raping a girl and ruining her whole life really a small crime in India? Criminals walk out easily.
May be can think of partnering with the cab companies and encourage more females to opt as female drivers. Even in Buses female conductors can be appointed which will be a way forward in ensuring safety of female travelers. Next is the cleanliness issue in cities, the main connecting roads are always clean but when we actually go to the intricate areas, that’s where a whole lot of garbage is found on the road. It should be ensured that everyday the garbage is picked up from the socities
Smart city campaign has to cover some important issues like pollution, unclean cities and safety. The pollution level in all the cities in alarmingly increasing and it can only be handled when common man makes use of public transport. Although the city must be well connected by the public transport which in today’s scenario not the case. Plus safety is also a big concern for girls and women making use of public transport.
For smart cities main issue is to make change in human mentality .1st challenge is to make mentality of peoples belong to perticular city.cause withot their support no city will be smart as we want.then give importance to such cities which are really not smart means contains so much of rural area,no facility for sanitation.Not give so much of importance to such cities which are already smart.please motivate peoples to follow ‘Swacha Bharat Abhiyan’.