Doon residents bulldoze their way into smart city initiative
NEW DELHI/DEHRADUN: In perhaps the first-of-its-kind example of citizens bulldozing their way into a smart city project and demanding their right to have a say in the planning process, residents of Dehradun have united under the banner of Citizens’ Action Group (CAG) in the last four-and-a-half months to force authorities to rework the plan.
“We successfully forced the Congress government to scrap its plans to acquire tea garden areas, the green lung of the city, to build a greenfield smart city,” said Florence Pandhi, a member of CAG. The state is now under President’s Rule since March 27.
R Meenakshi Sundaram, nodal officer, smart city project, told HT that almost 80% of the proposals made by the citizens’ group matches with the authority’s new plan, which will be sent to the Centre by April 21.
The battle between the former Congress-led state government and the citizens started in November when the latter heard about the tea garden greenfield project.
“The Smart City Mission guidelines say citizens have to be involved in the decision-making process but the government tried to keep us out,” claimed Pandhi.
Instead of a greenfield city, the residents want Dehradun to be freed of over-construction, crumbling infrastructure, lack of water supply, sewerage network and poor solid waste management and crowded/broken roads. Under pressure, the state government launched a social media campaign about the plan and held an online poll.
Sundaram, however, denied that public pressure led to such a citizen-engagement programme.
Finally, the government decided that the tea garden plan would be scrapped and retrofitting of some parts of the city will be included in its proposal. This option, the panel said, had got the maximum votes.
Citizen’s participation is one of the key elements of smart city programmes, but the experience has been uneven in India.
The success of such citizen engagement, say experts, will depend on whether city leaderships have appetite for it.