How smart is smart city Udaipur?? A coin has 2 faces and the flip side reveals that the title is for name sake.

Tagging Lake city as smart city has merely added to its name. This has been revealed through a number of instances which prove that the term “smart” is only in papers and not in reality. A smart city or a city heading towards being a smart city is not merely in technological terms. Smart refers to the overall development wherein basic needs and requirements must be dealt with efficiently and accurately. But if the basic requirements of a city are lagging behind, then the technological progress is of no use.

What are the basic requirements? Good roads, well managed traffic, safety of citizens, adequate water supply, proper and uninterrupted means of electricity and, of course, a well defined administration. But if these things exist only in black and white, what good is the tagging of the city as smart city?

Smartness in basic infrastructure is virtually a big zero. Roads are in an extreme pathetic condition, traffic is not yet managed as promised. In the name of traffic, there have been too many no-parking and one-way traffic adjustments; but the area of regularisation is not at all satisfactory. Traffic lights haven’t been working since long and a haphazard traffic management has added to the wrath, not to mention that even the public does not have traffic sense.

Water supply which is one of the most important requirements is suffering as wastage of water is to its extreme level. Roads are often bathing in wastage flowing out of drains and water leakage is a common incident. Pot holes make their appearance very often, in fact, they never stop. The occurrence of pot holes is as common as lava erupting from volcanoes.

News has it that garbage disposal system is improving with new auto tippers being added for the collection of door to door garbage. But where are the garbage collectors? Many colonies have reported that the garbage picking autos come once in 2 days, or even once in 3 days. To add to this, they even vacate the tippers in some nearby empty plot. Is that how the system works?

Incidentally, CCTV cameras don’t work where a crime occurs or they do not provide clear footages. Women’s security is another issue in the town, though the point is that there is no safety for anyone.

Garbage is constantly forming layers either on the top or the bottom of the important water bodies in town. Public seems to have lost common sense and there is no one to keep a check on this. How far and how long can the cleaning of lakes be a responsibility of the lake development authority? Stray animals are constantly attacking the image of Udaipur as tourist city.

We need to be aware and that is when we will be smart. If administration is simply wasting ink on papers, it is the duty of public to grow up and create that smartness which is the need of the hour.