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The vast majority of so-called smart cities are the same old cities but with a ‘smart solution’ tacked on. This could be, say, the layering of data capture devices such as sensors and CCTV cameras over existing infrastructure to create a ‘smart’ grid. The ‘smartness’ is derived from the data captured by the sensors and analysed by algorithms to aid decision-making in real time.

But the really smart thing about ‘smart solutions’ is that once installed, it makes the city permanently dependent on the private service provider, much like how your dependence on your smartphone is far greater, and of many dimensions, than it ever was with your non-smartphone. Whether or not an urban problem is solved by a smart city project, a market would have been created.

In other words, smart city projects have a lot to do with opening up municipal services to private capital. But that’s not all. There is also a broader agenda at work. The first clue to the nature of this agenda lies in the origin of the smart city idea itself.

Seven segment division

Unlike what one might expect, the ‘smart city’ concept did not originate in the field of urban design or city planning. The American urbanist Adam Greenfield traces its earliest usage to a bunch of technology firms. IBM, with its ‘Smarter Planet’ campaign, was one of the first movers. So was Cisco with its Smart+Connected Communities initiative, Siemens with its CityCockpit, and Microsoft with its CityNext programme.

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The smart dynamic in India

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Bruce Andrews captured this sentiment perfectly in his speech at the Smart Cities Summit in Mumbai this year: “I am joined today by representatives from 18 leading American environmental technology companies, all of whom are looking for new business opportunities in India’s growing infrastructure market.”

Debates about the smart city in the West tend to focus more on the dangers posed by digital colonisation of the analog cityscape. These include fears about loss of privacy, the rise of a surveillance society, and the possibilities of authoritarianism unleashed by the normalisation of biometric control. These concerns, while valid, do not fully capture the political dynamic of the smart city agenda in the Indian context.

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But State governments, too, are tainted by democratic limitations. The need of the hour, therefore, was to create a whole new governance structure that would bypass both State and Central governments, and insulate political decision-making from interference by any elected body whatsoever. Enter smart cities, with its creepy little baby, smart governance.

Special purpose of the vehicle

The SCG states that all smart city projects will be implemented (and the funds administered) by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The SPV would be a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013. The State government and the urban local body (ULB) will be equal shareholders of this company. But the private sector can take equity stake in the SPV. It is also possible for a private investor to be the biggest single shareholder of an SPV, so long as the combined shareholding of the State government and the ULB is greater.

Along with transfer of financial control, the SPV, to be headed by a CEO, is also a mechanism for transfer of political control. The SCG calls for “delegating the rights and obligations of the municipal council with respect to the Smart City project to the SPV” as well as “delegating the decision-making powers available to the ULB under the municipal act/Government rules to the Chief Executive Officer of the SPV.” The SPV will even have the powers to collect taxes and surcharges, and enter into JVs and PPPs. A city that has become a company with shareholders cannot but treat its citizens as anything other than sources of revenue.

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It is worrisome that India’s approach to urban development seems to have no alternative to the smart city paradigm. India needs to develop its own framework of urban renewal that prioritises the democratic aspirations of its citizens. What our cities need is not smartness but functionality; not efficiency so much as equity. And neither of these is a value that technology alone can deliver.