[Urbanstudy] Is India's 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?

[T M Vinod Kumar]

I do not intend to, since these are facts.

T.M.Vinod Kumar

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 3:26 PM, yash srivastava <yashdeeps at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I think you would do well in dropping nationalism and parochialism too
> from all the 'isms' that you mention in your list below
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2015 13:46:15 +0530
> From: tmvinod at gmail.com
> To: krc12353 at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [Urbanstudy] Is India's 100 smart cities project a recipe for
> social apartheid?
> CC: yanivbin at gmail.com; urbanstudygroup at sarai.net
>
>
> Surveys leads to simple statistical analysis (univariate, bivariate,
> logistical regression etc etc ) , hypothesis testing and then to stochastic
> modelling. You can calibrate past events by stochastic modelling. You can
> also model and program future events by stochastic modelling.  We have also
> found GIS database used in data mining leads towards unexpected future
> action. It is used by multinational business houses and national security
> agencies in many countries. In all these a strategist need not use any of
> his own opinion or embrace Marxism, Socialism, Gandhi ism, Nehruism or
> Capitalism to explain present and future phenomenon. You can leave such
> baggage’s in your dustbin. Smart city basics  also involves, how knowledge
> in real time generated by analytics from raw data from sensors and
> modelling is used for smart living, smart mobility, smart environment,
> smart governance, and smart economy by smart people. China and India are
> only two nations I feel genetically gifted with capability do what I
> discussed here since it is part of their genes.This is from my experience
> as teacher.  Internet access and E-literacy is required for smart cities to
> work and Kerala is the first state in India which is fully(100%) e-literate
> today. I do not see much problem for other states to follow Kerala.
>
>
>
> T.M.Vinod Kumar
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Karthik Rao-Cavale <krc12353 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Surveys can help establish social facts. But they need interpretation just
> as any other observations. There is no neutral vantage point for
> interpretation.
> Do you mean to say statistics and research methodology are inferior to
> opinions.Then why did you study and teach statistics.
>
> TMV
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 8:28 AM, Karthik Rao-Cavale <krc12353 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Prof. Kumar,
>
> Despite having studied and taught statistics for six years now, I really
> don't understand how a mere sample survey is sufficient to prove or
> disprove the arguments made in the article you find so offensive.
> The intention of this write up is well documented by Rajiv.
>
> I worked with CSDS for two years long long time back. CSDS always uphold
> research methodology and survey research.  and I feel ashamed CSDS  is
> associated with Urban study.which churns out gossips in urban study
> newsletter which have no connection with truth.Unscientific work only
> promote vested interest.
>
> At preset I am coordinating a project :Smart Economy in Smart Cities" by a
> network of top most universities in 12 countries through one year research
> in 16 cities from Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia.which is expected to
> prove otherwise than the gossip given in the write up. .. Springer will
> publish it in 2016. We have a monthly Bulletin which introduces authors who
> are ow more than 50 and city profiles.  I can share that with with
> interested party.
>
> You can also read my edited books on Smart Cities "Geographic Information
> System for Smart Cities" (Copal:2014) and "E-Governance for Smart Cities"
> (Springer:2015) where we have already proved opposite of what is written in
> the write up through well researched documentation.
>
> T.M.Vinod Kumar
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 10:09 PM, Rajeev Yerneni <rajeevy at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I think the article was a great opinion piece, don't think the author is
> aiming for scientific integrity.
>
> Folks who reject ideas and thoughts based on scientific grounds probably
> do the most 'disservice to science'.
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 9:18 AM, T M Vinod Kumar <tmvinod at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I totally disagree with Bhuvsnreswari and Henrick. What is written there
> has no data base to prove. It is just like ones opinion with no basis. . It
> is great disservice to science
>
> T.M.Vinod Kumar.
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 6:32 PM, Bhuvaneswari Raman <
> raman.bhuvaneswari at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Agreed with Henrik- it is a well researched and timely article.
> A positivist, quantitative sample survey does not reveal the reality on
> the ground. Pushed under the rhetoric of "scientificity" of social science
> research, positivist research serve as a comfortable vehicle to reinforce
> the Indian fiction of "Smart Cities" denying the invisible violence of
> constituting such cities in the name of growth and wealth for a few at the
> expense of a majority.
> Bhuvana
>
>
> On 11 June 2015 at 13:03, Henrik Valeur <hv at uid.dk> wrote:
>
> Seems like a well-researched article covering many angles of the topic -
> important and informative.
> Henrik Valeur
>
>
> On Jun 11, 2015, at 5:25 AM, T M Vinod Kumar wrote:
>
> Such write up sounds unscientific for me. A social scientist takes a
> systematic sample, make hypothesis  and conduct surveys and tabulate it
> before making conclusions drawn on smart cities. Of course India do not
> have many smart cities but Jaipur, Hyderabad and Bangalore have potential
> for smart cities. The author shall conduct sample surveys there and make
> responsible conclusions.
>
> The write up looks like fiction.for me and degrade social scientists.
>
>
> T.M.Vinod Kumar
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 12:12 PM, Vinay Baindur <yanivbin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/07/india-100-smart-cities-project-social-apartheid?CMP=share_btn_tw
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Is India's 100 smart cities project a recipe for social apartheid?*
> The emergence of hi-tech prototype cities is raising concerns that India’s
> new urban enclaves will override local laws and use surveillance to keep
> out the poor
>
>  A labourer pulls a cable in front of office buildings in Gujarat
> International Finance Tec-City (Gift City). Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters
>
>
>
> Shruti Ravindran
>
> Thursday 7 May 2015 07.00 BSTLast modified on Friday 8 May 201513.09 BST
>
>
> In architectural renderings, Gujarat International Financial Tec-City
> resembles a thicket of glassy blue skyscrapers soaring above the Sabarmati
> River in Gandhinagar, capital of the western Indian state of Gujarat. Its
> “signature towers” include the Diamond, a 410-metre spire resembling an icy
> stalagmite, and the 362m Gateway Towers, a bendy, sinuous version of Rem
> Koolhaas’s CCTV headquarters in Beijing.
>
> By 2021, the creators of Gift City, as it is commonly known, promise to
> surround these towers with world-class infrastructure which will provide
> residents with round-the-clock power and water, a “district-cooling system”
> that sluices chilled water through buildings, and an automatic garbage
> disposal system sending excrement hurtling through sewage pipes at 90kph –
> “faster than most Indian trains”, as the journalist Manu Joseph dryly
> observed.
>
> The beating heart – or rather, robot brain – of Gift City is its “Command
> and Control Centre”, which keeps traffic moving smoothly and monitors every
> building through a network of CCTVs. In a country where more than 300
> million people live without electricity, and twice as many don’t have
> access to toilets, Gift City’s towers sound like hypertrophic castles in
> the sky. But they are an essential part of the Indian government’s urban
> vision, one that it wants to see replicated a hundred times across the
> country. Recently, the Indian cabinetgreen-lit a £10 billion scheme that
> will be divided equally between building 100 smart cities, and rejuvenating
> another 500 cities and towns over the next five years.
>
> In a country where 300 million people live without electricity, Gift
> City’s towers sound like castles in the sky
>
>
>
> Yet many experts and planners fear that such “insta-cities”, if they are
> made, will prove dystopic and inequitable. Some even hint that smart cities
> may turn into social apartheid cities, governed by powerful corporate
> entities that could override local laws and governments to “keep out” the
> poor.
>
> In a monograph for a conference on smart cities in Mumbai in January, the
> economist and consultant Laveesh Bhandari described smart cities as
> “special enclaves” that would use prohibitive prices and harsh policing to
> prevent “millions of poor Indians” from “enjoying the privileges of such
> great infrastructure”. “This is the natural way of things,” he noted, “for
> if we do not keep them out, they will override our ability to maintain such
> infrastructure.”
>
>
>
> Bhandari’s bald statements sparked social-media pandemonium, and the
> economist is now at pains to assert he is far from uncritical of such
> plans. “I am describing the unfeasibility and undesirability of a
> thoughtless smart-city vision,” he says. “When you invest so much without
> thinking about services and low-cost housing and governance, then you will
> end up creating enclaves that keep out the poor.”
>
>
> In their present form, Bhandari adds, smart cities are essentially
> rechristened Special Economic Zones (SEZs); neo-liberal business-friendly
> zones exempt from taxes, duties and stringent labour laws. They are also
> subject to what urban scholars say is a form of “privatised governance”,
> due to a constitutional amendment that renders local governments powerless.
> All of which, according to Bhandari, makes them inherently and unreservedly
> exclusionary. “The current template for smart cities only mandates
> infrastructure creation. What we need is democracy and rule of law, not
> governance by fiat that holds in SEZs and smart cities created in China.”
>
> Last July, Narendra Modi’s newly elected government allocated 70.6 billion
> rupees (£762m) to its “100 Smart Cities” plan. This year’s allocation
> shrank to 1.4bn rupees, yet smart cities remain a key justification for a
> controversial land-acquisition ordinance the government is aiming to enact,
> which does away with mandatory consent and social safeguards for those
> whose lands are forcibly acquired. Over the past few months, smart
> city-themed conferences have been taking place every week in Delhi and
> Mumbai, culminating in the urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu’s
> announcement that the scheme would be “rolled out” imminently.
>
> Yet no one is quite sure of what these cities might look like, or who
> they’re for. Naidu, with not a little wistfulness, said that smart cities
> “would have clean water, assured power supply, efficient public transport
> and would not be polluted or congested”. A concept note from his ministry,
> last revised in December, explains that they will “have smart (intelligent)
> physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure”, guaranteeing
> their residents employment opportunities and “a very high quality of life,
> comparable with any developed European city”.
>
> This repeated emphasis on high-end infrastructure and superlative quality
> of life hints at a discomfiting answer to the second question: who the
> intended inhabitants of smart cities are likely to be.
>
>  A visualisation of Palava City’s lakefront, designed to be the heart of
> this new city’s cultural and social life.
>
> The current template might have given us Palava City. This self-described
> smart city across 3,000 acres of Mumbai’s northeastern exurbs is being
> built by a city-based developer best known for treating skyscraper-erecting
> as a competitive sport. As its promotional video announces in a smug
> baritone, Palava City was inspired by the futuristic vision that brought
> Singapore, Dubai “and even Mumbai” into being.
>
> What this translates into is “essential public infrastructure” such as
> 24x7 electricity, immaculate wide roads, public transport, malls,
> multiplexes and luxury housing, including “Mumbai’s first and only
> golf-course-equipped residential township”. To make sure that no one
> trespasses on its immaculate privatopia, Palava plans to issue its
> residents with “smart identity cards”, and will watch over them through a
> system of “smart surveillance”.
>
> The emphasis on surveillance underlines the stratified, elitist nature of
> smart cities, according to the academic and author Pramod Nayar. “Smart
> cities will be heavily policed spaces,” he says, “where only eligible
> people – economically productive consumers (shoppers) and producers
> (employees) – will be allowed freedom of walking and travel, while ambient
> and ubiquitous surveillance will be tracked so as to anticipate the
> ‘anti-socials’.”
>
> As such, Nayar adds, smart cities will be “more fortresses than places of
> heterogeneous humanity, because they are meant only for specific classes of
> people”. One class to be served, the other to be surveilled and contained.
>
> Palava plans to issue its residents with smart identity cards, and watch
> over them via a system of smart surveillance
>
>  Palava City will feature ‘Mumbai’s first and only golf-course-equipped
> residential township’
>
> “The smart city paradigm comes from mid-scale European cities, and they’re
> meant to make existing infrastructure work in a more integrated way,
> whether it’s waste, habitation or transport connectivity,” says Gautam
> Bhan, a researcher with the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in
> Delhi. “But Indian cities struggle with the absence of networks. Just 16%
> of Indian cities have underground sewage drainage systems. No technology
> can make the system work better if basic services don’t exist.”
>
> Set against this context, Gift City, which models itself after financial
> hubs Canary Wharf in London and Paris’s La Defense, starts to resemble the
> Emerald City, a glittering spectacle at the end of a shiny highway. In
> India such cities – geared towards high-end services – seem unlikely to
> provide many meaningful livelihood opportunities in the rural hinterlands
> where they come up.
>
> “Having islands of well-serviced smart cities amidst a vast sea of
> poorly-serviced and impoverished villages leads to what urban scholars have
> called the juxtaposition of the citadel and ghetto,” says Sai Balakrishnan,
> an urban scholar at Rutgers, who studies land conflicts and urbanisation in
> India. “If the government does succeed in building these premium 100 smart
> cities, but does nothing to alleviate poverty and poor services in the
> surrounding areas, it could well lead to a politically volatile situation.
> These visible forms of spatial inequalities engender social mistrust and
> even violence.”
>
> Nowhere is this combination of political volatility and spatial inequality
> more striking than in the giant expressway projects snaking across the
> country’s hinterland since 2006. These six-to-eight lane highways, intended
> to thread together luxury townships and special economic zones, often come
> up on fertile farmland that is forcibly acquired under the pretext of
> fulfilling a “public purpose”. In May 2011, one such project just outside
> Delhi – involving an expressway, private sports-themed city, and the
> country’s first Formula 1 racetrack – led to months-long protests among
> farmers from 10 villages. The rally descended into violence when villagers
> clashed with armed police, leading to the deaths of two farmers and two
> policemen.
>
> The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy'
>
>
> Not all manifestations of disquiet end in gunshots and death, however.
> Balakrishnan recounts an incident that took place on the outskirts of
> Bangalore, where villages are rapidly being replaced with IT parks, gated
> communities and wealthy villas. A friend returned to her “visibly opulent”
> bungalow one evening to find a young man lounging on her porch, drinking a
> cold beer from her fridge. When she took out her phone to call the police,
> he brandished a small knife and motioned for her to sit down. She did, upon
> which he finished his beer, thanked her politely and left.
>
> “This incident makes palpable the sense of resentment and alienation among
> those excluded from partaking in India’s new urban wealth,” Balakrishnan
> says. “The young man wasn’t out to harm anyone, but he felt justified,
> entitled almost, to break into an affluent home and to help himself to a
> few hours of luxury.”
>
> Every new smart city, she suggests, signals yet another “temporary
> secession, each of them setting in place a new social order that will not
> be easy to reverse, and that takes urban planning dangerously away from the
> public domain”. A hundred smart cities could spawn a thousand shadow
> cities, simmering with resentment and rage.
>
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> --
> =============================
> Prof.T.M.Vinod Kumar
> Besant Nivas, Jayanthi Road, P.O.Kolathara
> Kozhikode-673655,Kerala,India
> Phone:0495-2422244
> Mobile:9946550900
> Email:tmvinod at gmail.com <mail%3Atmvinod at gmail.com>
> skype id:tmvinodkumar
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> =============================
> Prof.T.M.Vinod Kumar
> Besant Nivas, Jayanthi Road, P.O.Kolathara
> Kozhikode-673655,Kerala,India
> Phone:0495-2422244
> Mobile:9946550900
> Email:tmvinod at gmail.com <mail%3Atmvinod at gmail.com>
> skype id:tmvinodkumar
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> =============================
> Prof.T.M.Vinod Kumar
> Besant Nivas, Jayanthi Road, P.O.Kolathara
> Kozhikode-673655,Kerala,India
> Phone:0495-2422244
> Mobile:9946550900
> Email:tmvinod at gmail.com <mail%3Atmvinod at gmail.com>
> skype id:tmvinodkumar
> =============================
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> =============================
> Prof.T.M.Vinod Kumar
> Besant Nivas, Jayanthi Road, P.O.Kolathara
> Kozhikode-673655,Kerala,India
> Phone:0495-2422244
> Mobile:9946550900
> Email:tmvinod at gmail.com <mail%3Atmvinod at gmail.com>
> skype id:tmvinodkumar
> =============================
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>
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>
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> =============================
> Prof.T.M.Vinod Kumar
> Besant Nivas, Jayanthi Road, P.O.Kolathara
> Kozhikode-673655,Kerala,India
> Phone:0495-2422244
> Mobile:9946550900
> Email:tmvinod at gmail.com <mail%3Atmvinod at gmail.com>
> skype id:tmvinodkumar
> =============================
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-- 
=============================
Prof.T.M.Vinod Kumar
Besant Nivas, Jayanthi Road, P.O.Kolathara
Kozhikode-673655,Kerala,India
Phone:0495-2422244
Mobile:9946550900
Email:tmvinod at gmail.com <mail%3Atmvinod at gmail.com>
skype id:tmvinodkumar
=============================
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