Roundtable Workshop: Role of Universities in Developing Skills for Smart Cities

A roundtable workshop was organised to discuss and promote the role of universities with regards to Smart Cities in India. This workshop is a part of the “Building Research Collaboration for Smart Cities” project, a multi-partnership research collaboration supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), UK and Scottish Funding Council. The workshop saw participation of leading researchers from the UK and India, including Dr. Srabani Maitra (Lecturer in Sociology of Education, University of Glasgow), Michael Osborne (Chair of Adult & Lifelong Education, University of Glasgow), Dr. Ajith Kaliyath (Associate Professor, Sushant School of Art & Architecture), Dr. Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay (Director, PRIA) and Dr. Rajesh Tandon (Founder-President, PRIA and UNESCO Co-Chair in Community Based Research). Practitioners and policy makers from National Skill Development Council also attended the workshop.

Universities located within a city or in the surrounding areas, must support and encourage skilling and lifelong learning opportunities.  This will help create “learning cities” as opposed to “smart cities” .The concept of a learning city is being promoted globally by UNESCO and is the cornerstone of their programmes on encouraging lifelong learning. According to Dr. Michael Osbourne, there are two principle ways of defining a learning city:

• Social justice perspective – Every type of stakeholder becomes involved in learning so that learning becomes ubiquitous with the city. For example, in South Korea, most citizens are not more than five minutes away from a learning opportunity, such as construction of lifelong learning centres, promotion of at-home and in-house learning programmes . Additionally, studies have shown that there is a strong link between participatory learning and health and well-being.
• Economic perspective – Due to the strong link between learning and well-being, stakeholders are more likely to perform their economic functions better.

Creating learning cities is not without obstacles, and specific challenges related to Indian cities were highlighted:

• There exists little to no information on understanding the needs of the informal sector and what can be done to improve their situation
• India’s chronic problem of underemployment

The notion of smart cities needs to be realigned with the idea of improving the collective human capital. Dr. Ajith Kaliyath from the Sushant School for Art and Architecture raised the thought-provoking question: Establishing smart cities is a smart proposition but how prosperous are India’s smart cities? Finding answers to this question became the central theme of the discussions at the workshop. 

The idea of improving human capital also begs the question of figuring out ways to improve the capacities of the marginalised sections of society, who are primarily employed in informal work; the question being, how do we craft smart cities which engage with the informal sector? The popular perception of smart cities, and indeed cities in general, is that they are places for white-collar jobs, but what about the maids, the drivers and other people who are from the informal sector? These people are generally left out of city planning and efforts must be made to include them in the process. Therefore, the role of universities with regards to smart cities must include providing assistance to train the informal sector and improve their socio-economic position.

The discussion shifted from the podium as the agenda was opened to the floor, moderated by Dr. Kaliyath. Mr. Nabaroon Bhattacharjee (Former team leader, Water and Sanitation Program) elaborated on the point raised by Dr. Kaliyath, “What will smart cities lead to?” With respect to the role of universities, most pre-existing universities do not run degrees on urban management/ urban practice, which is perhaps one reason why universities in India are not sought to assist in the development of smart cities.

Mr. Bhattacharjee identified 3 other constraints which come in the way of establishing smart cities:

• Basic failure of urban governance
• Lack of willingness on behalf of the local government to embrace innovation
• Lack of an open data system

Additionally, while the idea of smart cities looks good on paper, on closer inspection the city authorities responsible for implementing plans and programs are desperately lacking in basic capacities – both human and financial. For example, most of the SPVs (special purpose vehicles) in smart cities are run by private consulting firms in India, making them disconnected from the local context, which hinders the facilitation of learning. The solution, he proposed, must be to connect local governments, SPVs and the technical universities in these cities. It is important to engage adult learning and technical universities to achieve best results.

Dr. Debjani Ghosh (Senior Research Officer, National Institute of Urban Affairs), elaborating on the points raised by Mr. Bhattacharjee, added that the entire smart cities ecosystem was full of consultants who have signed long-term MOUs with local city authorities (some lasting 20 years). Local governance institutions are therefore reticent about improving the skills of their own officials since they have already hired “the best consultants in the sector” to prepare plans. Such an attitude only ensures that “local people will never be a part of making their cities smarter.”, she added. Additionally a lot of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission are heavy-duty infrastructure projects which compulsorily require outside help, thus ensuring that local officials will never be involved.

Agreeing with these perspectives of lack of capacities at the local level, Shrawan Kumar Acharya (Professor, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University) raised a further question: How exactly are universities expected to engage with the city at large? Many universities are engaged, collaborating among themselves, but what are the expectations of engagement vis-à-vis their cities?  A large number of universities are state-run public universities. There must, therefore, be a mechanism to link the specific work and learning in all the universities located in a city to the planning needs of that city. Furthermore, urban planning is based on data which is not available to the general public. Efforts must be made to improve the database and make it accessible to the general public. Universities can help in both these aspects.

Prof. Ashok Kumar (Head of Housing Department, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi) made a final presentation at the workshop, using the case of study of preparation of the Smart City Proposal for New Delhi Municipal Corporation to provide insights into planning and development of smart cities in India. Most smart city proposals have little to no public engagement or the promotion of public engagement. This is further compounded by the fact that smart city institutions were exclusionary as they were self-appointed bodies composed of civil servants and the SPVs (which is the implementing agency) is a limited company with a full-time CEO. He also pointed out other forms of exclusion in development of smart cities:

• Non-elected rather than elected or community members manage the affairs of the NDMC. The government explains this by saying that it is easier to show results in a shorter time by working through non-elected people
• One single civil servant holds 99% equity in these projects. This is why a consulting firm was hired to prepare the smart city proposal
• 80-85% of total outlay in the proposals is earmarked for area based projects. Poorer areas and communities remain outside the ambit of such projects.
• Smart city proposals do not address the concerns of slum dwellers. For example: no information on housing for the poor and vulnerable groups of society is available or addressed in these proposals.

The workshop concluded with a statement by Dr. Bandyopadhyay who highlighted the aspect of political willingness, especially for the marginalised sections of society. Why should the marginalised contribute to a smart city when they are not even a part of the process of planning for the city? Steps must be taken to include them in the development of smart cities. This requires political willingness and collaboration. Both are pre-requisite to correct inequalities. Only then can any city, smart or otherwise, thrive.