Article by A Human from Smart City-Port Blair
This article is a result of a thought which had hit me when I was on the traffic signal and someone spitted a mouth full of pan on the road. (Sorry man!! I don’t Like you).
We are hearing about this smart city for a long time now.I have googled what is Smart City?many times and I found this – “There is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different people.”
The best definition that google gave me was this – “A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government.”
After this googling my mind was curious about knowing about the kind of people who live in the Smart Cities around the globe. I think they must be called Smart People.
“Smart People”, now that’s sounds something interesting to me. Who are Smart people? Smart people are those who don’t spit on the road, who don’t pee on the side of the road, who don’t throw trash on the streets, who don’t break traffic rules, who saves electricity, petrol, diesel, etc., who thinks and acts rationally, who is literate enough to speak for the right things rather than just writing his/her name(According to the our Government, anyone who can read and write his/her name is a literate), who believes that earth belongs to everyone who lives in it, who believes Humanity is a greater faith. This is purely my definition of Smart People, and its upto you readers to make your definitions of smart people without hurting anyone’s emotions or feelings (Dear Readers, Please don’t define Smart people are those who don’t eat beef or pork).
Smart people will not be born in a day. People have to be trained to be Smart. Smartness will come through education and discipline. I think our education system must be reiterated to make our future generation more sensible to the society and environment.
Today I see children in the race of getting the highest marks (there is nothing wrong in getting high marks) instead of becoming a good human. Instead of teaching children mathematics and science, they must be taught ethics and theology. They must be taught to care for the environment in which they live and respect each and every living being. Discipline will come only when our law is stronger. People must be punished for polluting the environment, and making their surrounding dirty. I want our houses to have two dustbins, one for recyclable wastes and the other for non-recyclable wastes. I want our municipality to recycle our wastes. I don’t want our municipality to dump the waste in Brookshabad, where they lie for years or they are burnt, which increases our carbon emission.
There are so many other things that has to be changed for making people around us smart. Each one us can change from today and start a new initiative to become a smarter person. As Mahatma Gandhi said – “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” As I said earlier, it’s not going to happen in one day, we need to evolve into smart people, and that will take some time for us. Now, we just need to start changing.
So want I intent to say here is, to build a Smart City the foremost requirement is Smart people.I don’t want my country to be called a third world again. I want it to be called Smart World where Smart People live.
(For me a Smart city will be one where I can walk on the road without my slippers, drink the tap water without boiling and filtering it, no power cuts, get quality food for reasonable rate, affordable best medical facility, I want it to have night schools and colleges, I want it to conserve rain water, run on solar power, tidal power and wind power and recycle waste. I want to inherit a smart city to my children with lot of opportunities and peace.)
