AJMER, India — Ajmer's famous 13th-century Sufi shrine draws millions of pilgrims from around the world every year. The city started a website called “Amazing Ajmer.” But life in this ancient city of 550,000 people in northern India is anything but amazing.
Running water is available for two hours every two days. Only 130 of 125,000 homes in the city are connected to the sewage system. Dirty water flows in open drains in cramped neighborhoods. Stepwells and lakes have become garbage dumps. Illegal buildings and slums dot the city. And only two traffic lights work.
But soon, Ajmer could be transformed into a 21st-century “smart city” — an urban planning term for gleaming metropolises that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to build by 2022.
These modern marvels would be connected by grids in which water, electricity, waste removal, traffic, hospitals and schools are seamlessly integrated with information technology to run them more efficiently.
The government has set aside $7.5 billion to make it happen, and Modi officially began the program Thursday. But it's a grand vision that the residents of Ajmer — one of the 100 cities designated for the modernization — are not quite ready for.
As it becomes a buzzword, many people here are unclear about what it means to be a smart city. And others question whether Modi's fascination with smart cities in South Korea, China and Abu Dhabi can be duplicated in India.
The ambitious project signals a marked shift in Indian politics, analysts say. For decades, the village dominated the country's political and economic decisions, a stubborn legacy that dates back to Mahatma Gandhi's constant refrain that “India lives in its villages.”
“While we are trying to bring 21st-century technology, we also need to sort out some 19th-century challenges in Ajmer,” said Mukesh Aghi, president of the U.S.-India Business Council, which organized the meeting. “Basic services like sanitation, health, roads and electricity have not kept up with the pace of growth in these old cities.”
“Can we first work towards becoming a functioning city before aspiring to be a smart city? We lack even the basic services that a city should typically provide,” asked Suresh Mathur, a retired teacher who runs a city cleanliness drive called “My Clean School.”
Critics have dismissed Modi's plan as a 21st-century urban utopia, as a distant Neverland and Orwellian. They say that the idea is more suitable for richer nations whose citizens can afford to take basic urban services, such as drinking water or electricity, for granted.
