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| Image and eaten by Pooja Ugrani |
Of all the available biscuits, I like ginger biscuits
best.
It is an acquired taste; so of course, they are the least
easily available. When I can lay my hands on them, I tend to over-buy and
hoard. I have to, you see. In the boondocks where I live, resources are
available only because they sell. 'Yeh
item running hai'. New products do make their way on and off, but last only
if they catch the imagination of the grand unwashed. Only running items are reordered.
This is not the way of the small kirana-wallah but the
credo of the franchisee supermarkets as well- Big Bazaar, D-Mart, Hyper Mart
will only stock items that will easily clear their shelves. The end effect is
obvious- there is no diversity, no innovative products, no inclusion or
freshness in the merchandise, only the staid and steady. So of late, no ginger
biscuits. Also no coconut-orange juice, no basil and no Dindori.
In much the same way, our government has imagined 'smart
cities'.
They have redefined ‘liveable cities’ to ‘cities that
have the potential to give maximum returns’. In a great leap of associative
fallacy they equate 'smart' with 'running items'- with economic viability. This
ledger-book definition keeps citizens entirely out of the balance-sheet. If 100
crores are to be put into a city, it must generate 100 crores to be deemed
smart.
This, in the long run, is a slippery slope. We can
imagine stock patches of habitation with corporate built slickness and all
round surveillance. A city where you can control your air conditioner with your
mobile phone. But you cannot buy a packet of ginger biscuits, because not
enough people like to eat it. Cities without diversity or inclusion, with only
economic drivers, lacking socio-cultural touch points are cities heading for
stagnation. We already have enough gated communities and failed malls to show
us what such smart cities can become. No dogs, no bachelors, no women living
alone or together, no musicians, no non-vegetarians, no Muslims. Nothing that
is not conventional or conservative.
The great cities of the world have shown us one thing in
the 21st century- they can run, grow, even flourish despite the government and their planners, not because of them. You
live in one of them today. Look around. You have enough to complain about, but
the city is not about to collapse. Diversity and everyday innovation power
cities forward, social contracts that are made and remade on the streets power
its spirit. And yet none of this is reflected in the Development Plans and
indeed Smart City conceptions of the state.
Labels are all they are. Even definitions are difficult
to come by, let alone directions.
Meanwhile, I dream of ginger biscuits.
