Evaluation of the area based development (ABD) project in Bhubaneswar: a participatory apporoach

Abstract

The infrastructure development and technological interventions in an urban area have direct as well as indirect impact on the residents by enhancing the quality of life and making the location attractive for business and commerce. Projects like the “Smart City Project” in India aim at the overall development of the identified area (site for Area Based Development) in order to create a scenario that will provide the utmost possible value to the proposed site. Various past instances (for example: Lusaka squatter upgrade project) around the world have indicated that development of public infrastructure without identifying the impact and acceptance of the development by the people have led to more bad than good. This resulted in deterioration of the financial strength of the ULBs even further as they became unable to pay back the debt financing involved due to failure in cost recovery from public. If people accept a project and are aware of its possible impacts, the recovery of the investment made becomes easier. There are instances where certain financial tools are questioned by people leading the authorities to change their approach towards cost recovery (example: questioning the moral behind Tax Increment Finance in some states of USA). The opinion, awareness and acceptance of residents regarding the rationale behind a fiscal tool is also important to implement it successfully. Hence, this study was dedicated to understand the development in the built-up environment of the selected site as perceived by the stakeholders (residents and authorities). Also, as the project involves investment into ICTs meant to transform the area into a “Smart City” and elevate the image of the area, hence, it was necessary to understand the efficacy and acceptance of ICTs by the residents. Now, it is known that there is an element of debt financing in the project. So to recover this, an investigation into various kinds of fiscal tools helpful to generate revenue from the people benefitted by the project was performed. This involved the perception study of the stakeholders. Different fiscal tools were ranked to identify the most suitable tool which the people find comfortable or justifying and the authorities find easy to implement either with the existing resources or with certain practical changes in management. Presence of participatory approach can be identified at each stage of the study. The Smart City Mission is one of the flagship projects of Government of India through investment of about INR 98000 Cr. in 100 major lighthouse cities of India to enhance the infrastructure and avail smart services to the netizens. Out of those 100 cities, the site identified for the study is the ABD site of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Project. This Smart City Project in among one of the top 5 projects in terms of funding in the Smart City Mission. The SCP of Bhubaneswar Smart City is the receive an amount of INR 4537 Cr. out of which around INR 4095 Cr. (90 percent) will be dedicated towards the ABD project. Such high level of investment (with involvement of debt financing) dedicated towards such a small area (3.9 sq.km) made this location an ideal site for the study.