KOCHI: When the Union government’s Smart City Mission conducted its first round of selection, Kochi was ranked 5th among the 20 major cities across the country. However, the recent rains proved that Kochi won’t be able to claim that it has an advanced ‘overall infrastructure’ – a cardinal factor that make these cities ‘really’ smart and sets them apart from others.“This is a city that is growing without any fundamentals – waterlogging is just one issue to be tackled,” said K J Sohan, former mayor, Kochi corporation. Smart City project wouldn’t change the face of the town completely, as it is restricted to two areas of the town, he said. “These are two tiny parts of the town – first being the 1 to 5 divisions of Fort Kochi and second being the area between Banerji Road, MG Road and Durbar Hall Road,” he said.Sohan fears that Smart City project might not be successful, if they keep on implementing certain elements of development, rather than seeing the whole picture. “West Kochi is an area that faces acute shortage of drinking water, but the Smart City project is implementing ‘smart’ metering there, which allows the officials to measure the consumption levels sitting in their offices,” he said.Kochi is also going to see a huge pressure on its infrastructure as evident from the ‘Development Plan for Kochi City Region – 2031’, prepared by the department of town and country planning.“We forget the fact that Kochi is an estuarine city. During high tides, the sea level will be three feet up and if there is rain, it will result in waterlogging across town. You will have to wait five hours for the low tide for this to subside. During this interval, the water used to be contained by natural water systems, till few years ago. Residential areas like Panampilly Nagar, Giri Nagar, Jawahar Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Shastri Nagar, were all developed from paddy fields, a natural water harvesting system,” he said.Further, the various governmental developmental projects of Kochi region, which started mainly in 1970s, also put pressure on the natural water systems, Sohan said.“Marine Drive was built by reclaiming 200 acres, Goshree created 64 acres and Bolghatty Island took another 33 acres. For Vallarpadam, 700 acres were reclaimed and for Willingdon Island , 400 acres,” he said.Sohan said that to construct efficient drainage systems, the town needs a contour map, a topographic map that shows the elevations at various points of the Earth’s surface.“We also need to develop a geographical information system which could provide route map and contour map of all the places within the town,” he said.Two other aspects that Kochi needs badly are water harvesting systems and service roads on canal banks.“Currently 75% of the rain water drains to ground, resulting in waterlogging. If individual households could set up water harvesting systems, this could partly be contained. Service roads on the banks of the canals could be used for cleaning them during summers, he said.

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