Lottery of the smart

The good people of Chosen Smart City woke up today feeling infinitely smarter. They found themselves winners of the Rs 500cr Smart City lottery, along with 97 others. This is a smart move by our government, because while most nations waste their time confusing smartness for wisdom, improving systems after putting basic infrastructure in place, like, say, a road or a functional police force, or you know, electricity, because it is not like Amsterdam is lit up and the rest of Holland eats dinner under a candle, or that Glasgow uses a smart commuter network while the countryside of Scotland hitches a ride on the haycart, India has saved time and money by clubbing it all together. It is not that we are assured of 100 per cent electricity, but that we are assured of electricity at all. It is not that treated, drinkable water will now flow, it is that our children will not know what that gurgling sound the tap makes when it is choking on its emptiness, is. It is not that we are assured of CCTV camera footage of my mugger, but that the hinterland can consume all the country-made double revolver footage it likes, we can leave our doors unlocked because the bat signal has been dusted and wiped clean and superheroes will now nab the very crows who steal the frankies out of our hands at Shivaji Park. We know this because the toll money has been steadily improving our roads, we are not choking on our air, and our taxes have maintained a ship-shape police force, and our politicians have utilised all local body corpuses exactly as they said they would. There is nothing to doubt that Rs 500cr seed money will not only absolutely not stick us with bills on water, electricity, road and commuter transport and air, but that these basic services we ought to be receiving in return for our existing taxes will also not be available to those who are unable to afford the extra financial burden... < man, aiming to shoot killer mosquitoes with sawed barrel shotgun by hurricane lamp light in Alirajpur kills daughter instead, forces wife to have another child, but dies of dengue four weeks later due to a lack of civic health care facilities leaving four children and an increased female foeticide and maternal anaemia and domestic crime statistic count in the forthcoming NSSO> ... Smart City residents reading about him in their smart digital newspapers the next morning felt an inexplicable discomfort, which they attributed to his blatant stupidity, but in reality was caused by their inability to recall what a mosquito bite felt like anymore, their epidermises having been made sensorially numb by an evolution kinder than government. Because the only thing standing between us and an efficient garbage disposal systems is, of course, a larger sum of money and an internet connection with which not to achieve it. The good people shrugged it off and went to work on their potholed roads, paying tolls that crumbled into its fillers like soggy cookies in the rainwater accumulating in their choked drains as politicos whizzed past in their choppers. That lingering feeling of having been had settled like a cloud. Nobody was feeling very smart in a while.