Smart Anandababu – Icon of smart city project

The smart city initiatives of New Town and Salt Lake have already grabbed the attention of mayors from some countries. 

The New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) is now planning to follow the ‘Buladi’ route to reach out to residents of New Town to have a direct interface with the citizens in a smart way.

Similar to the state’s counter-AIDS icon, the authorities are planning ‘Smart Anandababu’ who will always be there to listen, give details and refer it to the relevant section through a web-based software at the back-end and give feedback to the concerned residents.

Officials said that resolving citizen’s grievances is one of the main focus areas of the smart city strategy. While many are talking of online web portals, complaint monitoring software and GISbased photo shoots through smartphone applications, officials said that the interaction needs to have a human face, a person people can relate to and hence the ‘ Anandababu’ ídea has been conceptualised.

To make the system more effective, the person on the other side of telephone will be backed up with a control room that will provide time bound results on the actions being taken by giving sms based feedback to the complainant on his or her mobile phone.

The authorities are also holding ‘Smart Fridays’ where interactions are taking place with citizens of the township to discuss on the smart city initiatives.