Poor women ignorant of ‘smart’ projects: Study

The Pukar Foundation found that poor women in urban areas have very little knowledge about smart city projects that are currently being viewed as a mark of the country’s progress.

According to the study involving residents of BKC, Lower Parel and Wadala, poor women in urban areas have no tools to give their inputs online through the website.

While the Maharashtra government has said that every citizen can give his or her input for better connectivity, water and planning in their respective areas, the research has revealed that economically backward sections which need to give their inputs the most have no idea that their inputs have been asked for in the first place. Their demand is that current amenities be improved. One of the researchers, Preet Karan Sandhu, said that women living in hutments and small 10x10 feet homes had no idea that the government had asked for their inputs.

“The study was conducted with around 20 women in these areas who said they did not know how to visit these sites andgive ideas about how to improve and make their part of the city smart. Mobile phones in the house were usually operated by menfolk and women usually gave ideas like increasing height of the wall outside the home by a few feet during monsoons to prevent water from entering their homes,” said Ms Sandhu.

Other smart city options like affordable transport from one point to another were also missing.

“Women in Wadala for example said that they the monorail extension to Jacob Circle would be a big boon however it would be tough on their pockets. At the same time, people took BEST buses to Dadar to catch a central railway or western railway train so there was need for affordable transport connecting these suburbs with other sections of the city,” said another researcher, Tehmina Sabuwala.

Researchers tracked social and financial lives of these 20 women for a year and found that a lot of plans did not include the economically backward sections of Mumbai.