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Bhailal is trying to park his bicycle somehow amidst the vegetable vendors’ shops on the nearly four and a half kilometre-long cycle track. But the vegetable vendors chase him away. The distressed cyclist tries several times to explain to them to park. But his words have no effect on the vegetable vendors.
“This is not the first time this has happened to me. I have tried to walk on this track many times but have failed,” Bhailal told Down To Earth (DTE). “If you try to cycle on this cycle track, you will have to carry your cycle on your shoulders and bring it to the main road again and again because at many places, these encroachers have occupied the entire track,” he added.
DTE monitored the track for almost a week. No cyclist was ever seen on it during those days.
This, then, is the situation of Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district which was included in the 100 ‘Smart Cities’ announced by the central government in 2015. The cycle track in question was intended as a gift to the residents of Satna under the same scheme.
Bhailal is a fruit seller by profession. He sells fruits by roaming around the streets of the city. “I bought 22 kg of mangoes today. I start at 9 in the morning and am able to sell these many mangoes till late evening. Given the traffic jams in the city, I have to spend more time on the road. Such a situation did not exist 10 years ago. I sold fruits then too but would leave at 9 in the morning and finish my work by 2 in the afternoon and return home. Now, most of my time is spent in going from one locality to another. The traffic situation in the city has put my livelihood in danger,” said Bhailal.
After being declared a ‘Smart City’, Satna Smart City Development Limited aimed to complete a total of 72 development works in the city. Of these, 43 have been claimed to be completed so far. The cycle track, built at a cost of Rs 5.5 crore, is also included in these.
But are other development works in the city also as bad as the cycle track?
“More or less, other development works in the city are also going on in the same manner,” Vishwatara Doosra, the editor of a national newspaper, told DTE.
Another important work completed as part of Satna being declared as a ‘Smart City’ is the Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS) built at the district headquarters at a cost of Rs 49.9 crore. Despite its completion, it currently takes more than 45 minutes to cover a distance of two kilometres every day.
The city’s traffic department says that they have limited resources. Local people, including other departments, should understand their responsibility in this regard, officials in the department add.
Despite being a ‘Smart City’, the traffic police force in the district remains the same as it was 10 years ago. At the time, the population of the district was 2,228,935 and the urban population was 533,042. This figure has now increased to 550,000. According to data received from the traffic police, there are currently 68 traffic employees deployed in the city. But this deployment has been decided according to the population of 10 years ago. This number should now be doubled.
According to state government data, Satna is the most densely populated district of Madhya Pradesh. “Satna city is 125 years old. It developed well until 1996. But after that, the rapidly increasing population (since it became the commercial capital of the Vindhya Pradesh region) made it the most densely populated district of the state. The population increased but the city remained stagnant at one place,” Vishwatara said.
The city’s stagnation at one place and the continuous increase in the number of two-, three- and four-wheelers forced Satna to crawl. While the number of two-wheelers was 26,509 in 2020, it has increased to 37,448 in 2024. Apart from this, a similar increase can be seen in the number of three-wheelers. Their number was 725 in 2020, which has increased to 2,056 in 2024. Also, the number of cars in the city was 4,684 in 2020, which has increased to 6,267 in 2024.
While the number of private vehicles has increased by 20 to 30 per cent, the rate of increase in the number of local buses is very low. According to data, there were 114 buses in 2020, which increased to 210 in 2024.
Vishwatara said the ITMS remains only on paper in the city. Hence, the air of the city is not as clean as before.
“If you look at the data of the pollution department, you will find that for the last three months, the average air quality in the city has remained at 133 AQI. A big reason for this is that almost every road in the city has been dug up to lay sewer lines in order to make it a ‘Smart City’. But they have not been restored properly. This has led to mud being spread on the roads and the scorching heat of June has turned this mud into dust. This dust is now being blown around the city by vehicular movement,” said Viswatara.
It is not that nothing is being done to rectify this. The municipal corporation has opened its purses for the restoration of roads damaged by the sewerage project. Within the last four months, six tenders and work orders worth Rs 5 crore 86 lakh were given.
Despite this, the situation remains the same. Vishwatara said Satna is a town built on top of mines and because the engineers of today are not fully aware of its geographical peculiarities, the work done by them is not successful. In this regard, the district pollution control department said due to construction and government projects in the city, the AQI index remains higher than normal. Work is being done to improve the air quality by sprinkling water in the city.
Satna’s first cement factory was set up in 1960. Today, there are five cement factories around the city. The raw material required for these comes from more than half a dozen stone mines located on the outskirts of town.
Bhailal said he has to cover his mouth with a cloth when he goes to the Ghuradang area, where the factories are situated, to sell fruits. Otherwise, he starts feeling suffocated while breathing.
Ghuradang is adjacent to the Satna Cement Factory. A cloud of smoke hovers over the settlement. Raghav and Bambholiya, standing a little away from the main gate of the factory, say that when the unit is operational, a lot of smoke comes out from there and we cough a lot. The same is the condition of the people living near the stone quarries on the outskirts of the city.
Due to being a disorganised city, the graph of road accidents in Satna is increasing rapidly. According to data received from the district police office, while 369 people died in road accidents in 2020, in 2024 it has increased to four digits i.e. 1,145 deaths occurred. Road accidents in the city have increased three-fold in the last five years. To prevent them, four places in the district have been identified as ‘black spots’ (if five road accidents occur at one place on a road within three years or if 10 deaths occur at the same place within three years, then that place is declared as a ‘black spot’). The district’s Road Safety Committee, however, said that unless a road safety audit is conducted at these black spots, merely identifying them is of no use.
This article is part of our series on how India moves, which looks at the relationship between air quality and human mobility in cities and towns.