Governing Urban Environment in the Era of E-technologies: An Indian Experience

By Jaydip De (Barasat Government College) |

Following the technological advancements, good governance of the urban environment is continuously coming into the focus. The guidelines of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are making valuable inroads to ensure urban sustainability. Human, being the prime sculptor of the environment is always influencing nature. During the last three decades, increasing adaptation and application of e-technologies are creating opportunities to think about the modalities of public administration in new ways, particularly in the developing world. During the COVID-19 phase, e-activities have gained a landslide increase in the number and duration of using virtual media. Hence, craving out new ways to govern the urban space also. In this context, this present study concentrates on the problems, dimensions, modalities, and scopes of e-technology application for environmental governance of urban India. An in-depth review of available literature using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses-PRISMA (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009) approach forms the base of this study. Since SCOPUS is the largest reliable source of the published research database, it has been considered for sampling the literature. The potentialities of e-technologies in urban environmental governance are examined thoroughly. Several models are proposed where the incorporation of e-technologies with the traditional system may boost up the mechanism of service delivery and ensure public participation from the doorstep. Therefore, the tools of digital participation in this neo-modernised socio-cultural system are anticipated to have an enhanced impact on the nourishment of the urban ecosystem.