NMC proposes Rs 1.48 crore for 365 tablets as Nagpur's water shortage deepens

Nagpur: The water shortage in the city is deepening and reservoir levels are falling fast. Amid this, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has drawn up a proposal to buy 365 Android tablets for corporators and civic officials, at a total cost of Rs 1.48 crore. Questions have begun to be raised about spending priorities, accountability and what became of the tablets distributed last time.

According to the proposal, each tablet costs Rs 38,999, and the estimated Rs 1.48 crore includes tax. The agenda for the standing committee meeting was issued on Tuesday, and the proposal has been placed for consideration at Friday's meeting. The municipal commissioner approved it on October 13.

The purchase will be made through e-tendering. Digital pens will come with the tablets. They will be given to the mayor, the deputy mayor, the standing committee chairperson, the leaders of the ruling party and the Opposition, and corporators of all parties. Municipal officials will also get them, including heads of departments, executive engineers and junior engineers.

The information technology department has defended the purchase. It says work increasingly depends on the work module, the e-office system, the MIS portal, video conferencing and other technical applications. The administration has also said the earlier laptop service has been discontinued, so it now has to move to tablets.

The real question is what happened to the old tablets. During the tenure of the then standing committee chairperson Avinash Thakre, the corporation bought tablets and distributed them to corporators. The new agenda note itself admits that most of them eventually stopped working. Many corporators also had difficulty operating them properly.

Despite this, the administration is now set to repeat the same exercise on a larger scale. The proposal also shows no credible plan to ensure that the new tablets will actually be used, maintained and monitored. Otherwise these too will end up as expensive electronic burdens.

The timing of the spending is also jarring. Totladoh reservoir, Nagpur's main water source, fell to just 31.34 per cent of its live storage capacity on October 31. On the same date last year it was 92.42 per cent. Such a sharp drop in water availability has raised concern about the city's preparedness for the shortage ahead. Saving water, stopping leakages and improving water management need urgent attention.

Nagpur residents face a direct question: why is the corporation ready to spend crores of rupees on gadgets whose earlier versions proved of no use, while the city struggles for water, the most essential thing? Taxpayers want answers on the fate of the old tablets, how they were used, the reason for buying again, and the safeguards against such a failure in future.