Delhi is doomed, as is any other city

Delhi is doomed, as is any other city
Ravi Agrawal

Hundreds of workers poured out onto the streets of Delhi several times last month violently protesting against the proposed shifting of over 100,000 non-conforming and polluting industrial units. Supporting them were unusual allies: Their employers. Both threatened by an unmoving and firm Supreme Court tired of playing ball on the issue with the state government since 1996. `Shift or close down', was the loud and clear message the court was sending out, for too long had the Master Plan been violated jeopardising the health of the 12 million residents of this increasingly chaotic capital city. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit even expressed sympathy with the workers. But without real action on that front it was a case of passing the buck. But who was really responsible for things having come to such a pass? Environmental justice demands that the livelihood of the workers need to be protected. Yet again, the environment was being used as a fall guy for the real culprit! In this case a miserably failed urbandevelopment process. The question being posed -- of a clean environment verses jobs -- does not focus on the core problem and lets the real culprits off the hook.

While everyone -- workers, politicians, unions, employers -- are fighting each other, the perpetuators of the crime remain unscathed. Early in the sixties, Parliament had reposed its confidence in urban planning institutions and set up the Delhi Development Authority, as one of the largest landholders in Asia. It was evidently meant to provide housing and planning to a growing number of cosmopolites -- less than half a million then. Today things could not be more wrong, for not only do 40 per cent people here live in slums without water, electricity or sewage disposal, new development is being promoted along shamelessly commercial lines. For example, in 1997, 315 hectares of some of the best forest land on the Vasant Kunj Delhi Ridge was being auctioned off, not for ``public purposes'', but for building 13 five-star hotels! Things could not been more warped. An incredulous Supreme Court, remarking on a plea by eight NGOs, challenging the project said that it might have been willing to consider it`development' had the proposal even been for hospitals, but hotels? The project thankfully did not go through, owing to an alert and persistent public. But then no one really knows how many such projects, landuse changes and authorizations are being given on a daily basis. It is all this that has made Delhi the unlivable city it has become.

Everyone accepts that such violations go hand in hand with a lack of transparency. Public land is diverted for commercial purposes routinely. Parks have given way to religious places or marriage halls, houses to factories, pavements to shops, and riverfronts have been converted into flyash ponds. Each one has some rationale, duly noted on files, which are subsequently untraceable. The rot runs deep and includes architects, planners, contractors, and inspectors of all types. The house next to yours could get an authorisation as a household industry and you will not even know about it. In a jiffy noise and toxic chemicals would be your new companions.

A whole market came up in Jwalapuri, the largest in Asia, selling used plastics in a residential area. It then burnt down. Was anyone held responsible? Nobody! Non-accountability and associated corruption has become the biggest protector of the rot and perpetuated the state of urban non-planning. In this particular case in Delhi political parties have in their wisdom suggested that the Master Plan itself be amended effectively rendering the Supreme Court order invalid. However redrawing the lines will not change much the lives of Delhiites or the processes which cause them misery. The process of urban development needs transparency. Neighbors need to know and agree to what is being proposed. Public knowledge is, ultimately, the only effective watchdog.