Another Doomed 26th
After that deluge on 26th July, it's been again raining incessantly in Mumbai since past three days. In Pune too, there has not been a moment of respite. Had the city not been on the slopes of Sahyadris, it would have been almost as bad here as in Mumbai.
26th as the date has again haunted us. 26th January, it was Gujarat earthquake; 26th December, it was Tsunami. 26th July, it was this cloud burst in Mumbai. The life of the people there, as it is clearly evident from the news, is more miserable than the worst of the miseries. Imagining myself there runs a chill down my spine.
But clearly, this unfortunate calamity has shown that in any direction beyond Dadar, except south, the Financial Capital of India is one big slum. In between this slum, there are some oasis of wealth, but largely it's a shabby, crumbling piece of town planning.
But that's what precisely happens with the prevailing builder-politco nexus. The town planning is fed to dogs. Forget a town, there are no sub-towns either. Ok, there are places like Kandivili, but just for locals to stop. Beyond that, there is just a Lokhandwala complex to harp about. Everything else - a slum again.
That's not the way to plan a city. A builder gets hold of a patch of land, and raises a building over there, another builder would do like wise nearby, and so on. That way an unplanned maze is created. On the contrary, one needs to develop a complete township to give that area a planned look.
Three good examples would be Nigdi Pradhikaran in Pune, Rohni in Delhi, and Gomti Nagar in Lucknow. Such colonies have the dedicated facilities for schools, hospitals, post office, parks, markets, and police stations. This has not happened in Mumbai since long. There is always some illegal construction going on there, be it on a hill, near a river or in a slum.
These builders had in fact changed the course of a small river to create illegal constructions. Now the river has come back with vengeance!
Hope this mayhem gets over soon, and normalcy returns.
26th as the date has again haunted us. 26th January, it was Gujarat earthquake; 26th December, it was Tsunami. 26th July, it was this cloud burst in Mumbai. The life of the people there, as it is clearly evident from the news, is more miserable than the worst of the miseries. Imagining myself there runs a chill down my spine.
But clearly, this unfortunate calamity has shown that in any direction beyond Dadar, except south, the Financial Capital of India is one big slum. In between this slum, there are some oasis of wealth, but largely it's a shabby, crumbling piece of town planning.
But that's what precisely happens with the prevailing builder-politco nexus. The town planning is fed to dogs. Forget a town, there are no sub-towns either. Ok, there are places like Kandivili, but just for locals to stop. Beyond that, there is just a Lokhandwala complex to harp about. Everything else - a slum again.
That's not the way to plan a city. A builder gets hold of a patch of land, and raises a building over there, another builder would do like wise nearby, and so on. That way an unplanned maze is created. On the contrary, one needs to develop a complete township to give that area a planned look.
Three good examples would be Nigdi Pradhikaran in Pune, Rohni in Delhi, and Gomti Nagar in Lucknow. Such colonies have the dedicated facilities for schools, hospitals, post office, parks, markets, and police stations. This has not happened in Mumbai since long. There is always some illegal construction going on there, be it on a hill, near a river or in a slum.
These builders had in fact changed the course of a small river to create illegal constructions. Now the river has come back with vengeance!
Hope this mayhem gets over soon, and normalcy returns.
Labels: Thoughts
posted by Unknown at 4:03 PM
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