There was a seminar-and-discussion on "Re-Imagining
Delhi: Master Plans and the City's Future", arranged
by Urban Futures Initiative at India International
Centre on Saturday 6 August. There were lots of
reporters and I suppose there will be reports, but
they are unlikely to capture the following (requiring
some background).
Advocacy of Local-Area-Planning (LAP) with
citizens-participation featured prominently (with
accompanying Master-Planning bashing), raising
impropriety issues due to participation of those
responsible for safeguarding sanctity of planning
processes, since (1) LAP is germane to USAID-sponsored
amendments to MCD Act (in name of bye-law reform), up
for comment on MCD website since 01 August, and (2)
LAP is a DMP-2021 proposal (presumably botchy attempt
to iron out conflict between proposed MCD Act reform
and Delhi Development Act) and at least MPISG has
commented extensively on it in response to the
statutory DMP-2021 Public Notice, not yet disposed
off.
UFI pamphlet that could be picked up outside IIC
Conference Room-I said "New paradigms are needed to
understand the complexity and fragility of the
metropolis, and to envision positive futures for the
Indian City" and "the Indian city has been lurching
towards a systemic crisis rooted essentially in a
failure of planning and implementation". Curiously,
panellists were selected from those responsible for
the lurching, crisis and root failure, those occupying
problem-solving space and misusing it for
problem-sustaining ends.
Prof Narayani Gupta, *Consultant to INTACH*, opined
that DMP-2021 chapter on heritage is poorly written
and called for citizens-involvement. INTACH is duly
represented on DMP-2021 sub-group that wrote the
chapter and since 1998 also duly vested with
implementation responsibilities for DMP heritage
proposals. (MPISG has sought deletion of this chapter
because it is largely copied from DMP-2001 to sweep
implementation failures under the carpet and additions
are realtor-friendly and unmindful of objections of
citizens via statutory and judicial processes).
Shri MC Mehta, *Public Interest Attorney*, opined on
citizens-participation in typical vein of PIA (and
what Mr Jagmohan, referring to society at large, later
called blind-men-with-lanterns) in context of his PIL
against ridge encroachments and non-conforming
industries, which will go down in history as paradox
that confused development law for penal code in
curious pursuit of saving the city from citizens and
missed sterling opportunity to demonstrate
non-adversarial problem-solving potential of PIL to
spawn the exact opposite. (DMP-2021 industries
chapter, especially, is largely the outcome of Mehta?s
PIL and full of techno-legal infirmities).
Prof Ashesh Maitra, *Environment Planner and Former
Director SPA*, made a power-point presentation to
lament DMP-2021 inadequacy in terms of EP and to
declare LAP an EP imperative. Maitra is not EP by
specialised qualification and became Former Director
after being indicted in MoHRD inquiry in 2003. SPA is
named in DMP-2021 as adviser, with Maitra leading a
team of three. During Public Notice period, Maitra
wrote in the press against DMP-2021 and formed a group
in ITPI for joint-response. (MPISG has sought deletion
of ridge and riverbed sections and an Annexure from
DMP-2021 chapter on environment for inadequate
reference to environmental law preventing development
schemes and for unjustified remarks in support of
evictions).
Shri Jagmohan, self-styled planner, opined on
good-governance (with readings from his latest book),
even as it was under him as *concerned* minister that
a wholly unlawful DMP revision took-off and has
culminated in an indefensible DMP-2021 to become
historic case of mis-governance. At UFI-IIC he went
beyond harping on His-Plans for Delhi (unrelated to
its statutory Plans) to declare it open to citizens to
make their own plans.
Two Professors contributed to the discussion. Prof AGK
Menon, Director TVB School of Habitat Studies, opined
that the 20-year-Master-Planning process is flawed.
Menon functioned as chairperson of DMP-2021 sub-group
on conservation and renewal and TVB SHS, a
builder-trust college, functions from illegal
builder-farmhouse in DMP green belt. TVB SHS was
justified by a report (authored by Menon & others) on
need to restructure professional education and
practice to meet habitat needs, but has yet to
articulate an alternative after two decades and its
faculty has been openly saying that regularisation of
its illegal site was a key purpose of Menon?s
participation in DMP-2021.
Prof Kavas Kapadia, HoD of Urban Planning as well as
Regional Planning Departments in SPA (the only HoD
unaffected by the recent head-rotation there)
criticised DMP-2021 vaguely and master planning with
intemperate and inaccurate surmises about extant
reality to call for LAP and citizens-participation.
Kapadia was in the group of faculty members diverted
to an undergraduate Physical Planning Department
created in SPA in mid 90s in anticipation of demand,
pursuant to the 74th Constitutional Amendment, for
that sort of planning expertise (to date undefined in
SPA, but in line with LAP ideas).
Young persons who participated in the discussion,
however, were not from SPA Physical Planning
Department (justified in terms of 74th, like LAP) or
TVB SHS (justified in name of responsive education /
practice, like citizens-participation), but employees
of an enterprise called Hazard Centre (and at times
Sajha Munch, platform of NGOs), active in
anti-planning propaganda since start of DMP revision
(with funding, it is learned, from Ford Foundation,
Action-Aid, etc). There were also some foreign
students and perhaps their NRI faculty who opined that
Master Planning is bogged down by socialist
perspective and hence failing to harness economic
opportunities. (These represent, respectively,
citizen-participation and private-partnership lobbies
advocating *liberalisation* of planning frameworks, as
in so-called LAP).
Mr AK Jain, DDA Commissioner planning, called upon by
the chairperson to respond on three issues, viz, basis
of population projection of 230m, relation between
DMP-2021 and NCR Plan, and integration of villages in
urban development, stated names of eminent
demographers in the sub-group for projections, fact of
DDA and NCRPB being represented on both plans for
coordination, and the idea of LAP to take care of
villages, etc.
Dr KC Sivaramakrishnan, who was personally involved
with drafting what became the 73rd and 74th
constitutional amendments, was chairing the discussion
and his last remark was that if even half of what has
been said is true, the master plan process needs to be
stopped.
----
In the second half, by when Shri Jagmohan and Shri MC
Mehta and also MCD Commissioner Mr Rakesh Mehta had
left, Mrs Aruna Bhowmick (having already raised in the
first half, in context of long and continuing efforts
against commercial misuse in residential areas, the
question about future of citizens-participation after
law is *liberalised*) expressed reservations about the
idea of planning by citizens rather than
professionals. In view of that and of remarks about
villages and of heritage and environment *expertise*
in the room, I reacted to remarks of my professors in
my capacity as consultant to historic villages in
Mehrauli-Mahipalpur (ridge and ridge appurtenant CGWA
notified) area demanding, by statutory and judicial
processes, since 2001 enforcement of mandatory DMP
provisions for integration. I referred to the
Sultangarhi scheme, floated with INTACH support and
illegally started in 2002, that the court ordered
stopped and inquired into and over 1700 families
objected to (on grounds of it jeopardizing DMP scheme
for integration) in response to Public Notice,
regardless of which the scheme was *approved* without
court-ordered inquiry and resumed in pendency of fresh
PIL against it and identical illegalities and for a
DMP-based scheme for integration. Counter-affidavits
in this MPISG PIL do not mention any LAP. I pointed
out that TVB SHS as well as plot allotted to SPA
occupied land acquired from these villages and SPA
students have been studying them, in 2003 also for MCD
(which has claimed no role in the area and hence in
the PIL), and AGK Menon has recommended the
Sultangarhi scheme. I referred also to riverbed
constructions by DMRC and lately secured against its
tender (since someone had mentioned in context of
Pushta evictions not these, coming up right across and
simultaneously, but Akshardham built already and
elsewhere). I reminded my professors that DMP was tied
to 50 years of land acquisition in its name and I
asked them what kind of LAP and community
participation did they have in mind and why had they
had occupied places on DMP-2021 revision if they had
no confidence in master planning.
Having already recalled to Dr Sivaramakrishnan, over
tea in context of what went up on MCD website on 01
August, the AMDA conference of 2003 (at which, with
him in the chair, USAID FIRE project coordinator
Chetan Vaidya had mentioned a nearly-ready model
municipal act they had made and I had reacted sharply
to ask if he had not paid attention to the day-long
discussion that reached agreement to seriously rethink
modalities of applying the 74th to, especially, the
metropolitan context), I also asked about the kind of
decentralisation being imagined via fuzzy LAP that
required legislative amendment sponsored by USAID in
disregard of reservations of professionals about the
underlying assumptions.
Of course, I got no answers from my professors
(though, of course, accountability had been repeatedly
mentioned). Dr Sivaramakrishnan did say in his closing
remarks that perhaps we are all unclear about
community participation but, as stated, his last
remark was that the master planning process needs to
be stopped.
No one said anything about built and natural heritage
violating illegal schemes on ridge/riverbed (possible
only by fuzzy LAP) and no one said anything about
USAID-sponsored legislative amendments to allow fuzzy
LAP.
----
Nearly all MPISG convenor responses to various
DMP-2021 chapters begin with broad-stroking the
overall situation of adequate statutory solution,
implementation failure, profiteering on land and
resources spared by that, additional profiteering by
NGO-ising the problem, and the deadly alliance of
interests in cover-up (government) and in diversion of
problem-solving resources (private) and in
problem-sustaining interventions (NGO),
synergistically demanding in name of reform,
world-class visions and beggarly rights *regularising*
of all this by abandoning statutory solutions and
frameworks that guarantee equity and efficiency and,
ultimately, the legislating of problems,
inefficiencies and inequities.
At the UFI-IIC seminar I saw the alliance at work, yet
again.
----
View, just for a moment, the situation without
ideological slant and merely from Rule-of-Law
imperative. Read, without a fret about Delhi or
planning and only as case study, the Foreword in what
is up on MCD website. Count, just count, the number of
institutions on which we rely for techno-legal
competence that have endorsed a USAID-sponsored
legislative amendment on issues they are mandated, and
maintained at public cost, to mind.
The UFI pamphlet says, "The future of nations depends
overwhelmingly on how they shape their cities, their
urban futures". With institutions overwhelmingly
co-opted in anomie and discourse overwhelmingly
demanding more anomie, our future-shaping seems
overwhelmingly up for grabs.
----
The USAID-sponsored legislative amendments are up for
public comment for two months, by unspecified process,
but by invitation nevertheless. cheers.
__________________________________________________
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Delhi: Master Plans and the City's Future", arranged
by Urban Futures Initiative at India International
Centre on Saturday 6 August. There were lots of
reporters and I suppose there will be reports, but
they are unlikely to capture the following (requiring
some background).
Advocacy of Local-Area-Planning (LAP) with
citizens-participation featured prominently (with
accompanying Master-Planning bashing), raising
impropriety issues due to participation of those
responsible for safeguarding sanctity of planning
processes, since (1) LAP is germane to USAID-sponsored
amendments to MCD Act (in name of bye-law reform), up
for comment on MCD website since 01 August, and (2)
LAP is a DMP-2021 proposal (presumably botchy attempt
to iron out conflict between proposed MCD Act reform
and Delhi Development Act) and at least MPISG has
commented extensively on it in response to the
statutory DMP-2021 Public Notice, not yet disposed
off.
UFI pamphlet that could be picked up outside IIC
Conference Room-I said "New paradigms are needed to
understand the complexity and fragility of the
metropolis, and to envision positive futures for the
Indian City" and "the Indian city has been lurching
towards a systemic crisis rooted essentially in a
failure of planning and implementation". Curiously,
panellists were selected from those responsible for
the lurching, crisis and root failure, those occupying
problem-solving space and misusing it for
problem-sustaining ends.
Prof Narayani Gupta, *Consultant to INTACH*, opined
that DMP-2021 chapter on heritage is poorly written
and called for citizens-involvement. INTACH is duly
represented on DMP-2021 sub-group that wrote the
chapter and since 1998 also duly vested with
implementation responsibilities for DMP heritage
proposals. (MPISG has sought deletion of this chapter
because it is largely copied from DMP-2001 to sweep
implementation failures under the carpet and additions
are realtor-friendly and unmindful of objections of
citizens via statutory and judicial processes).
Shri MC Mehta, *Public Interest Attorney*, opined on
citizens-participation in typical vein of PIA (and
what Mr Jagmohan, referring to society at large, later
called blind-men-with-lanterns) in context of his PIL
against ridge encroachments and non-conforming
industries, which will go down in history as paradox
that confused development law for penal code in
curious pursuit of saving the city from citizens and
missed sterling opportunity to demonstrate
non-adversarial problem-solving potential of PIL to
spawn the exact opposite. (DMP-2021 industries
chapter, especially, is largely the outcome of Mehta?s
PIL and full of techno-legal infirmities).
Prof Ashesh Maitra, *Environment Planner and Former
Director SPA*, made a power-point presentation to
lament DMP-2021 inadequacy in terms of EP and to
declare LAP an EP imperative. Maitra is not EP by
specialised qualification and became Former Director
after being indicted in MoHRD inquiry in 2003. SPA is
named in DMP-2021 as adviser, with Maitra leading a
team of three. During Public Notice period, Maitra
wrote in the press against DMP-2021 and formed a group
in ITPI for joint-response. (MPISG has sought deletion
of ridge and riverbed sections and an Annexure from
DMP-2021 chapter on environment for inadequate
reference to environmental law preventing development
schemes and for unjustified remarks in support of
evictions).
Shri Jagmohan, self-styled planner, opined on
good-governance (with readings from his latest book),
even as it was under him as *concerned* minister that
a wholly unlawful DMP revision took-off and has
culminated in an indefensible DMP-2021 to become
historic case of mis-governance. At UFI-IIC he went
beyond harping on His-Plans for Delhi (unrelated to
its statutory Plans) to declare it open to citizens to
make their own plans.
Two Professors contributed to the discussion. Prof AGK
Menon, Director TVB School of Habitat Studies, opined
that the 20-year-Master-Planning process is flawed.
Menon functioned as chairperson of DMP-2021 sub-group
on conservation and renewal and TVB SHS, a
builder-trust college, functions from illegal
builder-farmhouse in DMP green belt. TVB SHS was
justified by a report (authored by Menon & others) on
need to restructure professional education and
practice to meet habitat needs, but has yet to
articulate an alternative after two decades and its
faculty has been openly saying that regularisation of
its illegal site was a key purpose of Menon?s
participation in DMP-2021.
Prof Kavas Kapadia, HoD of Urban Planning as well as
Regional Planning Departments in SPA (the only HoD
unaffected by the recent head-rotation there)
criticised DMP-2021 vaguely and master planning with
intemperate and inaccurate surmises about extant
reality to call for LAP and citizens-participation.
Kapadia was in the group of faculty members diverted
to an undergraduate Physical Planning Department
created in SPA in mid 90s in anticipation of demand,
pursuant to the 74th Constitutional Amendment, for
that sort of planning expertise (to date undefined in
SPA, but in line with LAP ideas).
Young persons who participated in the discussion,
however, were not from SPA Physical Planning
Department (justified in terms of 74th, like LAP) or
TVB SHS (justified in name of responsive education /
practice, like citizens-participation), but employees
of an enterprise called Hazard Centre (and at times
Sajha Munch, platform of NGOs), active in
anti-planning propaganda since start of DMP revision
(with funding, it is learned, from Ford Foundation,
Action-Aid, etc). There were also some foreign
students and perhaps their NRI faculty who opined that
Master Planning is bogged down by socialist
perspective and hence failing to harness economic
opportunities. (These represent, respectively,
citizen-participation and private-partnership lobbies
advocating *liberalisation* of planning frameworks, as
in so-called LAP).
Mr AK Jain, DDA Commissioner planning, called upon by
the chairperson to respond on three issues, viz, basis
of population projection of 230m, relation between
DMP-2021 and NCR Plan, and integration of villages in
urban development, stated names of eminent
demographers in the sub-group for projections, fact of
DDA and NCRPB being represented on both plans for
coordination, and the idea of LAP to take care of
villages, etc.
Dr KC Sivaramakrishnan, who was personally involved
with drafting what became the 73rd and 74th
constitutional amendments, was chairing the discussion
and his last remark was that if even half of what has
been said is true, the master plan process needs to be
stopped.
----
In the second half, by when Shri Jagmohan and Shri MC
Mehta and also MCD Commissioner Mr Rakesh Mehta had
left, Mrs Aruna Bhowmick (having already raised in the
first half, in context of long and continuing efforts
against commercial misuse in residential areas, the
question about future of citizens-participation after
law is *liberalised*) expressed reservations about the
idea of planning by citizens rather than
professionals. In view of that and of remarks about
villages and of heritage and environment *expertise*
in the room, I reacted to remarks of my professors in
my capacity as consultant to historic villages in
Mehrauli-Mahipalpur (ridge and ridge appurtenant CGWA
notified) area demanding, by statutory and judicial
processes, since 2001 enforcement of mandatory DMP
provisions for integration. I referred to the
Sultangarhi scheme, floated with INTACH support and
illegally started in 2002, that the court ordered
stopped and inquired into and over 1700 families
objected to (on grounds of it jeopardizing DMP scheme
for integration) in response to Public Notice,
regardless of which the scheme was *approved* without
court-ordered inquiry and resumed in pendency of fresh
PIL against it and identical illegalities and for a
DMP-based scheme for integration. Counter-affidavits
in this MPISG PIL do not mention any LAP. I pointed
out that TVB SHS as well as plot allotted to SPA
occupied land acquired from these villages and SPA
students have been studying them, in 2003 also for MCD
(which has claimed no role in the area and hence in
the PIL), and AGK Menon has recommended the
Sultangarhi scheme. I referred also to riverbed
constructions by DMRC and lately secured against its
tender (since someone had mentioned in context of
Pushta evictions not these, coming up right across and
simultaneously, but Akshardham built already and
elsewhere). I reminded my professors that DMP was tied
to 50 years of land acquisition in its name and I
asked them what kind of LAP and community
participation did they have in mind and why had they
had occupied places on DMP-2021 revision if they had
no confidence in master planning.
Having already recalled to Dr Sivaramakrishnan, over
tea in context of what went up on MCD website on 01
August, the AMDA conference of 2003 (at which, with
him in the chair, USAID FIRE project coordinator
Chetan Vaidya had mentioned a nearly-ready model
municipal act they had made and I had reacted sharply
to ask if he had not paid attention to the day-long
discussion that reached agreement to seriously rethink
modalities of applying the 74th to, especially, the
metropolitan context), I also asked about the kind of
decentralisation being imagined via fuzzy LAP that
required legislative amendment sponsored by USAID in
disregard of reservations of professionals about the
underlying assumptions.
Of course, I got no answers from my professors
(though, of course, accountability had been repeatedly
mentioned). Dr Sivaramakrishnan did say in his closing
remarks that perhaps we are all unclear about
community participation but, as stated, his last
remark was that the master planning process needs to
be stopped.
No one said anything about built and natural heritage
violating illegal schemes on ridge/riverbed (possible
only by fuzzy LAP) and no one said anything about
USAID-sponsored legislative amendments to allow fuzzy
LAP.
----
Nearly all MPISG convenor responses to various
DMP-2021 chapters begin with broad-stroking the
overall situation of adequate statutory solution,
implementation failure, profiteering on land and
resources spared by that, additional profiteering by
NGO-ising the problem, and the deadly alliance of
interests in cover-up (government) and in diversion of
problem-solving resources (private) and in
problem-sustaining interventions (NGO),
synergistically demanding in name of reform,
world-class visions and beggarly rights *regularising*
of all this by abandoning statutory solutions and
frameworks that guarantee equity and efficiency and,
ultimately, the legislating of problems,
inefficiencies and inequities.
At the UFI-IIC seminar I saw the alliance at work, yet
again.
----
View, just for a moment, the situation without
ideological slant and merely from Rule-of-Law
imperative. Read, without a fret about Delhi or
planning and only as case study, the Foreword in what
is up on MCD website. Count, just count, the number of
institutions on which we rely for techno-legal
competence that have endorsed a USAID-sponsored
legislative amendment on issues they are mandated, and
maintained at public cost, to mind.
The UFI pamphlet says, "The future of nations depends
overwhelmingly on how they shape their cities, their
urban futures". With institutions overwhelmingly
co-opted in anomie and discourse overwhelmingly
demanding more anomie, our future-shaping seems
overwhelmingly up for grabs.
----
The USAID-sponsored legislative amendments are up for
public comment for two months, by unspecified process,
but by invitation nevertheless. cheers.
__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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