| Attaching the Introduction to DUAC seminar, in case
| anyone wants of 'discussin' that ought to have any
| sane person ROTFWL!
===========================================
DUAC Seminar on the Master Plan
31st March 2007-03-30
Romi Khosla
Well it is a great pleasure to be invited here to this condolence
meeting to pay respects to the great role that planners once played in
deciding the fate of Delhi. Let us be under no illusions. Neither the
DUAC nor any of us here is of the slightest relevance to the future of
Delhi. I think with this most recent Master Plan, we can finally admit
to ourselves that three is no use pretending that the Government, of for
that matter anyone else is interested in our views. We who pride
ourselves on our more than average informed skills of city planning.
There is no one to blame.
It’s simply that historical circumstances have changed and from now on
architect planners like us will not be relevant to the future vision of
the city.
Four radical changes have, together, changed the historical
circumstances that have made us redundant as planners:
1.There has been a dramatic shift in the nature and social
responsibilities of Government as well as the relationships of that
Government, or to use the more classic word – The State and private
money sources.
2.The sources of the money being used to finance the state as a new
avatar of social benevolence are now coming from sources that cannot be
refused. Not only are those seen fund offers delicious, refusing them
would be disastrous.
3.The bureaucracy has lost those social moorings that once Nehru had so
influenced in forming and has not turned into a rather enthusiastic club
of monsters been on ensuing that only its club members run every state
institution so that its newly expanded loyalty to what Professor Prabhat
Patnaik aptly terms the ‘neo-liberal state’ is complete and unquestioned.
4.There has been a complete marginalization of the professional
planner’s role in the visioning of a city and this role has been usurped
by the growing corporate friendly state and its ambitious representative
and servants.
Very briefly, I would like to explain this a little more about these
changes in historical circumstances. We are at the beginning of a new
age, an age in which a very unfamiliar State is becoming very cosey with
big businesses, big bucks donor and international loan agencies. This is
an unfamiliar state because we have hitherto been accustomed to a rather
independent minded state that had a social conscience and some semblance
of equality in its behavior towards its citizens especially the poor.
Of course this site does not flaunt its news callous role. On the
contrary, it assures the poor that city improvements will benefit the
poor and there will be bhagidari, but its real quest is for a new
legitimacy, the legitimacy of becoming an international city
administration fit enough to host international events. The real issues
that concern this unfamiliar state is its state of readiness for the
international event through which it will gain a legitimacy to install
all sorts of equipments and paraphernalia that international cities have
by the way of infrastructure.
Now in this new avatar, I can assure you, that it is in vain that we
will expect any mercy for the poor of this city from this state. For the
poor live in the middle kingdoms of this city, the cracks and marginal
spaces, the spaces that get left over after our architecture is built,
and it is from these areas where they now earn a marginal livelihood
that they will get dispersed as the Games approach. No liberal state
will soil its international reputation by exposing its poor to the eyes
of the world.
One of the necessary characteristics of this new state is to use
perceived threat to security and law and order as a means of extending
its intervention in citizen lives not only through arbitrary security
barriers but through identity cards, demolitions, ridiculous land use
policies that justify evictions and the increasing violence of the state
against its own citizens. This new state also cannot legitimize its new
role without exercising some form of violence against the poor because
it no longer has lost its social moorings based on its independent status.
The Master Plan is perhaps the strongest documentary evidence that the
state has lost its social moorings because it is a ridiculous document.
How can your prepare a master plan of a city when you don’t have a
cadastral mapping of the city and have to rely on an Eicher map to view
the fullness of the extent of the city’s habitation?
I for one am under no illusion that this city is ever going to become
some sort of peaceful paradise with wonderful international amenities. I
am absolutely certain that this new state is leading us to a greater and
greater polerisation and that the poor and the deprive are going to
resist and that the perceived threat from these uprisings will barricade
the gated communities with higher walls and more security agencies and
more colony barrier gates. Its i s not use looking towards the state for
remedial actions now. It has already become the greatest enemy of what
we at once time called a Master Plan. It is tool ate to appeal to it
because it is the agent of a new liberalization that is anti poor in a
city where more than half the city’s population is poor. And it is
against these poor that the barricades are being erected, the colony
gates manned by private security agencies, closed early at night. It is
these poor who are the real threat to the new state’s vision of itself
as a legitimate institutional City State.
But of course this vision is an absurd vision. We all know it. How can a
compromised corrupted municipal bureaucracy start numbering streets for
mixed land use? How can a city state be ruled by three agencies in
perpetual conflict with each other? How can there be a Master Plan for a
city that has no functioning wards or boroughs that represent local
citizens? How can you have a system of questionable participation with
self-appointed housing association representative who have no legal
status? Do we really think that this city state will be ruled by
Bhagidari? Not a bit of it.
If we want to make this city a peaceful place then we will have to start
in the beginning. We have to remove the fingers of the state apparatus
that have got into the planning processes and we have to restore to the
planners the legitimacy of planing. City planning is a bit like rocket
science. It is best left to those who spend their lives dreaming about
cities as rocket scientists spend their time dreaming about the moon.
| anyone wants of 'discussin' that ought to have any
| sane person ROTFWL!
===========================================
DUAC Seminar on the Master Plan
31st March 2007-03-30
Romi Khosla
Well it is a great pleasure to be invited here to this condolence
meeting to pay respects to the great role that planners once played in
deciding the fate of Delhi. Let us be under no illusions. Neither the
DUAC nor any of us here is of the slightest relevance to the future of
Delhi. I think with this most recent Master Plan, we can finally admit
to ourselves that three is no use pretending that the Government, of for
that matter anyone else is interested in our views. We who pride
ourselves on our more than average informed skills of city planning.
There is no one to blame.
It’s simply that historical circumstances have changed and from now on
architect planners like us will not be relevant to the future vision of
the city.
Four radical changes have, together, changed the historical
circumstances that have made us redundant as planners:
1.There has been a dramatic shift in the nature and social
responsibilities of Government as well as the relationships of that
Government, or to use the more classic word – The State and private
money sources.
2.The sources of the money being used to finance the state as a new
avatar of social benevolence are now coming from sources that cannot be
refused. Not only are those seen fund offers delicious, refusing them
would be disastrous.
3.The bureaucracy has lost those social moorings that once Nehru had so
influenced in forming and has not turned into a rather enthusiastic club
of monsters been on ensuing that only its club members run every state
institution so that its newly expanded loyalty to what Professor Prabhat
Patnaik aptly terms the ‘neo-liberal state’ is complete and unquestioned.
4.There has been a complete marginalization of the professional
planner’s role in the visioning of a city and this role has been usurped
by the growing corporate friendly state and its ambitious representative
and servants.
Very briefly, I would like to explain this a little more about these
changes in historical circumstances. We are at the beginning of a new
age, an age in which a very unfamiliar State is becoming very cosey with
big businesses, big bucks donor and international loan agencies. This is
an unfamiliar state because we have hitherto been accustomed to a rather
independent minded state that had a social conscience and some semblance
of equality in its behavior towards its citizens especially the poor.
Of course this site does not flaunt its news callous role. On the
contrary, it assures the poor that city improvements will benefit the
poor and there will be bhagidari, but its real quest is for a new
legitimacy, the legitimacy of becoming an international city
administration fit enough to host international events. The real issues
that concern this unfamiliar state is its state of readiness for the
international event through which it will gain a legitimacy to install
all sorts of equipments and paraphernalia that international cities have
by the way of infrastructure.
Now in this new avatar, I can assure you, that it is in vain that we
will expect any mercy for the poor of this city from this state. For the
poor live in the middle kingdoms of this city, the cracks and marginal
spaces, the spaces that get left over after our architecture is built,
and it is from these areas where they now earn a marginal livelihood
that they will get dispersed as the Games approach. No liberal state
will soil its international reputation by exposing its poor to the eyes
of the world.
One of the necessary characteristics of this new state is to use
perceived threat to security and law and order as a means of extending
its intervention in citizen lives not only through arbitrary security
barriers but through identity cards, demolitions, ridiculous land use
policies that justify evictions and the increasing violence of the state
against its own citizens. This new state also cannot legitimize its new
role without exercising some form of violence against the poor because
it no longer has lost its social moorings based on its independent status.
The Master Plan is perhaps the strongest documentary evidence that the
state has lost its social moorings because it is a ridiculous document.
How can your prepare a master plan of a city when you don’t have a
cadastral mapping of the city and have to rely on an Eicher map to view
the fullness of the extent of the city’s habitation?
I for one am under no illusion that this city is ever going to become
some sort of peaceful paradise with wonderful international amenities. I
am absolutely certain that this new state is leading us to a greater and
greater polerisation and that the poor and the deprive are going to
resist and that the perceived threat from these uprisings will barricade
the gated communities with higher walls and more security agencies and
more colony barrier gates. Its i s not use looking towards the state for
remedial actions now. It has already become the greatest enemy of what
we at once time called a Master Plan. It is tool ate to appeal to it
because it is the agent of a new liberalization that is anti poor in a
city where more than half the city’s population is poor. And it is
against these poor that the barricades are being erected, the colony
gates manned by private security agencies, closed early at night. It is
these poor who are the real threat to the new state’s vision of itself
as a legitimate institutional City State.
But of course this vision is an absurd vision. We all know it. How can a
compromised corrupted municipal bureaucracy start numbering streets for
mixed land use? How can a city state be ruled by three agencies in
perpetual conflict with each other? How can there be a Master Plan for a
city that has no functioning wards or boroughs that represent local
citizens? How can you have a system of questionable participation with
self-appointed housing association representative who have no legal
status? Do we really think that this city state will be ruled by
Bhagidari? Not a bit of it.
If we want to make this city a peaceful place then we will have to start
in the beginning. We have to remove the fingers of the state apparatus
that have got into the planning processes and we have to restore to the
planners the legitimacy of planing. City planning is a bit like rocket
science. It is best left to those who spend their lives dreaming about
cities as rocket scientists spend their time dreaming about the moon.