Should an open ground in the heart of the city give way to concrete and cars? Yes, we are talking about NTR Stadium grounds opposite Indira Park. This 12-acre rectangular patch is a source of enjoyment, exercise, laughter and sportive spirit to thousands of youth who use it as a playground.
In addition, the multipurpose ground is a popular place for temporary exhibitions like handloom melas and myriad public gatherings.
On this open ground, the Telangana Government is proposing a ‘Telangana Kala Bhavan’ – a huge cultural complex with four auditoriums (with a combined seating capacity of Ravindra Bharathi, Shilpa Kala Vedika and Hari Hara Kala Bhavan) and parking for over 2,000 cars as social and secular public spaces, auditoria are crucial to a city’s life.
Hyderabad needs more of them since Ravindra Bharathi is already over stretched. So while there is no argument about the need, it is the location of the proposed Kala Bhavan that is totally inappropriate.
Here are some of the reasons why the cultural complex has to find a different location:
1. Open spaces are invaluable to a city. In fact, open grounds are often more important than landscaped parks because they are multi functional. Like the Parade Grounds in Secunderabad, there is extensive sports activity at NTR Stadium. Located in the heart of a dense residential area, it is a rare play ground for youth who are otherwise deprived of such facilities in their crucial growing years, being crammed into their multi-storey schools and colleges.
One has to see the number of cricket teams that populate this space on evenings and weekends, it is a joyful melee! Such spaces engender activities that make healthy and socially accommodating humans. In one stroke, this proposed auditorium will destroy that. One will see activity for about only 10-12 days a month as that is the general use of auditoria. And on rest of the days there will be a deathly silence trapped in hollow and humongous concrete instead of the daily frolic.
2. The proposed location is just three kilometres from Ravindra Bharathi, so it will not serve any new population of Hyderabad, especially areas which do not have such a facility. The implicit elitism in trying to locate all prestigious projects in and around Hussain Sagar has to give way to other localities for equitable growth of the city.
3. An auditorium complex of this size will generate a huge volume of traffic. Due to their very nature, they spew cars and people in concentrated spurts after an event or show. This will add enormous pressure on already stressed hubs like Tank Bund, RTC cross roads, Liberty Junction, R.P.Road etc.
Public transport access is also poor with only RTC buses (that too not the prime routes) catering to the area. Such huge buildings should ideally be located on one of the metro rail routes, thereby best optimising its use. In fact, in forward looking urban planning around the world, buildings such as this provide minimal car parking and are instead well connected by public transport. It is a known fact that liberal provision of parking tempts people to take out their car!
4. There is also the fact of majesty of location. Lower Tank Bund, does not have the aura for a city/state level icon that the Telangana Kala Bhavan is projected to be. Such structures, if located in a prominent place of the city where more people can see them lead to greater sense of civic pride amongst its citizens. This is a huge positive in the city’s morale. Being a downstream location in a natural depression; one has to consider the ecological effects of locating such large structures, particularly from groundwater and disaster points of view. Indira Park is also now nicely integrated, both functionally and visually, with the NTR Open Grounds.
Together they form a civic zone -a ‘Health Plaza’ of sorts - if one goes by the activities that happen there. With this humongous structure hovering over the Park and all the security paraphernalia which will inevitably come into play, the walkers in Indira Park will sense claustrophobia setting in – particularly in the mornings, when there is peak usage, the looming shadow of the mega structure will block the eastern sun which enlivens the space now.
5. The street dividing Indira Park and NTR grounds has over the years developed into a ‘Protest Galli’ of sorts for ‘dharnas’ and sit-ins. Such spaces as these are essential to a democratic polity. Every major democratic city in the world has them like Speakers’ Corner in London or Zucotti Park in New York. With the ‘prestigious’ auditorium in place, this essential activity will be evicted and the place sanitized.
So, what is the appropriate location for the Telangana Kala Bhavan? For some pointers, please see the graphic alongside. It maps the major open grounds and public cultural spaces of our city. There are some surprises. The south east of the city, especially the highly dense Dilsukhnagar area does not have any public auditoriums nor does Kukatpally, another populated area in the diagonally opposite direction. Please note that we are not counting the function halls and hotels which double up as cultural spaces nor the institutional auditoriums.
Another eye opener is that the posh Banjara and Jubilee Hills do not have a single public open ground for children to play! However, they are liberally sprinkled with landscaped gardens, an indication of the skewed socio cultural make up of our city.
The Telangana Kala Bhavan can be located in the Victoria Memorial precincts in Kothapet. The erstwhile palace which is now an orphanage is both functionally and visually apt for such a use. By building a nice and cosy modern building for the orphanage, the heritage building can be transformed into a Deccan Museum of Culture dovetailed with the Telangana Kala Bhavan.
There is the Metro Line one passing adjacent and also a station called Victoria Memorial. Even from as far as Madhapur, one will be able to reach it in 45 mins by the Metro, less than the time it will take by car to reach Indira Park. Further this will serve the Old City and the entire belt up to Uppal and Kanchanbagh.
More location options can also be explored in Kukatpally and areas along the other Metro corridors. While the political class is best placed to articulate the needs of society, it should leave it to the professionals to plug them into a planned framework in the larger and long term interests of the city.
(The writing is an practising architect and can be reached - shankar@shankarch.com)
