For most political parties intent on urban electoral victories, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto, or what it calls the Vision Document, has now become a stale and hackneyed idea. Unable to prepare a comprehensive ideal for a city as complex and ungovernable as Delhi, the party released a list of 270 promises, which were vague points. There was also a wholly unoriginal statement saying the BJP, if elected to power, “will focus on many urgent matters and work towards making Delhi a smart world-class city.”
The idea of a world-class city has been around since the time of Sheila Dikshit. But the 15 years of Congress governance tried desperately to use the label in various half-baked ideas: an expanding sector of luxury homes with private builders, even as there was a shortfall in public housing; an official recognition of slums, but without any slum improvement; a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system adapted from Bogotá, but left incomplete; expensive public buses which then caught fire; CNG fuel that left the city the most polluted in the world; appalling standards of personal safety, and crimes against women. The final cherry on the cake was the Commonwealth Games that had the official stamp of world class, but with corruption and poor standards of construction, left Delhi beleaguered and officially recognised the world over as a Third World city.
How this is likely to change, if the BJP comes to power, remains to be seen, but the Kiran Bedi campaign has happily added Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s prefix ‘smart’ to the ‘world class’ tag, and cited a series of very obvious points from the manual of good governance. These include “100 per cent transparency, unimpeachable integrity, maximum measurability (aren’t they all the same?), constant dialogue with stakeholders, zero tolerance for corruption, and deriving maximum benefit in all key elements.” While all these phrases sound good, they could as easily apply to company policy or even marriage vows.
A general statement No attempt is made to seriously reflect on the city’s problems or offer tangible solutions. Today, Delhi is unofficially a slum. Measured against international and United Nations standards for health, planning, layout and public amenities, the city meets none of the norms of rudimentary survival in urban areas. Thirty five per cent of the city’s land and people are unaccounted for; unofficially, the figure is closer to 70 per cent. With high pollution levels, depleting underground reserves, toxic soil, lack of water and sanitation, depleting tree cover, personal insecurity, disappearing sidewalks and a complete lack of public life, you would think that the BJP would have its work cut out. The vision statement, however, merely cites generalities: unauthorised colonies will be authorised and government services installed, clean water will be provided and potable water made available to every resident, water bills will be reviewed and rationalised. Families Below Poverty Line will get subsidised electricity; the BRT corridor will be scrapped.
“ Delhi’s dual and disparate demands hanker for a place that is both a functioning city and a world-class city all at once ”
Is this the work of a six-year-old writing an essay titled “How I will improve my city”? There is no attempt to explain the logic of the sudden provision in a city of desperate shortages. Where will the utilities come from? How can adequate supply of water, electricity etc. be guaranteed to slums upgraded only in name, when actual supply is diminishing in regular colonies? That the city’s dire health situation requires serious assault on pollution gets little mention in any form of preventive health, limiting industrial growth or reducing the number of vehicles. Instead, the BJP promises ambulances be made available and every citizen buy compulsory health insurance.
Bleak vision In a nutshell, the vision is bleak and explained without irony: if more slums are being created, regularise them; when more vehicles enter the road system, widen the roads; when people fall sick, give them health insurance; if woman feel unsafe, increase policing and CCTV cameras. Where possible, simply accommodate the trend...
Delhi’s dual and disparate demands hanker for a place that is both a functioning city and a world-class city all at once. It is like asking a street urchin to be clean and also Harvard-educated. Which should he do first? So the city remains standing in the wings, waiting first to eradicate its slums, gain access to more electricity and water, to adequate sanitation and fuel, and improve its health to begin functioning as an ordinary Third World city. But at the same time its ambition soars and it seeks comparisons to Shanghai and New York. Delhi is a functioning slum for 70 per cent of its population, with isolated pockets of superficial cosmopolitanism — two extremes that effectively deny the other’s right to exist. It is an impossible reconciliation. Without a vision, the reality looks bleak.
More than any other city, the last two decades of Delhi have seen a marked decline in the quality of people’s lives. The divide between the rich and the poor, the unequal distribution of utilities, the inequities of housing, lack of public space, poor health and educational facilities all require fresh thinking. The current image of urban blight carries lessons few parties or politicians wish to learn or deal with in any seriousness. Motivated by a will to change, the real vision for the city requires genuine invention and design, set within limited means and limited land. However, without serious inputs on new forms of housing, limits to city expansion, curbs on private vehicles, new land development reforms, revised zoning and building by-laws, comprehensive ideas on energy and conservation, and plans for a more open, more public city, urban electoral promises will have no meaning.
(Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect and writer.)
