Economists and urban
planners who met in Mumbai recently at a conference to discuss the
state of the most populous cities in the world described Delhi's
problems as "rapid population growth and large unplanned urbanization".
They deplored its stretched-out infrastructure, unaffordable housing
and growing slums, traffic congestion and "significant ecological
degradation". By 2020, they predicted, the city's population would
touch 23.7 million, neck-and-neck with Mumbai, Mexico City, New York
and Kolkata and Shanghai will be trailing behind. By 2025 the
population is expected to touch 30 million. But Delhi's planners and
policy-makers have only one target in mind: a fast and furious varnish
job before hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010. It's called the
three-year itch.
The city adds about 1,000 cars to its roads a day and a quarter of a
million new migrants a year. But dry statistics cannot give the
complete picture. Stepping out on the capital's streets is a hazard at
any time of day; my short daily drive from home to office - less than
two kilometres as the crow flies - sometimes seems like a close shave
with death. I cross four sets of traffic lights and pass under one
flyover. On bad days this brief journey can take upwards of 30 minutes.
At peak traffic hours it can be longer.
Take one example of "unplanned urbanisation": at two intersections the
roads have been dangerously hived off with low concrete dividers to
create new corridors for high-speed buses. A string of flimsy-looking
plastic guards, meant to indicate the divisions, are scarcely visible
in the stream of traffic. Some have been knocked down. It was only when
a couple of two-wheeler drivers died at the spot recently that planners
got round to painting the concrete and station traffic marshals with
batons to assist the traffic flow. Not that it has helped much. As
there are almost no signs to indicate turn-offs, the snarls are
horrendous and I am often in a sweat. One wrong turn and I will end up
a few kilometres outside my route.
Elsewhere entire pavements have been ripped out to widen streets or lay
pipes but the work seems interminable. At some corners, roots of old
trees pulled out in the summer remain uncleared months later, a case of
"ecological degradation" twice over. Pushed off the sidewalks,
pedestrians edge their way perilously through the bumper-to-bumper
crawl of vehicles. The Metro, as it spreads its tentacles through the
city, has for the moment added to congestion on the streets and to
litigation in court. Residents in several parts of the city have filed
petitions, protesting that elevated train corridors will add to the
noise pollution and wreck their quality of life. Metro officials argue
that underground corridors will add Rs 750 crore in costs and cause
delays in meeting the deadline for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. To
which the High Court pointedly asked whether the Metro was meant for
the Games or the people of Delhi?
A letter writer in the paper the other day put the question in another
way. How foresighted was the investment in the city's development
programmes? Could the outlay in planning flyovers, transport networks
and other infrastructure meet the demand in 2020 or was it only a
three-year itch? Despite the privatisation of the electricity boards
the city reels from power shortage, despite judicial activism illegal
construction and encroachments continue, and despite crores spent on
attempts to clean the Yamuna, the river remains a cesspool of
industrial and human waste.
The paradox is that Delhi is one of the richest parts of the country,
with high per capita incomes and a greater visible display of wealth
than the rest of urban India. It can afford to plan and execute with
ambition for the next 25 years. Rewind to the Asian Games of 1982, when
the first flush of building public amenities on a large scale took
place. Yet how outdated and inadequate those flyovers and housing
projects seem today!
How will Delhi cope with another 10-15 million people once its
three-year itch is over?
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