Almost monetising the mayhem of urbanism, public art, aesthetics, and amenities seem to make a feeble attempt at voicing concern over its vacuous void in most unchecked developmental sprawls across India. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the mind-bogglingly insane jugaad sets a new iterative low, each time one encounters a mega luxury complex adjacent to the abyss of human sub-existence with an absurd degree of aplomb.
With barely functional roads and sporadic sidewalks soldiering some semblance of public works ingenuity, the urban chaos has some remarkable common characteristics that set a new norm for nihilistic incompetence. From the dangerous cobwebs of electrical wires at cross roads coiled precariously on a jumble of teetering poles, to overflowing scattered foul-smelling mountains of plastic garbage decorating the streets, cesspools of stagnant drains and puddles, to graffiti and endless penchant for installing illegal billboards, random temples, calm cud-chewing cattle that seem to don noise-cancelling headsets blocking the endless cacophony of intense honking pressure horns, to primitive toll-booths in the age of Paytm and Infrared sensors, barricading the poor cash collector seated on rickety chairs wrapped in WW II vintage armour of metal pipes, to bizarre signage that could distract a driver or deviate, the circus is beyond comprehension and cure.
In a land that boasts of reaching the moon, in conjunction with Indian-origin CEOs leading some of the smartest companies in the world, premiere educational institutions including BITS, IITs, IIMs and NIDs generating a significant number of degree holders, urban design is a non-existent notion in most government guided endeavors and their bureaucratic nomenclature of nodal centres that impacts millions, who suffer in silence. What is more concerning is the lack of accountability and acceptability of responsibility – a criterion that only surfaces ensuing a fatal disaster or collapse of infra – only to be upended by a lengthy inquiry process and a blame-game charade of finger-pointing. Not only does unchecked urbanism threaten life and limb from potholes, electric wire trips, falling bridges, collapsing roofs and lack of sidewalks, it also robs civil societies of the basic civic amenities and quality of life that are taken for granted in most developing and developed parts of the world.
While there is an empathetic acceptance and faith in incremental improvements in transport connectivity, fuel efficient vehicles, enforced regulations and a regime of fining speeders, trespassers, rule breakers, stray-dog impounders, violators of signage, encroachers on public spaces and noise polluters, to name a few, there is a strong need to assess the metrics of this losing battle in the newest of developments succumbing to the scourge of mediocrity to the point of endangering human life and trampling on tax-payer induced right to basic amenities.
The haemorrhage and flaunting of every standard have left accountability dry in the veins of a system, in need of a complete purge and hardwiring – vital to the future of India. One only has to look to the example being set by China at a macro level and Dubai at a micro, in comparison. These nations are planning based on current and projected needs, looking a century ahead in terms of creating a sustainable ecosystem with a built-in elasticity to adopt and adapt to a multi-dimensional growth trajectory. In neither country is there an excessive sycophancy of glad-standing garlands, illegal billboards and ribbon-cutting ceremonies for every little poorly constructed lane and unstable bridge, which punctuate political rhetoric to pathetic levels of misplaced publicity. With every meddler and Shylock eyeing their pound of flesh impeding progressive manifestation, there are important lessons for India in collective resolve and the wisdom of co-creating a common agenda, beyond political opportunism.
Each city is a destination unlike any other. Each project is an opportunity of a lifetime, and every project, an economic engine for holistic growth
Though Le Corbusier created two well-planned exemplars in Chandigarh and Gandhinagar to trigger planned urbanism in post-independent India, his influence has since crumbled at the footsteps of the very perimeter of his brutalist organised grid of concrete and brick.
The solution to this chaos created in cities across India over centuries, with infinite challenges, perhaps lies in entirely new development and reimagining connectivity and mobility. In this era of remote and hybrid work, envisioning a wave of satellite cities and hubs can offer a lifestyle of the future – clean, smart, designed to suit the local visual vernacular, sustainable and laced with amenities, museums, theatre, cultural and spiritual growth and rejuvenation, where organic osmosis is controlled and filtered in sync with engineered capacity. This new breed of mini-cities could offer a counterpoint to the unmanageable urban collapse that faces tired urban jungles, crumbling under the burden of unchecked population, vehicular gridlock, pollution, garbage and skyrocketing prices.
Even as Jeff Bezos pronounces the ultimate moon-shot of locating Giga Data Centres on the Moon within the coming decade, the satellite cities of emergent India are an earth-shot that India must embrace for a transformative future that fundamentally shifts and lifts our low-bar expectations from neo-urbanism. These cities (and hamlets for rural India) can offer green cover, autonomous utilities, well-engineered sewers, sustainable power and recycling capacity aimed at carbon reduction and a unique public-private-partnership that is both uniquely adapted by design to its geographical ecosystem and built for scalable modularity. Designing dwellings as symbiotic sanctuaries of life itself, must be embedded in its core values. These are wider generative cities akin to the high-end housing campuses with gardens, club-houses and golf-courses that are sprouting in many Tier I and II cities across the nation, where demand far outstrips inventory. Each city is a destination unlike any other. Each project is an opportunity of a lifetime, and every project, an economic engine for holistic growth.
A serious undertaking of this magnitude would call for a progressive policy on permits with incentivised slabs of development, investment mechanisms and collaborative execution apparatus to match world-class quality living experience, where there is no room for mediocrity and bureaucratic hurdles. It is only in the utopic dare, that India can truly emerge as a haven for an inspired amalgam of rural development, which resonates with 67 per cent of its population, entwined with the fabric of neo-urbanism.