Corporator, we should meet often and work together for our ward

Dear Corporator, 

you might not remember me but I remember seeing you in a marriage function in the neighborhood last year. I have not seen you ever since. I appreciate the fact that you have attended all the marriages, openings of shops and other social functions in the neighbourhood. Five years back, when you came to my building to ask for our votes, you promised that we will be in touch. I never realised that ‘being in touch’ means you will be attending all the social events in the area, or occasionally we will see your face on the posters and hoardings wishing us for various festivals.

I thought we will have a dialogue about the developmental issues in our municipal ward. But we never got a chance to do that. Now, it is again time for the municipal elections and I am likely to see you again. I hope, you are not relying on an assumption that I will be voting for a particular party based on national or state politics. This time, I have decided to vote for a local candidate who works locally and not based on the party lines. Because the state level or national level politicians are not going to hear my pleas about the garbage collection or footpaths in my ward.

I guess you have put some benches here and there with your name on it. I am not sure if you have done anything else apart from putting these benches. Isn’t it too ad hoc! I don’t even know how much budget you had for the development works. How did you spend it? How did you decide the priorities? When you get elected for five years, shouldn’t you, along with other corporators, decide a roadmap for spending the budget in a planned manner?

Let me make a quick list of the problems in the ward. The door-to-door garbage collection is working alright, but the sweeping of streets and the garbage collections from the streets is not at all efficient. The street garbage is openly burnt which is a health hazard. There are many unsafe spots on the roads in our ward. It is dangerous for anyone to cross the roads – especially so for senior citizens. There are no footpaths to walk on, or safe pedestrian crossings. Every time we raise this issue, we are told that we don’t make footpaths because they will be encroached! Isn’t it absurd! Some areas in the ward are suffering from unhygienic conditions and irregular water supply. Some of the street lights do not work. Are there any plans for more planting trees in our ward? How do we tackle these issues? There are many more in my list.

I will probably not receive any answers to these questions, but that doesn’t mean that I will stop asking. You probably don’t like the ‘concerned citizen’ types like me. Let’s put the personal likes and dislikes aside to try and make a deliberative democracy work at the local level. Shouldn’t we have monthly meetings at the neighborhood level and a large one annually at the area level to discuss your budget and the priorities? Please involve us, discuss things with us, make us participate in your plans for the ward.

Thanks for patience.

Sincerely,
a concerned citizen from your ward – our ward (though you know me as a voter).

(2nd November, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=73613&boxid=2522&ed_date=2015-11-02&ed_code=1310009&ed_page=5

Welfare of sanitary workers is the first step towards 'Clean India'!

Welfare of sanitary workers is the first step towards 'Clean India'. (સફાઈ કર્મચારીઓના કલ્યાણ વગર 'સ્વચ્છ ભારત' શક્ય નથી.)

Is it only me, or did everyone miss the great spectacle on October 2 of netas, babus, celebrities and wanna-be-celebrities posing with brooms in their hands? In 2014, this time of the year, the media was buzzing with photos and videos of celebrity cleaning acts. Some naïve people like me thought the dirty days are over. Indian cities will be clean. But we live in times where the photo-ops are more important than the cause.

There are two severe bottlenecks in the governing system of garbage in our cities. One, the workers, who collect garbage and clean our streets, are not much cared for. And the organisations who hire these workers – the municipalities – have their own problems of financial health and political autonomy. Who is looking into these aspects of ‘clean India’?

Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has started a remarkable pilot project of segregating garbage at the household level into dry and food waste. Households, which segregate the waste, will get 5 percent discount on property tax bills as incentives. This is a great way to make waste collection environment-friendly.But the garbage collection, in itself, is a major challenge in most cities in Gujarat. Apparently, Gujarat state has reported that they have 120 towns out of 195, which collect and transport 100 percent of the garbage produced. Only the citizens of those 120 towns can verify these claims. My experience of towns in Gujarat is quite the opposite. Streets remain filthy, and garbage is not collected for days, unless there is an official visit of some sort. Probably, I have only experienced those 75 towns, which do not claim to collect 100 percent garbage.

So, what kind of garbage collection systems do our municipal towns have? How frequently are the streets cleaned? How is the collected garbage disposed of? What percent of garbage is burnt openly? How are they paying for the cost of their staff and equipment? How much is paid to municipal sanitary staff and sweepers?

It is important to recognise the foot soldiers in the battle against filth in our cities. They are the sanitary workers and sweepers, who are the least-paid in the municipal hierarchy. The sanitary workers are paid lower than even the prevalent minimum wages in the state. And then, we expect these workers to perform their duties all seven days a week, whether during festivals or after violent clashes.

Oxford University professor Barbara Harriss-White has studied India’s waste economy in great detail. She says that the dignity and social condition of workers involved in waste management figures right at the bottom of the political agenda. Unlike many countries, India’s sanitation sector is highly caste-based. Many ‘dalit’ workers continue to clean our cities with little or no possibility of moving out of their occupations. Unless the ‘Clean India’ mission addresses such fundamental issues of welfare of workers who are actually cleaning India, our country is unlikely to be either be filth-free or be able to develop an egalitarian society.

Unless the financial health and administrative capacities of municipal towns are improved, they will not have any wherewithal to work toward the welfare of their sanitary staff. Clean India will need explicit policies of empowering the sanitary workers and municipalities.

(12th October, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=72604&boxid=2823&ed_date=2015-10-12&ed_code=1310009&ed_page=5

Will the next-gen kids ever experience the fun of cycling on city streets?

It has become rare to find films depicting its main protagonist as an everyday cyclist. In the 1940s-50s films, cyclists were depicted as working class heroes who would cycle to work. Here, the cycle would become a symbol of hard work and freedom in an industrialising society. The films of the 1960s and 1970s showed cycling as both a recreational and a group activity, where the actor on a cycle used to go for a ‘picnic’ with his or her friends, singing and dancing. This changed drastically in the 1980s and 1990s when cycling started disappearing from the movies. Since then, cycles have only appeared in nostalgic or atypical sequences, but not as a part of life or as an everyday object. Indian cities have witnessed consistent decline of cycling from everyday life, popular culture and urban landscapes.

Films not only represent collective social experiences but also construct aspirations and imaginations of lifestyles. These observations prompt a gloomy question – is cycling a part of everyday urban life anymore? Is there space in our cities for cycling without getting hurt? Will the children today ever know the fun of aimless wandering - cycling and running around in the streets? Any possibilities of cycling on our motorised traffic-packed streets make a lot of people nervous today. I am not sure how genuine this fear of getting out on a cycle, is but a lot of people complain of safety issues, lack of infrastructure and weather conditions. In spite of all odds, there are lakhs of people who cycle to their destinations in our cities. Many school children still cycle to school for some years. Both of these groups have their own vulnerabilities of being victims in road crashes.

On the other hand, many countries around the world have seen a revival of cycling – London is investing about 1 billion pounds in cycling, that is after spending 500 millions in a public bike sharing scheme known as ‘Boris Bikes’. About 200 European cities, 50 South American cities and about 25 Asian cities have definitive plans for cycling infrastructure and promotion, including the public bike sharing schemes. Weather conditions are not very pleasant in London and in many other European cities, yet the numbers of cyclists keep going up and they continue to build infrastructure. Why in the world are these cities investing in cycling in the 21st century? Because they are worried about climate change and they are fighting the relentless air pollution. Besides, cycling-friendly cities are people-friendly, beautiful cities - Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Dublin, Antwerp, Buenos Aires and many more. 

We have lakhs of cyclists in our cities but we still need to promote the culture of cycling and fight the social stigma of it being a ‘poor man’s vehicle’. A cycle is perfect for manageable distances and it is surely a healthier and environment-friendly mode of transport unlike any other mode. Cycles takes up less space while moving and parking. You can begin cycling just one day in a week. One message concluded it all for me – ‘cycle burns fat and saves money, car burns money and makes you fat!’ There are lots of local heroes who are putting in great efforts for reviving cycling in cities of Gujarat - more about them next week!

 (13th July, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

Stop blaming pedestrians for getting killed & instead sensitise motorists!

In the last week, I read two contradictory news items from Delhi and Ahmedabad. The Delhi Traffic Police took out a drive for unruly motorists to respect pedestrians by giving them enough space on zebra crossing. Motorists who stopped before zebra crossings were given chocolates and key chains and the ones who did not were fined. The reason for this drive was the data of road fatalities – almost 46% of the people who died in road crashes in Delhi were pedestrians. Pedestrians do not have proper footpaths to walk on or safe crossings to go across the roads. It is commendable that the Delhi traffic police took the road fatalities data seriously and ran a campaign of supporting pedestrian rights. 

The other news items came from our own Ahmedabad (DNA, 29/06/15) where pedestrians were termed as ‘rash pedestrians’ by the Traffic Police and blamed for their own death or injuries in road crashes. The pedestrians were asked to use zebra crossings and footpaths to be safe. Great! It would have been utmost helpful, if the Traffic Police took some efforts of showing the said zebra crossings and footpaths by walking for about 200 meters on any city road! Where are the footpaths and zebra crossings in Ahmedabad? Footpaths are mostly covered by parked vehicles, roadside businesses and other things. There is no space left on the zebra crossings for the pedestrians to cross. The zebra crossings start and end in blank walls, planters and hoardings. With such sorry state of pedestrian infrastructure in the city, they are still blamed as ‘causes’ of accidents. 

How can the pedestrians alone be the ‘causes’ of these accidents? When there is a collision can you only blame one side? I can only picture these ‘rash’ pedestrians as being zombies who are crashing themselves into the fast-moving vehicles and committing suicide. Calling pedestrians as the sole reason for accidents amounts to blaming the victims. Pedestrians are victims and not perpetrators of traffic crimes because they are at higher risks and are more vulnerable during road crashes. Victim blaming has its own logical fallacies and besides, it is convenient to blame someone – it distracts the attention from the real problems. If you blame the victims like the pedestrians then no one will ask questions about systemic problems like why there is no safe infrastructure for pedestrians in the city? OR why the Traffic Police is only concerned about protecting the vehicular traffic and why do they ignore the pedestrian or the non-motorised traffic? 

Traffic Police in Ahmedabad and in other cities are doing commendable job of managing the unmanageable – the never-ending traffic. They have scarce resources, inadequate staff, limited equipments and a thankless job. But an important part of their job is to reduce road fatalities and injuries. Blaming the victims does not help their job at all. Rather they should proactively work with different road users to make them safe on our hostile roads. 

About one-third of the total intra-city journeys in our cities are by walking. We all have to walk sometime or the other. Unsafe pedestrian environment affects everyone in the family. When pedestrians are using the roads, they are scavenging for safe spaces to walk on. They operate with a different logic compared to the motorised traffic. Beyond the usual contest over road space, it is essential that both the pedestrians and the motorists understand each other’s way of dealing with the road space and have mutual respect. Cities, which are built on mutual respect and shared spaces, are the most beautiful cities in the world. 

 (6th July, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)

Charles Correa and blessings of the sky – architecture for modern India

Architect Charles Correa

Kanchanjangha apartments, Mumbai

Gandhi Memorial Museum, Ahmedabad

Charles Correa, the legendary architect of modern India died last Tuesday. I remember sitting awestruck in Charles Correa's lecture at School of Architecture CEPT in 1998. Before Charles Correa started his lecture, someone was adjusting the microphone in front of him and the mic went too close. Correa immediately said, "Oh, here goes my front teeth." Everyone laughed and I told myself, 'I like this guy!' The lecture was famously called ‘blessings of the sky’ where Correa talked about his creative journey, building after building, to explain how he uses open-to-sky spaces such as courtyards and terraces in his designs. To him, open-to-sky spaces not only have sacred meaning but they are practical way of making climate-friendly buildings which people can associate with very easily. 

Charles Correa is a leading name among a generation of architects who began their career when India became independent. And the question in front of him was how to design buildings, which have Indian ethos and Western modernity at the same time. Correa drew references from the historical buildings and traditional vernacular architecture without being burdened by the past. He absorbed Western modernist ideas of abstraction compositions and devised them to cater to the Indian imagination. His architecture was loaded with playful arrangements of colorful planes, light and shadows. 

Ahmedabad knows Charles Correa as a designer of the Memorial Museum at the Sabarmati Ashram. He was 28 years old when he was commissioned this work. Charles Correa taught us how to design in a powerful historical context like the Gandhi Ashram without being loud or without pretending to be traditional. Correa’s architectural marvel in Gandhi Ashram reflect the beauty of being subtle and of being structured yet flexible. The museum becomes an obvious extension – not only to the other buildings in the Ashram – but also to Gandhi’s philosophy of austerity, simplicity and truthfulness. 

Charles Correa was a tireless advocate of better urban living. His ideas of urban architecture and housing radically deviated from attitudes of greedy floor space consumptions and dreary skylines that define our cities these days. He was a planner for the New Bombay’s early plans until 1975. Later he was asked by Government of India to lead the first ever Commission on Urbanisation between 1985-88. A lot of what is written in the commission's report(s) still makes sense – giving more financial autonomy to cities or to create unified transport authorities and so on. Of course, these recommendations were never taken seriously or acted upon by the government who commissioned it. It is heartening to see that the NIUA (National Institute of Urban Affairs) is determined to re-publish the reports. Today we can surely criticize the positions of the commission but there is no doubt that they had comprehensive road map for the future of cities and this was in many ways a stepping stone for the future urban policies in India.

Charles Correa’s architecture and his ideas on Indian cities became ‘textbooks’ for the architecture and urban planning students. I am sure Charles Correa’s work will come to rescue whenever a teacher looking for an example to show to her students, - ‘Ah, see what Correa did in this kind of situation’. 

 (22nd June, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)