What is that thing which is harming Brand India? Three decades ago, after economic reforms, India had become a favorite country in the eyes of developed countries, but why has the situation changed now? Investors are withdrawing their money and the number of foreign tourists coming to India has not yet reached the level of 2019. I was trying to understand what was the reason for this, but the recent fire in an illegal hotel in Delhi gave me the answer. There are many things in India which harm the image of the country, but the three biggest problems are garbage, air pollution and insecurity of women in public places. At present these three together create another big problem and that is the cities of India. Add to this those dangers which pose a risk to people’s lives. This is a story of poor governance and disorganization in cities. Suppose you come to Delhi from a remote village or small town. The President, Prime Minister, Chief Justice, big journalists and social workers live here, who are considered the voice of conscience of the society. But in this very city, while sleeping at night, you worry that if your building catches fire, will you survive? The biggest thing is that people have accepted all this as normal. But personal safety is most important, especially for those who have no other place to live other than cities. In 2019, a fire broke out in a six-storey hotel in Karol Bagh and 17 people died. In the same year, 45 people, including nine children, were killed in a fire in the grain market. These are just major accidents. In 2022, 27 people died of suffocation in a fire that broke out in a four-storey commercial building in Mundka. Two years later, a fire broke out in a pediatric clinic in East Delhi’s Vivek Vihar, killing eight newborn babies. Most of these accidents took place in what are called unauthorized, illegal or unregulated areas. The old villages of Delhi have been declared Lal Dora areas, where normal urban rules do not apply. The Malviya Nagar fire accident and the Saket building incident both happened in such areas. Malviya Nagar’s hotel was in Hauz Rani and Saket’s building was in Syed-ul-Ajaib area of Mehrauli. If you want to run a hotel, you have to get a license, but in an urban village like the Lal Dora area, you can build almost anything. After all it is a village! There are many rules for construction in a regular colony of Delhi – like Malviya Nagar or Saket. Like how tall can you build a building, but in Lal Dora areas you can build tall buildings on small land. Even such buildings can be built whose strength is very weak and which collapse immediately in an earthquake of 6 Richter intensity. The biggest problem of our urban administration is not just that these villages and illegal colonies have more voters than the regular areas. The real problem is that political parties are busy in keeping them happy instead of improving their standard of living. In almost every election in Delhi, all political parties promise to regularize illegal colonies, but no one wants to talk about large-scale redevelopment, slum rehabilitation or creating safe and modern housing. Because it is a long and difficult task and such work cannot be completed in one election term. The result is that our cities have been divided into two parts – on one side, people living in gated colonies and on the other side, those living in almost illegal conditions. These people have the power of vote, which is achieved through promises of free facilities or regularization of colonies. In this way the urban population is used for politics. Our politics has always maintained distance from planned urbanization. Whereas today about 35% of India’s population lives in cities. New cities should be such where the coming people get all the facilities for living and commuting. Only then will they gradually be able to progress economically and move up the value chain. But the model that has been used till now cannot move forward in this direction. (These are the author’s own views)
Source link
Shekhar Gupta’s Column: What is that? "Is it harming ‘Brand India’?
