Capital chaos

The present demolition drive in Delhi would prove to be a futile attempt to rectify the larger problem of poor urban plan implementation

Sandeep Yadav Delhi

A pro-active High Court came down heavily on flagrant encroachments and illegal structures in the capital compelling the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to train its bulldozers towards new, mighty targets. The hue and cry reminiscent of the demolitions of the Emergency surrounded residential colonies and commercial establishments. The noise-making class felt the heat, influencing a nervous Chief Minister of Delhi to contemplate an ordinance on the lines of the one recently issued in Mumbai. But better sense prevailed and the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the formation of a committee under the central urban development ministry to study all illegal constructions, except those on government land. Although the political class thus has bought valuable time, the roar of the bulldozers has not been silenced. "Had the ten specific measures recorded in the cabinet note during my tenure been followed, the situation would not have been so drastic," said Jagmohan, the former urban affair minister.

As the foreground is dominated by these happenings, some basic questions remain. How did such a massive unauthorised build up take place under the nose of the mandated government bodies? What about the master plans for the showcased capital city?

Many inconvenient bits of history are tucked under the belt of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which was set up in 1957 as a single planning and controlling body for all urban areas in the city. It is altogether different matter that it refuses to be embarrassed. DDA very conveniently puts all the blame of Delhi's woes to the increasing population of the city. But the fact is that all the master plans had been formed visualising this increase in population that has by and large kept pace with the expectations of the planners. Sometimes there has been a marginal increase of 8 to 10 per cent over expectations, but then, that should have been manageable.

The real reason is the deviation from the master plans. "The Delhi Master Plan was a landmark in every sense of the word, and is followed by several smaller cities. What fails the people is the non-implementation of it," rues Professor Kavas Kapadia, Head of the Department, Urban Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi.

What was planned was not carried out. And what was carried out was not planned. For example, there was no mention of the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games or Olympics in the 2021 Plan. Now the fund allocated for other projects and construction has been pumped into developing the infrastructure for these games. In the Master Plan (1981-2001), 32,000 hectares of land were allocated for housing schemes, whereas only 11,000 hectares were actually provided. The same holds for commercial centres and industrial areas, for which only one-third of the proposed land was provided. The result? Not enough shopping centres in the city and sprouting of shops in the residential areas. How could these shops flourish if there were enough provided for by the DDA?

SS Shafi, who was involved with the planning of the city since the Authority's establishment, is on record as saying that the DDA has "emerged as the largest real estate agency in the world, with over 50,000 acres of prime metropolitan land at its disposal". The DDA is administered by the central government and is answerable only to Parliament. Its monopoly, without any popular control, over land, and the lack of transparency in its functioning are its fatal flaws. Every Master Plan is based on the study and research by the DDA. However when it is asked to make those reports public, it refuses on the grounds of "not being in public interest".

The DDA can then wink at malpractices including regularisation of unauthorised housing colonies, grant of approval for building plan alterations and land use pattern (converting residential areas into industrial or commercial zones) to serve the interests of a "very strong mafia which encompasses the political leadership, landowners, affluent sections and the middle classes, and the real estate sharks," asserts Dunu Roy, of Hazard Centre, an NGO serving the interests of urban poor.

In Almitra Patel v. Union of India (February 2001), the Supreme Court deemed that "rewarding an encroacher on public land with a free alternative site is like rewarding a pickpocket". However, the court did not seem to take cognisance of the fact that the failure of government agencies to provide "authorised" land and housing has forced the people to encroach upon public lands, as a good majority of them earn less than Rs 2,000 a month. "The court has punished the errors of commission, but the errors of omission are not being prosecuted," insists Roy.

The price of land set aside for the economically weaker sections (EWS) has gone up by almost 10 times in the last decade, while commercial and industrial land prices have risen by only about three to four times, according to a survey conducted by Sajha Manch, a coalition of organisations working with the urban poor. The highhandedness of the government had once again come in glaring light when 30,000 families in Yamuna Pushta area were evicted and 40 hectares of land was released from their possession. The same government allotted 60 hectares of the land for the construction of the Akshardham temple. Now which Master Plan had the provision for this temple on the banks of Yamuna?

The shortage of adequately developed land at affordable prices has led to mushrooming of unplanned settlements throughout the city. The population of Delhi in 1954 was two million. By year 2000, the population had crossed 10 million, while the number of houses built by the DDA in this period was just one million. Even assuming five persons to a house, that still leaves half the city without a regular roof over its head.

Further, if this figure is divided into the High Income Group (HIG), Middle Income Group (MIG), Low Income Group ( LIG), and the Janta flats, DDA's bias against the poor becomes indisputable. From 1988 to 2004, DDA has built total of 290,600 houses. Of these 54,674 were HIG, 64,323 MIG, 77,962 LIG and 93,641 Janta flats.

The population of the low income and economically weaker section (EWS) in the city is much larger then the middle income group and the high income group. They need more houses. Even the ones meant for them are grabbed by the other income groups. As a result LIG is occupied by the middle-income group and Janta flats by the low income group. According to a survey conducted by the Hazard Centre, 80 per cent of the surveyed LIG was occupied by the people from the middle-income group. The EWS are pushed to the periphery.  What option do they have? Grab the government land and set up some unauthorised colony.   Increasing numbers of poor inhabitants continue to live in shantytowns without services. It is presently estimated that around 60 per cent of Delhi's population lives in sub-standard housing.

The story of Trans-Yamuna is all about the illegal colonies and their subsequent legalisation. In 1975 the High Court legalised 507 unauthorised colonies on a government petition. There were however two conditions to the authorisation. First, that there would be no further regulation of the unauthorised colonies; second, the government would not permit the growth of any new illegal settlements. Today there are more then 3,000 illegal colonies in the capital. Politicians need their constituencies, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The retreat of the influential population, the 162-acre Sainik Farms, is mostly illegal construction, where MCD guidelines are observed mostly in the breach. And, in spite of specific court instructions the MCD has remained a silent spectator. According to MCD there are 3.2 million buildings in the city and of these about 70 to 80 per
cent are categorised as major or minor illegal construction. In the present drive
the MCD has only targeted 18,299 buildings. Ridding Delhi of the infestation of
illegal constructions would leave it looking unrecognisable.

Administrators know how much to tell whom. When Supreme Court shut down 70,000 industrial units in the city few years back, reportedly it did not know the fact that the DDA failed to allocate land to all industrial units and that only land for 30,000 units was provided, rendering the others non-conforming. The lasting myth is that industrial units were shut down under the apex court's green banner. The fact remains that the court struck down on grounds of non-conforming. It, on its own, changed the charge against the affected units from being polluting to being non-conforming. What can the recent demolitions do about this?