Decongesting Cities

The hardships bugging the residents of cities and towns across the country, as they have emerged so far, are being talked about in different circles of citizens who have to bear themselves the charge of creating the irksome urban situation. The hard times that the rural residents are currently experiencing are more prominently due to volatile monsoons year after year than human factor. Even the two cities of the land raised by following designs by recognised experts, namely Chandigarh and New Delhi, have come a cropper mainly due to their headcount stretching beyond accepted norms of density of residents. Currently, new urban territories are being created to host respective capital cities of the newly-formed States namely New Raipur in Chattisgarh and Amravati in the truncated Andhra Pradesh. One has to keep one’s fingers crossed until the times these cities face the same fate as other cities or endure as the planned urban spaces.

An estimated 30 million Indians have taken residence outside their homeland in countries virtually all over the globe. Most of them, if not all of them, owe their connect to one or the other family resident in cities. If this mass of non-returning-Indians retreat to their parent land, particularly to well-marked few cities, including Bengaluru, the outcome of the city environment cannot be adequately described in words.

The total stock of good that the successive governments are doing, ostensibly to facilitate life of comfort and satisfaction to the citizen has turned wafer thin when converted to per capita share. On the other hand, the total hardship carried by the country’s massive population, unable to bear its brunt any more, is only galloping both as per capita hardship and taken in toto. In this backdrop of unabating imbalance between achieving desired lifestyle for every citizen and the remaining task, the top brass in administration in the State has resorted to bravery as it were by declaring that all the 175 odd pre-poll promises given to the people have been fulfilled. The disappointed citizens seem to have chosen the path of passive acceptance of the platitudes in the widely publicised statements by the powers that be.

India being avowedly a democracy, treating the administration and the land’s people as separate, although distinct, entities has resulted in placing them in opposite camps. The people owe it to themselves not only to decongest their living spaces but also play an active role in clearing the Augean Stables of administration, remembering the idiom As you sow, so shall you reap.