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Journalism of Courage
India is a land of opportunity. Especially for those adept at using the system to milk its cities. Architects are no exception. The urban chaos in India today is in no small part due to the subtle and skillful manipulation of civic bodies and real estate interests by ambitious architects whose flouting of building codes is causing irreparable damage to Indian cities.
Their greed has already destroyed the once elegant cities of Bombay and Delhi. But since enough is never enough Chandigarh is the next prize in the architectural sweepstakes of India. It offers rich pickings to enterprising architects who can think big and network globally to provide an ideological veneer and legitimacy to a brazen attempt to hijack this splendid city for personal pelf and fame. This was the reason for the drama staged in Chandigarh last week.
Because clearly, the entire exercise 8212; over a mere idea 8212; was undertaken to first validate the trashing of Chandigarh8217;s master plan and architectural controls, then open the way for architects to land ego-inflating jobs in Corbusier8217;s city with the help of an all-too-eager administration. If in the process the overall design concept of the city had to be sacrificed, so be it. Big deals are not swung by thinking small, and they are seldom swung by the squeamish or the faint-hearted.
A few words about Chandigarh8217;s founding will placethings in perspective. With Lahore, capital of the truncated state of Punjab falling to Pakistan8217;s share after the partition of India, Jawaharlal Nehru took the brilliant decision to send two emissaries, P.N. Thapar and P.L. Varma, around the world in search of the finest designer for a new capital for the portion of Punjab left in India. Le Corbusier was the man they chose and the Himalayan foothills 160 miles north of Delhi was the site selected for the new city.
Meeting for the first time in February 1951, Corbusier and his team took six weeks to draw up plans for the city8217;s first phase which would contain 150,000 people, its eventual population being 500,000. The plan was approved in the same year and work proceeded at such an impressive pace that the new capital was inaugurated on October 7, 1953 though many sectors took longer to finish. The city plan was not entirely Corbusier8217;s since it was based on a proposal by New York8217;s Albert Mayer who had been earlier asked to prepare a concept plan but hadwithdrawn after the tragic death of his creative young assistant, Mathew Nowicki, in a plane crash in 1950.
Corbusier designed the four principal buildings for the Capitol8217;: the State Secretariat, High Court, Legislature, and the Governor8217;s House which is still to be built. His architecture exudes vitality, strength and an amazing exuberance, the 800-foot-long, eight-storey secretariat being one of the most exciting buildings designed anywhere in the world in this century. The rest of the city is divided into self-contained sectors, with provision for adding more. Neighbourhood markets and shopping centres cater to their needs in addition to which there is the major City Centre with its offices, shops, restaurants and such. Carefully planned roads knit the city together and care was taken to ensure that 8220;no house or building door opens on a thoroughfare of rapid traffic8221;. This humane and sensitive attempt to insulate its residents from fast-moving vehicular traffic led Charles Correa 8212; a leading lightof the seminar 8212; to rather tastelessly call Chandigarh a zanana city8217;.
To prevent its haphazard growth Chandigarh8217;s founders had with commendable foresight legislated the Capital Periphery Control Act of 1952 which disallowed major constructions within its 10-mile radius. They also established architectural controls for its orderly and disciplined development in the future. The first was flagrantly violated by the Punjab and Haryana governments who built the satellite towns of Mohali and Panchkula next to Chandigarh, while the violation of architectural controls is now advocated by the professionals themselves. In its own way this does reflect the perverse state of affairs in India today in which both the state and the professionals violate laws meant to preserve India8217;s urban sanity.
One of the more grotesque remarks at the seminar was made by MIT8217;s Julian Bienart who said of Corbusier, 8220;The man is dead. Forget him and move on to plan for the future8230;8221; Equally dead is L8217;Enfant, the man whodesigned Washington D.C. in the 18th century. Why doesn8217;t Bienart scrap Washington8217;s master plan instead of Chandigarh8217;s?
8220;After listening carefully to each word at this seminar8221;, says Jeet Malhotra, Corbusier8217;s assistant for many years who went on to become Punjab8217;s Chief Architect, 8220;I had the distinct feeling that the conference was planned by two or three architects for their own benefit in an intellectually and professionally dishonest manner. It would be a criminal act to destroy a unique city made possible by Nehru8217;s vision and Corbusier8217;s and Mayer8217;s creativity8221;.
Chandigarh8217;s runaway growth cannot be stopped by self-seeking, orchestrated expressions of concern for the city, but by first curbing the insatiable appetite of its Administration for doing the wrong thing. The right thing would be to develop more sectors for the unorganised categories of people and give them houses similar to those provided for the lowest rung of government employees in the original plan. But a strategy is required toprevent misuse of this facility. Existing industries which do not provide housing for their workers must also be compelled to do so.
The next step should be to develop an industrial town 70 to 80 miles away and permit no more industries around the city. The third step must be to rigidly enforce architectural controls and the Periphery Control Act.If the Chandigarh Administration drags its feet or insist on short-changing the country its motives and actions must be investigated. Chandigarh is too unique a national asset to be wasted so openly and wantonly.
