Despite the haphazard planning, noise, poor infrastructure, abysmal vehicular traffic management, ubiquitous slums, pavement-dwellers and sheer chaos interspersed with a few islands of cleanliness and order which are defining characteristics of India’s half a dozen metropolitan mega-cities and 7,900 other cities and towns, schools of architecture and planning have been churning out graduates for over half a century.
The most prominent among them are the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi (SPA, estb.1941) which claims to be “a specialised university, only one of its kind” and was conferred deemed university status in 1979, and the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad (CEPT, estb.1962) which bills itself as “a premier academic institute”. Over the past half century plus, these institutions which have spawned half a dozen clones across the country have graduated “many thousands” of architects, town planners, civil engineers, interior designers and professionals of related disciplines. Currently 107 schools of architecture and civic planning across the country have been accredited by the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education.
In the circumstances, given the country’s rich historical tradition of excellent architecture, sophisticated town planning and civic management, and Indian academia’s half century plus acquaintance with modern urban planning and management, how does one explain the pathetic condition of contemporary India’s urban habitats?
“Until very recently when the JNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission) was launched in 2005, there was a clear bias in governments at the Centre and in the states in favour of rural development with little attention paid to urban planning and renewal. Even today when the number of towns and cities has grown to almost 8,000, SPA, Delhi graduates a mere 90 professional town planners per year and the output of the entire academic system is 4,000 per year. Moreover, within the housing and urban planning ministries of the state governments headed by generalist IAS officers, professional architects and town planners have little influence. Hence the pathetic condition of our cities,” explains Dr. Neelima Risbud, dean of academics at SPA.
Dr. R.N. Vakil, director of CEPT, Ahmedabad, also attributes the chaotic, run-down condition of India’s urban habitats to deficiencies of civic management and governance. “The housing and urban development ministries and civic planning organisations of the state and municipal governments are dominated by politicians and bureaucrats with short-term tenures who have little interest in long-term planning. Within these hierarchies, the excellent technocrats we nurture and graduate have very little influence. For India’s cities to develop in an orderly, planned fashion, civil society needs to demand high standards and accountability. Most of our graduates join private architectural and civil engineering firms because the government ministries are too inefficient and bureaucratic to attract them. Unless this situation changes and technocrats are given places of honour and respect in government ministries and civic development organisations, the condition of India’s cities won’t change,” says Vakil.
For this urban environment dominated by rapacious builders and corrupt and indifferent politicians and bureaucrats, the proposed IIHS University aspires to nurture urban practitioners to shape a brave new world.