Let this be a new town symbolic of the freedom of India unfettered by the traditions of the past. An expression of the nation’s faith in the future.

Jawaharlal Nehru in 1952

The venerable Le Corbusier didn’t obviously plan Chandigarh his City Beautiful so that it would go to pot within four decades of its inception. It was a city driven by dreams of becoming in time a metropolis that would rival the might of other major cities with a polish and persuasive charm of its own.

The polish and the charm are still there but the veneer is beginning to crack. Chandigarh constructed with geometric Precision for a maximum population of 500,000 is already host to over 700,000 and is unraveling rapidly at the seams. At least 10% of the population lives in the four villages and a half a dozen slums that pockmark the city. They are in no way daunted by the fact that over the past four years the administration has razed at least 20 slums and shifted their inhabitants to the city’s periphery.

But then putting all the blame for the city’s demographic desecration on slum dwellers alone is unfair. Many of them desperate shell-shocked spillovers from terrorism in Punjab over the last six years and from Jammu & Kashmir had little choice but to head towards Chandigarh’s relative serenity in the face of growing truculence in Punjab and Haryana.

Some of the refugees came loaded enough to give a boost to the fledgling real estate market that is with its condominiums in the throes of making a mess of Chandigarh’s skyline. Add to that the fact that the taller a building the less precious horizontal space it _ will occupy and you have the formula for a first class degree in real estate monetary greed.

A part of the city’s problems can be traced to the crisis of identity that has dogged it since the reorganization of Punjab in 1966.

 Carefully crafted plans have over years of political uncertainty been abandoned or been lost under mounds of fresh plans few of them implemented. The city’s master plan which was to have been realized in two phases has crumbled under the onslaught of emigres and refugees who settle in the city in thousands every year. The administration has in fact already jabbed the panic button but evidently doesn’t know how to turn the clock back to a more organized past.

Last year for instance for the 1608 houses advertised by the Chandigarh Housing Board there were as many as 21000 applicants. To meet the demand the administration of this union territory has resorted to increased density of units per acre-40 now against 12 units in phase I. We have no option says the city’s chief architect O.P. Mehta since there is not even an acre of free land available.

Over 100 private schools have applied to the administration for land to build upon. Scored of cooperative housing societies remain in limbo after having got themselves registered. Up to its knees in a mire of its own creation the administration now proposes to hijack 1800 acres of land adjoining the two townships of Mohali and Panchkula thus grabbing land that was meant to be a verdant buffer zone. Says Mehta: We will use it for low density population institutions. But environmentalists see this as the beginning of measures to choke the cities lungs.

Without such breathing space Chandigarh could well tum into an urban devils playground. As it stands today the city presents a contradiction of sorts-an unnerving mix of modernity and

Primitivism. The four villages within the city premises Badheri Attawa Burail and Buterla-stick out like sore thumbs.

As it is the city is groaning under the weight of essential services running themselves to the ground. We are already at breaking point says Chandigarh’s Chief Engineer S.S. Virdi. Its a thirsty city. Against the demand for 80 million gallons of water per day only 50 million gallons are tubed in mainly from its 85 tubewells and the Bhakra Canal. For reasons best known to itself the Government has shied away from building a dam across the Ghaghar River that flows close by. Other services too are on the brink of collapsing: even temporary telephone connections are almost impossible to get thus hiking up premiums to a high of Rs 40000 per connection.

The development of Mohali and Panchkula by Punjab and Haryana respectively without paying much heed to infrastructural facilities is slowly throttling Chandigarh. The two states have flouted with impunity the provisions of the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act 1952 which was sagely enacted to control development within 10 miles of Chandigarh. A committee appointed by the Union Government to regulate development on the periphery of the city was subsequently emasculated. Any which-way-you-can construction threatens to pore over onto even the fragile green belt behind the Sukhna Lake.

The lake itself has become the center of a controversy between two hardnosed groups  the anti-boating proavian environmentalists and the pro-boating water sports enthusiasts The lake is the only stretch of water in the country where water sport facilities are of international standards-a 2200-metre six lane straight and virtually flat surface ideal for rowing competitions. Last year matters came to a head and the lake was declared a wetland to prevent biotic interference.

Says S.K. Sharma founder secretary of the Environment Society of Chandigarh Due to a quantum increase in boating activity on the lake the number of migratory birds dropped drastically. Former Lake Club supervisor Kailash Nath differs: Its wagedy that water sports built up so assiduously will winter away. Adds Raman Kalia a city rower The controversy is unfortunate and unnecessary Water sports and birds have co-existed for years without any problems.

Real estate prices have shot up sometimes out of the reach of the middle class. In February last the Chandigarh administration sold a 500 s q mt residential plot in anew sector for Rs 20 lakh. A built up shop (2200 sq. ft. area) in Sector 17 fetched a rental of Rs 45000 per month. While the administration has tightened its loop there is a built in escape route; a number of private firms have been advertising 500 sq. mt farmhouses for Rs 20,000 each. The catch? The rigmarole is being played out 25 km from the city’s boundaries in the far more lenient Haryana.

The Chandigarh administration has been trying to come to grips with the situation. In order to ease traffic snarls near the Interstate Bus Stand it is constructing an 80metre underground subway which will be flanked by shops. At the same time it pretends to look the other way when asked why it doesn’t utilize large tracts of land that were once given away by the simple largesse of political patronage and which have been lying fallow. The administration has yet to exercise its demolition rights over 100-odd places of worship that have come up illegally.

But then this is Chandigarh as proudly ethnocentric as it is cosmopolitan. Combining the two however has left it rudderless without a signpost to show it which way to go towards Modernism often crass-or babu conservatism. Meanwhile the dream of this city set in the foothills of the Shivalik range is slowly turning sour.

(Kanwar Sandhu)

Article extracted from this publication >> January 11, 1991