Every year, we celebrate the Capital Foundation Day on April 13 to remind ourselves as one of independent India's planned capital city.
About 65 years have elapsed and the area of Bhubaneswar has grown up from 16.48 sqkm to a little over 135 sqkm with a population touching one million.
The city plan prepared by Otto H Koenigsberger in 1948 is till today considered worldwide a model in planning profession.
Every other year, we also conduct Capital City Neighbourhood Walk, same as Heritage Walk to share the people coming from outside the part of the planned capital city.
However, in spite of having good examples of urban planning and architectural structures with influences of majestic Hindu and Jain temples and caves, Bhubaneswar today seems to be lost in hoardings and granite structures leading to no visibility.
Second, even after 65years of independence, people are still restricted from taking photographs of the Old or the New Secretariat, whose architectural style had been inspired by the Khandagiri, Udayagiri caves, the lingaraj Temple and Portuguese forts.
Therefore, the Government should seriously consider preserving the originality of Koenigsberger’s thought like New Delhi preserved its lutyen’s Delhi. The Government should develop a museum to showcase past history of Bhubaneswar and works that took place around 1948 and conduct video and photography shows. Tourists should be allowed for photography inside the Secretariat without hampering works of the officials.
The structures that came between 1948 and 1960 as part the capital city plan around Unit-1 and Unit-2 should remain out of ugly hoardings and modified granite structures.
The Government should encourage conducting heritage walk in Bhubaneswar and last but not the least, the Government should look into if the proposed Gandhi Pillars in Bhubaneswar can be built, which itself could bring identity of similar structures that exists in many European cities that attracts many Indian tourists.
Some way or the other, our biasness for westernisation has left us to a situation where we feel modernity means only flyovers, concrete structures or multiplexes. However, we should rather think that we must build cities for the people at the core.
The next decade is crucial for correction or innovation to make it a city of people than just chasing behind mirage of master plans that are neither understandable nor implementable. let us leapfrog implementing some of the best people-centric practices and push the city into a World Heritage City.
(Dr Piyush Ranjan Rout is co-founder, local Governance Network, Bhubaneswar)