The recent flooding of Chennai eclipsed another major development that took place in the same city. On the very day that various parts of Chennai started getting inundated, a hospital in Chennai announced it had completed the first successful double organ transplant in Asia. So, while planning, infrastructure and skills helped the hospital achieve a major success, anomalies in these factors created a human-made flood that killed many and rendered many more homeless — apart from the considerable financial burden that will have to be borne to help restore the infrastructure and civic life.
Meanwhile, here in Dehradun, authorities hopeful of the city passing the second round of the Smart City competition in the near future State that development of Dehradun into a smart city will help prevent or at least mitigate scenarios like the one recently experienced in Chennai and other civic woes which alarmingly have become part of routine life in this once green, clean and peaceful valley. With various political, social and workers’ bodies joining forces with the tea-estate workers to strongly oppose the planned development of smart city on tea estates in the Shimla bye-pass area, the execution of the project may encounter more friction in the future if Dehradun is selected among the first 20 cities to receive funds from the Centre for the project. While opposing sides exchange allegations and explanations on this grandiose plan, I would like to draw your attention to other key factors in Dehradun which have been consistently ignored by successive State Governments and by the society. Anyone with common sense will know that one has to work well on the basics before attempting to successfully reach the top. However, the establishment and society in general appear to believe otherwise.
Take the smarty city project for example. We are thinking of developing a ‘smart city’ at a stage when the absence of even basic civic sense and non-implementation of regulations continue to deteriorate the civic, environmental and cultural atmosphere in the Doon Valley and elsewhere in Uttarakhand. We have outdated toxic spewing contraptions for public transport in Doon. These city buses and Vikrams are clogging traffic and polluting the environment while flouting various norms blatantly. However, no concrete action has been taken against them as the income from these sorry excuses for public transport also benefits politicians and public servants. Instead of first trying to put an efficient and less-damaging public system in place, the authorities have planned a fantastic public rapid transport system — automated pods — on monorails operating on tracks constructed on platforms erected above the central verge of the road. Considering the utter lack of discipline, civic sense and blatant violation of regulations here, such a plan appears to be more of a very costly joke that should not be played on this seismically active region. Considering the continued delay in construction of three flyovers in Dehradun, one wonders whether the development authority seriously thinks the proposed PRTS can be operated here or is it just a glittering impractical dream being shown to facilitate expenditure-income of crores of rupees for the survey, DPR preparation and other processes through which a project goes before actual work can be executed if approved. Worsening traffic congestion and resulting pollution, continued unplanned construction and the ignorance or disdain of the public for civic sense and regulations exacerbated by the reluctance of the various authorities involved to discharge their duty are the factors responsible for the drastic deformation of Dehradun.
Road widening is the ‘solution’ most favoured by the authorities to resolve traffic congestion though studies have shown that simply widening the roads mainly ends up increasing the volume of traffic without resolving the problem. Since Uttarakhand was created, there has been no sustained effort by the authorities to ensure road users in Dehradun follow the basic traffic rules and road sense though most traffic jams can be avoided if only the road users follow regulations and civic sense. What can one say about unplanned constructions when most public representatives and public servants acknowledge failure of the Government machinery to discharge its responsibilities that also include ensuring planned development. When it comes to the failure of the authorities to discharge their responsibilities — various ‘reasons’ including political, infrastructural, organisational and financial factors are cited by the officials for this systemic failure. However, the establishment continues its corrupted system only because the citizens continue their irresponsible and decadent ways of going about their lives. It is the public attitude that is mainly responsible for most of the problems being faced in Dehradun and elsewhere in Uttarakhand. Until this major drawback is addressed, spending time, money and effort on developing a ‘smart city’ for a dim society will actually cause more harm than benefit in the not too distant future.