One of the most prominent changes to have taken place since the creation of Uttarakhand State about 14 years ago is the degeneration of Dehradun from a sedate city known for its litchi orchards and basmati rice farms to a city with rising congestion and diminishing greenery. Dehradun is not the only place in Uttarakhand to be undergoing such degeneration as across the State, once clean and green areas are being transformed into unplanned garish settlements comprising tightly packed cemented homes made worse by environmental degradation and absence of scientific garbage disposal.
Irrespective of the official picture being presented by the establishment, the unplanned construction of settlements across the State being facilitated in the name of development is bound to have more cons than pros. Anyone who has lived long in Dehradun will recall the canals flowing through different parts of the town, the abundance of fruit trees and comparatively sparse population.
However, since State formation, at least 10,000 trees have been axed in Dehradun which now has at least 120 slum settlements with all the canals now covered in the city. Now it is easy to find many localities in Dehradun from where the view a resident enjoys is no different than the view enjoyed by a resident of a slum in, say, Delhi or Gurgaon. Experts and town planners in ancient India and even in modern civilisations across the world have stressed that human settlements are not merely shelters for people but also the deciding factor that influences human behaviour, socio-economic development, quality of life, environment and the crime rate, among other aspects.
People living in congested settlements without adequate sanitation and greenery will behave and perform much differently from those living in non-congested settlements with greenery and open spaces nearby. However, the town planners in Uttarakhand seem to ignore this with the authorities wanting to encourage conversion of the few remaining stretches of agricultural land in Dehradun for commercial or residential purposes.
Undoubtedly housing is needed for the rising population, but housing without integrated planning amounts to providing homes for the masses that will ensure a plethora of problems for the people and the Government in the future. It is such myopic mentality that created the ghettos in America and has already divided Dehradun into clusters of good, bad and ugly localities.
Is it because most of the senior public servants and policy makers do not get to live and suffer in localities that the common people live inIJ Some opine that it is because political motives, corruption and our general myopia have made it more important for the Government to simply facilitate settlement of natives and migrants instead of ensuring their settlement in a healthful manner that really ensures public welfare without destroying the environment.
There are examples galore in Doon of how colonies and individual buildings can be constructed in a way that ensures maximum wastage of space with minimum benefit without capitalizing on the environment or culture of the place. Unfortunately, the policy makers do not seem to mind this as they prefer to draft bigger and costlier plans to ‘resolve’ problems caused by execution of earlier skewed plans.
Most of the natural reservoirs and ravines that once dotted Doon and acted as pools and channels for rainwater were filled up or encroached upon for construction and the resulting change in topography now ensures water logging in many areas. The State is working on a multi-crore rupee storm water drainage master plan for the city but is still not ready to address the main cause for such problems apart from rising population. The fact is that increased population of humans and vehicles alone is not responsible for congestion in Dehradun as these factors have been exacerbated by policies skewed towards expensive and actually impractical constructions.
While the authorities appear to work towards replacing the remaining greenery with cement, the smart city project, which Dehradun is hoping to be selected in, has maximum budgetary provision of development of green belts. It seems illogical to say the least for one to first destroy the greenery for unplanned construction only to spend crores of rupees later on greenery and planned construction. Smart cities are not necessarily made through ambitious projects but by smart town planners, supported by honest and capable public servants.
It is now upto the public and public servants to comprehend whether they want to live in sensibly planned settlements or in unplanned habitats that destroy the environment and make life miserable. Though Dehradun is already on its downward spiral, many places in the mountains have not yet degenerated as badly as cities in the plains due to our collective folly. However, the question is whether we even care to comprehend when there is still time left.