Reacting to Dehradun not making it to the list of 13 smart cities, Doon based student activist group Making a Difference by Being the Difference (MAD) has stated that this should come as no surprise since the 85 page plan submitted by Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA) was vague and lacked precision.
MAD head Abhijay Negi said, “The focus was on wrong areas and had MDDA realised that Dehradun’s uniqueness lies in conserving the little which remains of its green spaces and rejuvenating the dying Rispana and Bindal rivers and not in further concretising the eco-sensitive Doon Valley, the Smart City plan for Dehradun would have been made on sustainable lines and would have definitely made the cut.
After such widespread protests the MDDA rolled back its earlier plan to make the smart city on the sprawling tea gardens. Yet, in the final plan it had submitted to the Ministry of Urban Development, the authority did highlight that they earlier wanted to make the Smart City on the tea gardens.
This gave the plan a confused look. We hope that the MDDA would view this setback with serious introspection and reset its priorities which should also include environmental conservation and sustainable development in place of unplanned urbanisation, which has not just caused this rejection in the second round of smarty city challenge but also long term damage to the fragility of Dehradun’s ecology,” said Negi.
The group also highlighted that there was a need for the MDDA to draft its plan in accordance with the findings of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute of India (NEERI), Nagpur which had in its report titled Carrying Capacity based Developmental Planning of Doon Valley, clearly laid out what the Dehradun Developmental Model should be.