Respected Sir,
I am grateful to you for including in your address to the nation references to planning in relation to urban development, to equity in relation to (besides unacceptability of disparities) sustainability and efficiency, and to need for ensuring respect for rule of law.
As a planner, I found in NCMP and in President’s address resonance on development concerns, but missed reference to need to rectify the paradigm shift, or drift, to abandonment of planned development. I am convinced this drift is what lies at the root of, especially, urban problems (mostly attributable to violations and implementation failures vis-à-vis statutory city plans) and unless it is stemmed, problem-solving attempts will remain sub-optimal, durable solutions elusive and ‘development’ greed-driven. I have been sending to authorities notes on various issues about opportunities arising from convergence of NCMP commitments and statutory plan provisions. I am presuming to enclose for your perusal a summary of these and, in view of today’s reports of your intervention, the full note on schools.
I admit I am clutching for straws. The planning profession is falling apart amidst growing contempt of principled planning. Scams in planning authorities and institutions and ‘takeover’ of planning by NGOs, MNCs, etc, are symptoms of rot that has been infused into the system at professional levels. I quit mainstream when I began to see these symptoms and have found ways to work with responsibility towards profession and society. You have said you entered public life because democracy needs professionals to become more engaged and active in politics. I believe democracy needs space for competent professionals to engage with politics without having to join it, which requires politics to meet us half way. I have been trying to engage for some years now and I think politics shuns principled planners. Your address inspires hope that this might change and for that I am grateful to you.
With warm greetings,
Yours sincerely
Gita Dewan Verma / Planner.
Encl. Summary of notes on NCMP opportunities and imperatives
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Note:
- Besides in above-mentioned notes, NCMP-DMP opportunities and imperatives have been illustrated in respect of housing, slums, ridge, riverbed, rural area / urban agriculture, urban renewal, infrastructure in letters to authorities. All these and subsequent NCMP-DMP engagements are being posted on a NCMP-DMP minder on the web.
- All these recent notes / letters are based on substantive engagements since 1999-2000, indifference to which remains unchanged even a month after the adoption of NCMP, the complete convergence between NCMP commitments and DMP provisions notwithstanding.