I received a call today from A G K Menon, Director TVB
School of Habitat Studies, to ask if I could *help*
with a housing studio, give orientation (to students,
obviously) about constitutional processes. Some days
ago Dean of Studies A B Lal had called to ask if I
could *help* about their illegal site, since I
understand best Delhi Master Plan processes.

TVB-SHS is five minutes walk from my flat in Vasant
Kunj. For five years I have been engaging in support
of DMP processes, mainly as planner consultant to
citizens’ groups, many in and around Vasant Kunj (in
all sorts of housing). For five years
*professional-trustees* (a phrase from Lal) like Menon
have lent *expert* credentials to extra-constitutional
processes to open-up, in name of an unlawful DMP
revision, public land acquired for half century in
name of DMP for world-class loot. Not once in five
years did *professional trustees* consider my work
worth a thumbnail in the professional space that they
control. After a full range of constitutional
processes has been subverted to substitute DMP with
lately approved draft DMP-2021, which I do not even
have access to forget expertise on, I am being invited
to *help* – what?

Just last week my clients lodged complaints against
experts and NGOs supporting DMP violations challenged
in court cases, public notice responses, Central
Vigilance Commission references, memoranda on which
Parliamentary Committee is to hear oral evidence, etc.
I saw no point in telling Menon that a serious
professional-practice ethics issue (and not, say, a
silly but damaging review that he wrote of my book and
me, his silly but damaging expert-planner comments in
media, etc) stands in my way to his TVB-SHS – has been
driven to stand there because questions about what
generally stands in the way of those wanting to *help*
have been ignored for too long.

I am posting this in case anyone wants to fret about
professional-space issues that such situations raise.
I myself have lately decided to save my fretting for
better things.

 


               
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