Leading environmentalist Sunita Narain on Thursday dubbed Lutyens’ Delhi a “parasite” urban space, alleging the bungalow zone, housing the “rich” and the influential, “draws more water” and jettisons its waste outside the prime land.

In an interactive session, ‘Citification of Bharat: Emerging Nightmares or Exciting Opportunities’ at an event held here, the Director-General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) claimed that the richer the city was becoming, the “less liveable” it was turning into.

Speaking in the presence of Union Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Puri, Ms. Narain said there was need to have a discussion on the “form of urban governance” the city required. 

‘Quality of life’

“I know the garbage figure and the pollution figure [for Delhi]. The liveability index of the city is going down. The richer the city is getting, the less liveable it is becoming in terms of health indicators and liveability, which you would define as a quality of life in a city,” she said.

Ms. Narain also claimed that clean and green spaces of Lutyens’ Delhi, comparable to some of the best urban zones in the western world, had insulated its residents from realising the “urban mess” that the city of Delhi or any other part of India is in.

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