NK SINGH
MP Government has just passed the death sentence on Bhopal's Upper Lake. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has instructed officers to regularise all illegal colonies in the State. There are about 350 illegal colonies in Bhopal alone, quite a few in the Upper Lake's catchment area. Do we care? Do the vote-hungry politicians care? I have my full sympathy with the bureaucracy which wants to work according to rules and environmental law.
The latest farmaan from mai-baap sarkar reminds me of the period eight years ago, when Bhopal fought tooth and nail to protect its environment. I was editing HT's Bhopal edition then, and we had reported:
Scrapping of Bhopal master plan
NK SINGH
The
proposed development plan for the city of Bhopal has been finally shown its
rightful place --- the dustbin. Bowing before powerful public opinion, the Madhya
Pradesh Government has decided to scrap the plan for all practical purposes.
Bhopal development plan 2021 was one
of the most controversial pieces of official document produced by a pliant and
short-sighted bureaucracy in Madhya Pradesh in recent times.
The 285-page document, rightly nicknamed
“Bhopal deruction plan”, reeked of greed, corruption and a flagrant
disregard for future of one of the most beautiful and well planned cities in
this country.
The scrapping of the master plan is
a victory of the people of Bhopal. It is the result of affirmative action by
the civil society. The citizens of Bhopal has risen as one person to oppose the
draft plan and save their beloved city from land sharks.
The Fourth Estate, aware of the
powerful sense of outrage among the people, was united for once. It played a
sterling role in scrapping of the plan by pointing out how the town and country
planning’s proposals would destroy the city of Bhopal.
The Hindustan Times also had its
humble role in creating public opinion against the development plan as we were
among the very first to raise out voice against the plan and generate a health
debate on the topic.
Builder-politician-official nexus
But the decision, taken at the
highest level in the State, will make some people extremely unhappy ---- land sharks, unscrupulous builders
and the nexus of corrupt politicians and official who had entered into an
unholy alliance with the profiteers and racketeers for their personal gains.
It is gratifying that the decision
was taken at the highest level in the Government. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh
Chouhan certainly deserves commendation for his rightful intervention.
It is also in the fitness of things
that the State Government did not wait for the report of the so-called
committee formed by the town and country planning department to hear the
complaints against the master plan.
For the committee had no moral,
ethical or legal right to take a decision on the future of the development
plan. Of the 73 members of the committee, 59 were such who did not attend its
hearings even once! What right they had to decide the fate of the plan? Were
they supposed to sign on dotted lines?
At one level, the decision to
“revisit” the plan rekindles a ray of hope… in the robustness of the system
governing us. At another, it reaffirms the believe that powerful public opinion
can bring down the corrupt and the arrogant to their knees.
The most gratifying thing for the
people of Bhopal or perhaps that the decision will save their bada talab, the
upper lake, from a certain death. For the decision to allow human habitation
around the lake was like declaring capital sentence on this heritage.
As the sun rises over the upper lake
on Monday morning, many of its admirers may feel tempted to quote Wordsworth.
I
wandered lonely as a cloud
That
floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all
at once I saw a crowd,
A host,
of golden daffodils;
Beside
the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering
an dancing in the breeze
Published in The Hindustan Times, 19 April 2010
nkexpress@gmail.com
Comments
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment. It will be published shortly by the Editor.