The Delhi Master Plan May Not Fulfill Your Dream for Home Until 2021
Delhi, November 30, 2015 (Newswire.com) - The Real Estate Guru Tarun Shienh thinks that the Delhi Master plan is still a distant dream, especially for those who want to realize their dreams of owning home before 2021. The Real Estate Guru Tarun Shienh says that The Delhi Master Plan is still on paper and the way to implement it in words and deed passes through a long and a tedious legal process. There are lots of legal hurdles which require thorough scrutiny. What are these legal hurdles? Let us know in his own words:
Delhi is the capital city of India and home to a population of almost 16 million people. It remains one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world. Therefore, it becomes important to look at the state of urban planning in the city and to constantly evolve and evaluate the strategies for managing its growth and development The Master Plan for Delhi is supposed to be the main policy document for this purpose, a legally enforceable text which lays down the planning strategies and development controls applicable to the city.
This paper attempts to provide a critical analysis of the Master Plan, keeping in mind the recent controversies regarding the demolition drive in the city against unauthorized construction. There is an attempt to deconstruct the provisions of the plan in the face of the ground realities facing the residents. Special attention is given to the debate over stringent and outdated development controls and zoning regulations in the city and the theoretical underpinnings of this debate.
The paper also looks at some examples of cities across the world to get a feel of the international trends in planning for better cities. The paper finds that there are serious shortcomings in the draft plan, which has failed to address the demands of the residents of the city. The paper concludes that there is a case for greater participation by the people in the decision making process rather than a top down planning approach, and there is an urgent need to review the Master Plan and bring out the finalized draft for implementation at the soonest.
India lives in its villages, but modern India resides in its cities. Cities are the centers of growth to which the populace from all regions gets attracted to, whether to look for new career opportunities, or in hope of finding a better life and escaping the drudgery and poverty of stagnating rural areas. All across the world, any country that has experienced the transformation of an economically developed nation has experienced sharply increased urbanization also, with cities emerging as centers of trade manufacturing and sophisticated service providers. India is no different. With an ever-expanding economy and sharp rise in the share of services in the national income, India is experiencing urbanization as never before. In total, some 108 million Indians, or 10.5 per cent of the national population, live in the country’s 35 largest cities. According to the 2001 census in all about 27% of the population lives in urban areas with an urban to rural ratio of 39.
Today Mumbai is the largest Indian city and the third largest urban area in the world with a population of 18.84 million. The National Capital Region of Delhi is the 6th largest urban area in the world with a population of about 16 million people. Cities of such huge magnitude, having a population of over 10 million, are in fact, now classified as ‘Mega Cities’.
But with the growth of such large urban areas also comes the problem of managing them well to ensure good quality of life for the residents. The existence of such large numbers of people densely packed into compact regions has led to ever-increasing burdens on the resources available in the cities. Housing, waste management, slums, transportation, have emerged as some of the most pressing problems in urban areas along with the overall issue of effective utilization of land. It is in dealing with such problems that urban planning comes to the fore, in order to provide a comprehensive development strategy for the city with a forward-looking approach. The city may thus get divided into administrative and uses based zones with separate plans for the same along with an all encompassing master plan for the city as a whole.
The question is how relevant and effective are such plans, both in their objectives and in their implementation. Do they pragmatically take into consideration the actual ground realities or are they too utopian in nature? Is due consideration given to the financial viability of such plans? And most importantly to what extent does this planning process curtail the rights of individual citizens to use their properties as they see fit, and to pursue any means of self-improvement that the city has to offer.
This paper attempts to analyze these issues focusing on the draft document on the Master Plan for Delhi till the year 2021 (MPD 2021). There has been a lack of comprehensive analysis on this major policy document till now and at present there is no research work available on the Master Plan. This work becomes all the more relevant in light of the widespread protests and controversies that these plans seem to generate. There is a huge urban planning quandary here. On one hand Denizens are protesting against the demolition drive launched by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi against unauthorized constructions whereas on the other hand the implementing agencies and judicial bodies are helpless who are saddled with the task of ensuring the implementation of the existing provisions of the master plan. The city is demanding a change in the draconian land use policy and requires an urgent revision and the formulation of a new Master Plan. Yet the new Master Plan is not without its own shortcomings. The paper aims to provide a critical analysis of the existing draft plan in this context and to collate examples of successful urban planning the world over. Finally the paper looks into the issue of zoning and strictly ordained and planned land use and its relevance in a free market based economy based with the inviolable right to private property.