Off a side lane behind Peddar Road is the home of one of Mumbai’s wealthiest men. Italianate statuary across a secluded private road carries you to a Baroque mansion with some of the finest collection of art. Unlike Mumbai’s business elite, the owner is a recluse, enjoying his wealth without ceremony or flash. A few miles away, lies the world’s largest slum. A warren of alleyways that house the city’s poorest, in densities so desperate that it is difficult to establish boundaries or ownership.
Ironically, both these extremes form a benign, positive relationship with the city. One remains a mirage, a free floating molecule, without citizenship; the other, a complex web of communities sustained by their links to each other. The parasite is the group of people in between, those riding cars and subways, strolling in malls, entertaining in clubs, eating at Thai restaurants, occupying homes and apartments, people for whom road space, parking, electricity and water is not just a birthright but part of the relentless daily expectation of urban life — the middle class.
An examination of civic and commercial infrastructure will reveal that a mere 28 per cent of the city population uses almost 80 per cent of the public facilities in the city. Roads, subways, housing, malls, markets, offices, parks, and museums, virtually every aspect of the city is meant for middle class use. Consequently, the middle class also contributes the larger quantum of waste: home garbage, raw sewage, air pollution, commercial and industrial waste. By all measures, the middle class first occupies the largest share of city land and space, consumes the biggest slice of its offerings, and wreaks the highest level of destruction. The middle class is to the Indian city what America is to the rest of the world. Even the recently concluded Commonwealth Games, have clearly left behind only a middle-class legacy. Would the Delhi authorities ever consider opening up the stadiums to the poor, say through special programs for government school children? I seriously doubt it.
The remaining 72 per cent majority that make up the urban poor, live on hand-outs. Their voice is not just muted, but missing altogether. There is no one to demand housing, better health, better sanitation, more water etc. Even though every Indian city has a large population of the poor, never has there been an attempt to create living conditions ideally suited to their perspective. No regulations or standards exist for a home, street or neighbourhood, nothing defines their needs for space, community or privacy. Everywhere they are merely unfortunate appendages to middle class values.
By all counts the degraded life of the Indian town is today beyond redemption; its downhill direction is visible in all aspects of lifestyle — shrinking homes, deteriorating air and water, poor sanitation, over-stretched transportation. Even the expectations are low and getting lower. Still, the poor will continue to come in larger numbers. With increasing scarcities of water, electricity and land, the middle class will become meaner, more miserly, more protective, and progressively more hostile. The divide will doubtless grow from the present sporadic skirmishes to serious warfare.
By all standards the poor live a richer life, filled with more varied incidents, more possessions that are shared, more abundant and spontaneous relationships, fewer inhibitions, and more enduring connections with nature. Doubtless there will be great resistance to the idea of making cities with the poor as the primary residents. However, a place that takes these values into consideration is bound to be more livable than one whose concern is a division of the spoils — of land, building, car space, office and transport modes.
The only answers lies in writing fresh guidelines for yet unmade places: neighbourhoods extending beyond the present city. Just the way access to capital has come to the poor through microfinance, access to homes and neighbourhoods for the poor needs serious consideration. To enact a new model of living that does away with all possessions that pollute the city: no ownership of land, home or car, no membership to private clubs, no privileged identity to individuals. To create conditions of life dependent on sharing and sustenance, dispossession becomes an important ideal for making a better city.
Such an urban ideal may still be years away, and in the run-up to the next decade, India’s architectural strategies seem limited by middle-class vanity. Recent years have left enough symbolic reminders to say that high economic growth will be rewarded by an architecture that is itself rooted only in the flash of big business and soaring profits. The Ambani residence in Mumbai will be remembered as an iconic structure; Delhi’s Commonwealth Games will be remembered for the Indian expectation of becoming world class; Bangalore’s IT hubs will also be viewed as being almost as good as American campuses.
Almost as good is the insufferable prefix to most Indian work. Till Indian architecture moves out of the West’s shadow, and to a self-belief in the intrinsic values of Indian life — perhaps into the aspiration of something better than world class — it will doubtless remain so. Certainly, the cold hard fact of always seeing oneself as second rate may take a long time to overcome. But a wholly different approach may be a welcome change. Designing city neighbourhoods explicitly for the urban poor as their main clients may not therefore be just a good idea for the poor, but could act as a game changer for the ugliness created by the middle class.
Gautam Bhatia, architect,
artist and writer, has built
extensively in India and the US
Links:
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