City demolished

The Delhi Development Authority is primarily responsible for the Capital being turned into a speculator’s paradise, land corruption, escalating realty prices, disastrous town planning, and the mainstreaming of illegality. Public-private partnership through mixed land-use is the only way to arrest the continuing downward spiral.

By Amar Drall

Had Delhi's two master plans (for 1961-81 and 1981-2001) been implemented, and not taken apart, the demolition squads would long have been out of their jobs. The current acute land shortage, and vicious speculative trading in real estate, would have been material for fiction rather than the waking nightmare that the capital is reeling under.

So, who’s to blame? The hapless citizenry that is forced to encroach on vacant public land, or the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), whose job it is to provide affordable shelter to all?
For an answer, you don’t have to grope under the rubble of the demolished structures—you will find it in the DDA's land acquisition and auction policies, both of which have created artificial shortages of a magnitude that only a major surgery can now hope to correct. This scarcity, highlighted by a sample analysis of commercial space in the major district centres that were created over the two master plan periods, reveals that only 16 per cent of the land earmarked for business activities has been utilised. It tells us why so many residential properties have been turned into commercial centres, and how the undefined rules for special areas, like the Walled City and urban villages, have compounded the conundrum. It tells us how inadequate enforcement of planning norms and building bylaws has resulted in the present scenario leading to large-scale unauthorised development and encroachment on public land.

What, then, are the alternatives? The survey suggests that if the city's commercial, institutional, industrial, and income-generating capacity is not to be permanently hampered, it is important that the development of the Delhi metropolitan area and the National Capital Region (NCR) be closely meshed.

Also, the DDA's bulk-land acquisition policy should be reviewed and suitable alternatives found, with the focus on durable public-private partnerships. The situation on the ground calls for suitable increase in the permissible FAR, with matching compound fees in identified areas where addition to
services and facilities is technically viable. Regulatory arrangements, too, would need to be strengthened to check the mushrooming jhuggi-jhompri (JJ) clusters on government land. Complemented by a judicious blend of flexible land use and enforcement procedures—as suggested by Master Plan Delhi (MPD) 2021—it could help immensely in raising the performance standards bar.

The survey also suggests that a residential-to-commercial makeover be allowed along roads of more than 30 m width, together with increased FAR as part of a mixed land-use programme. Specifically, priority development areas should be identified along corridors that can be easily integrated with the MRTS or high-capacity bus routes. Speculative trading can only be checked by ensuring complete marketing of all land identified for a district or community centre, rather than piecemeal sales, as has been the practice so far. The focus should be on integrated development rather than on piecemeal growth.

The shortfall of commercial areas can be met by regularising settlements and through betterment charges in the areas concerned. Public parking lots and open spaces could be developed for informal shopping areas on a public-private partnership basis.

The urban renewal of unauthorised areas, too, needs to be taken up on a major scale. Technology today enables vertical constructions, allowing for higher density and FAR, while ensuring more space for green cover and common spaces.

But property transfers continue to be dogged by absurd fiscal and legal hurdles: simpler, people-friendly procedures would speed up plot reconsolidation in the unauthorised areas. Wherever required, suitable amendments should be incorporated in the MPD 2021 before it is finalised.

Current crisis
The past four decades have seen both the nation's capital and the Union Territory metamorphosing into a massive metropolis. It is the country’s political and administrative centre and home to millions of migrants who arrive in search of jobs and opportunities. The NCR has developed impressively, but with a spatial distortion. Only the Delhi Metropolitan Area (DMA) towns—Noida, Faridabad, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad—have benefited; the other NCR towns suffer from a peculiar "spatial gap". In Delhi itself, large areas outside the master plan framework are in stark contrast with its better half. Never before has there been such a dire need for innovation, without sacrificing the city's sense of history.

We must first save what we have.
The growth of DMA towns has, to some extent, helped in containing the migrant explosion. Yet, more could be done through improved transportation linkages (including suburban rail links and bypass expressways.) The lost synergy between the NCR Plan, the Delhi Metropolitan Area Plan and Delhi's Master Plan has to be reinstated.

DDA’s culpability
The urban expansion over the past two plan periods is largely the outcome of the massive acquisition and development of land by the DDA. The policy's pluses and minuses are both before us. On the flip side has been the mushrooming of unauthorised structures and JJ clusters that the policymakers never made room for. Farmers who had to put up with the price of compulsory acquisitions, far below the market rate, responded by selling off land to unauthorised colony sharks. And, in many cases, where the land was acquired, its tardy development left it open to encroachers. Also, the acquired land was poorly protected, and weak enforcement of building regulations further encouraged JJ-dwellers.

Today, the old DDA policy of large-scale land acquisitions and disposal will not work. An alternative migrant-friendly approach needs to be worked out, and regulatory and enforcement arrangements beefed up to put the brakes on the city's ghettoisation.

The planners' attempts to deflect the population to other urban NCR centres have repeatedly failed, with the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCTD) cramming up at a frightful pace. According to Census 2001, Delhi's population was 13.8 million, well beyond the 12.8 million projected in MPD 1981-2001. What did MPD 1981-2001 seek to accomplish? Having 12.8 million people to accommodate, it sought an additional 18,000 to 24,000 hectares (ha) for development by 2001. It also called for further densification of already-developed areas. In 1990, the year of the MPD 1981-2001 notification, 4,000 ha had been added to the urban footprint of the Delhi Urban Act (DUA)-81.

But only the population rose—and everything else went to pot. The DDA failed to develop the balance 14,000-18,000 ha of land, and the 4,000 ha that was added during three plan periods under the urban extension scheme was way short of the targets set by MPD 2001. The demand-supply gap widened to unacceptable proportions, matched only by the mounting deficits of the public agencies.

Planned commercial areas
Land-use analysis, with respect to land under commercial use, as against the total land available for urbanisation, reveals that in MPD 1961-81, the total land allocated for commercial purposes was 5.75 per cent. It was reduced to 3-4 per cent in MPD 1981-2001—and the Draft MPD 2001-2021 has maintained the status quo.

A study by the Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) in 1968, titled Land Use Patterns of Indian Cities and Towns, says, “An analysis of planned towns in England and Wales reveals that they have 6 per cent land under commercial use. Even though the portion of land under such use in the cities of America is about the same as in India, land availability per thousand persons under commercial use is about five times the average of our 103 cities and towns."
Commercial areas first came up when MPD 1961-81 introduced the concept. There were to be several rungs: central business districts (CBDs) and sub-central business districts (sub-CBDs), both at the city level, district centres (DCs) for 1.5 lakh to 2.5 lakh people, community centres (CCS) for 40,000 to 50,000 people, residential planning area centres for 12,000 to 15,000 people and residential units (with convenient shopping) for 3,500 to 5,000 people.

The planning norms were revised in MPD 1981-2001: the DCs were proposed for about 500,000 people and CCs for 100,000. There was some nomenclature changing, too: local shopping centres (LSC) and convenient shopping centres (CSC) replaced the residential planning area centres and residential units, serving population limits of 15,000 and 5,000 respectively. These norms were mildly revised in Draft MPD 2001-21, lowering the population threshold for LSCs from 15,000
to 10,000.

An analysis of the growth and progress of district centres since 1961 onward points to an alarming situation. Under MPD 1961-81, 15 DCs were to cover the entire city. In addition, 13 sub-district centres were also proposed. The district centres were to have a FAR of 150. In 1961-81, only three DCs could be started (Pusa Road or Jhandewalan, South Shahdara or Laxmi Nagar, and Kalkaji or Nehru Place).

In MPD 1981-2001, seven DCs were developed or were underway (Nehru Place, Bhikaji Cama Place, Rajendra Place, Janakpuri, Laxmi Nagar, Shivaji Place and Jhandewalan). And, then, MPD 1981-2001 proposed 22 new DCs (eight under the urban extension scheme). In all, therefore, the planners sought 29 DCs by 2001.

But the Draft MPD 2001-2021 shows that only 10 DCs have thus far been, or are being, developed, while 13 other DCs have been identified. Thus, of the 29 DCs proposed in MPD 1981-2001, only 23 have yet been located—and six DCs exist only on paper. Another demand-supply analysis shows that in the 29 planned DCs, the total floor area that was to have come up was 96 lakh sq m but, till date in the 10 DCs that have been fully or partially completed, only 15.3 lakh sq m (16 per cent) have become available.

Issues of community
Similar studies of community centres show that some 122 of them, with an average site area of 5.4 ha each, and 100 FAR, had been sought by 2001. As yet, the city has only some 100 partially developed CCs, whose floor areas are said to be in the region of 54 lakh sq m each (if developed 100 per cent.) That leaves a gap of nearly 12 lakh sq m floor area. Most developed commercial areas are in the main city (west of the Yamuna.) In the Trans-Yamuna Area, for instance, of a total of five DCs proposed, only two have been started.

It should be obvious, then, how the shortfalls of planned commercial space have been impinged on residential areas. (These include every living space ranging from posh residential colonies, resettlement colonies, the Walled City, unauthorised-regularised colonies, and the lal dora urban villages.)

Among the reasons for the scarcity of developed land is the town planning failure to respect the targets set by MPD 2001. Furthermore, the land that the DDA acquired was never developed in its entirety. The long-drawn procedures and the technical and other complexities endemic to the land acquisition process—compensations, litigations under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, the DDA's limited financial and human resources—combined to create the current encroachers' paradise. While several DCs that were proposed in the first Master Plan (1961-81)—like Shahdara and Nehru Place—are still incomplete, and planned commercial spaces have been rendered unaffordable to the ordinary citizen. By monopolising land supply and creating an artificial scarcity, the DDA is leaving behind an entirely unacceptable legacy.

Every time a district or community centre design was prepared and the plots' "subdivision plan" finalised, the DDA's pick-and-choose policy—and its penchant for putting the worst-located plots under the hammer first—would put paid to the common person’s best laid plans. The DDA kept the auctioned price for one lot as the reserve price for the next lot in order to maximise its returns, ramming up the prices of planned commercial spaces to exorbitant levels. The slothful commercial activity in residential areas has, along with Delhi's “slummification”, been the most visible fallout of the DDA's continuing intransigence.

It needs no further iteration, therefore, that no single approach can work for our cheated egalopolis.

Holistic overview
Seeing that the population in the NCTD was far in excess of the available habitat, the V K Malhotra Committee had recommended increased FAR. But while we do that, we must also identify the areas that have suffered from irregular development. For the regularisation of unauthorised colonies to be effective, the administration should ensure they at least have basic civic amenities—electricity, drinking water, drainage, sewage disposal et al. They should also be linked to high-capacity bus corridors and transport-centred development. A review of district centre locations is, therefore, urgently called for.

Land-use conundrum
So, what, in light of these issues, is to be preferred: segregated or flexible land-use? Most current thinking favours the latter. It certainly helps to reap the synergies between the workplace, residence and transportation, and between complementary vocations. Ideally, land-use should respond to market dynamics: it is actually mixed residential and commercial land-use that is working for the city when nothing else is. What this systemic needs is to be fully streamlined. Along with the proposed increase in FAR, the officials must focus on "betterment charge" collections to finance infrastructure needs. The implementers must consult resident welfare associations to pre-empt avoidable controversies, such as made headlines last month.

Wherever a habitat is located on wide roads of more than 30 m, the residential-commercial makeover creates fewer problems, for it does not interfere with a colony's assiduously cultivated character. But any new premises coming up on such roads would need to have captive parking lots in their basements. Such areas should be exempted from the permissible FAR limit.

The new thinking
The authorities should involve private developers in identifying DCs; and to pre-empt speculation, all district and community centres need to be marketed simultaneously. That alone will ensure integrated, rather than the piecemeal, development that has been Delhi’s bane all these years.
It is both callous, and socially and economically counterproductive, to squander away precious national resources by demolishing existing structures that can be saved without affecting the city's development. These areas should be sold to an aware general public—if, that is, the idea is to discourage encroachers.

Open spaces and public parking lots should be provided in areas close to weekly markets, as envisaged in draft MPD 2021, which also approves of the haat concept. Non-compatible activities, such as manufacturing, which release pollutants and cause traffic jams, would, of course, be banned in predominantly residential areas. There would only be scope for opening "clean enterprises": small restaurants and offices—of consultants, engineers, architects, doctors, lawyers and chartered accountants.

Those who missed the big picture now have just a single alternative: they have to learn to make the best of the unseemly patchwork that is their own creation—a metropolitan Frankenstein that they would rather wish away.