The two agenda that have grabbed the headlines affect average, ordinary, real people. The sealing of illegal shops and commercial establishments is rocking the capital. The other act will allow women ready access to the law in the area of domestic violence. Both are the beginnings of social correctives that need to be put in place immediately if we are to restrain ourselves from falling into the trap of becoming a banana republic!

With rampant corruption in the municipalities, absurd masterplans, archaic rules and wild over-regulation, with an unimaginable number of additions to the law, all in an attempt to confuse the citizen and make way for bribery, urban India had descended into a filthy cesspool. Municipalities have not done their jobs. They have danced attendance for a few, compelling all our cities into becoming symbols of the worst kind of human habitats. Sixty years down the road and the major metros are just plain dirty, filthy, unkempt and disease- prone. Therefore, the first culprits who must be forcibly brought to book and made to pay the price are the officers of the administration whose mandate it is to run the urban settlements. The Supreme Court needs to order that cleansing immediately because those wily people have found new ways to make the buck as the sealing process moves forward.

The traders are now trying to hold the city to ransom because they are finally being forced to abide by the existing laws after decades of bribing officials to get away with their wrongdoing. They have had a free run at the cost of all those potential entrepreneurs who were honest and did not create illegal pools for making money.

Core problems

The dishonest cannot be condoned, nor should the government be seen to be attempting to legitimize the illegitimate. It is like saying that the murderer must be acquitted because we have decided to make ‘murder’ the correct thing to do when you are angry with someone. Our cities have been destroyed by corrupt municipalities and corrupt business practices. Lumpenism is the result, and with this come all the other unimaginable social horrors that we are being overwhelmed with. The breaking-the-rule-bravado must be stopped if civil society is to triumph. For this to happen, rules have to be rational and such that intervention by the authority occurs for the few who break the law and not for the majority who want to be honest and abide by the rules.

The core of the problem is the congenitally faulty planning process. Dysfunction and substandard management of the municipalities, endorsed by bribery and corruption, have betrayed the citizen. The Masterplan of Delhi (1982) had suggested 2,560 convenient shopping centres but only 600 are in place... the land authorities need to be scrutinized by the courts…what are they up to? In the same scheme, fifteen zonal plans were to be put in place over twenty years but only six happened. Of 29 district centres, only ten were built. Therefore, the gap between demand and supply kept widening as the authorities failed to deliver the goods and services, living happily on the lucrative spoils that come with unauthorized, rampant misuse of space illegitimately. It is the first example of the corruption that is suffocating India.

We need a leader of our latent honest conscience to stand up and call the right against the wrong. Punish, and at the same time, initiate immediate rectification. It is easy to do if the leader who takes charge is not guided by vote bank politics and other personal agenda. Let us frame sane regulations, taking a cue from cities in other countries, enforce the new laws and showcase the change by the time the Commonwealth Games open in this historic, special and rare city. Put the man who brought the Metro to Delhi at the helm of the municipality with a mandate to hire, fire and deliver.