It is totally inexplicable why the ‘dressing up’ of Delhi was not done over the past one year, well in advance of the Commonwealth Games. The job, then, could have been done with some sense of quality than in the slipshod manner it is being executed now. The dressing up will last only a few months, having been executed at exorbitant rates with everyone involved indulging in large-scale loot. Corruption has become a polite word for making illegal money when juxtaposed with what we are witnessing. The free-run of the corrupt authority has, over the years, given citizens the tacit license to do the same, which is why India is wallowing in the mire of self-destruction. Mosquitoes are breeding like never before, spreading dreaded illnesses. Drinking water is polluted. Roads are caving in wherever contractors have made money and shared the loot with those who commissioned them. Ostensibly better street lights are shedding less light than their predecessors.
India was known for its fine skills, techniques of building and embellishments. Edwin Lutyens used many such elements when he was building New Delhi. Unfortunately, Independent India’s builders, like the Delhi Development Authority, and careless restorers, such as the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the New Delhi Municipal Council, are run by babus who neither have expertise nor aesthetic sensibility needed for these jobs. None of them is an architect or conservation architect. This is the sad truth. If various governments and their statutory bodies had not been in complete denial, intervention by professionals from civil society would have forged a great partnership and produced celebratory results. The insecure, disconnected babu spends his time working out convoluted means to keep such experts out to protect his ineptitude from being exposed. Is there no political leader, with a profound commitment to India’s sensibilities and past heritage, who would want to change this fast-deteriorating situation?
Remove the hurdles
We do not have a single museum we can be proud of and send our children to visit. Our national archives are in abysmal condition with good people working there but without excitement or desire for excellence and accessibility because of a lack of leadership. The issue of access is knotted up in archaic procedures that drive away ordinary people. You have to be a ‘very important person’ to wade through the pigeon droppings and unbearable stench and be welcomed by the presiding babus. Ministers have done nothing to set a mandate for the babus to remove such hurdles. Criticism is taken to be an assault. The babu closes his door. A public space becomes more private than the private sector.
In the fortress of government, transparency is a foul word. This attitude towards sectors that should encourage a constant connection with the citizens spells the ‘end of empire’ in most history books. Municipalities, cultural and academic institutions and suchlike need proactive leadership, which is open to ideas that come from outside the portals of a closed-door government machinery. People know best about civilization and all its elements — which is why insular governments need to learn from their subjects.
Where is the excitement for change? Why are our institutions in a condition that embarrasses us? Why have we permitted the lowest tender everywhere? Why does a civilization such as ours not have a university comparable to Bologna, Oxford, Heidelberg or Harvard? We were innovators. We produced the most impressive philosophers, chroniclers, mathematicians, astronomers; then lost our strength through the later half of the last century into the new millennium.
