Bungle In The Jungle ... And The City

This news from Calcutta grabbed my attention:

“The war drums of the Maoist threat in Lalgarh boomed on the streets of Kolkata on Friday as thousands of tribals brandishing axes, swords and bows and arrows put up an unprecedented show of strength less than a kilometre from the state's seat of power in Writers' Buildings.”

Do read the full report.

Note that these tribal “Maoists” are led by a body that calls itself People's Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA).

Something is very wrong with our government system.

Everyone, from all classes of life, is disaffected.

People in the jungle are unhappy.

People in the cities are unhappy.

While Manmohan parrots on about “reviving the economy in 100 days.” Ideally, The State is nothing but magistrates and police – neither of whom have anything to do with The Economy.

And why wait 100 days: If you closed down the customs and excise departments at one stroke, The Economy would take off in one day.

And the take off would occur in cities, where The Market is to be found.

The future is Urban – and it is therefore vital that we get our cities and towns functioning properly.

For this, good roads are essential – good roads within cities, and good roads between cities and satellite towns. This will spread urbanization. This will also be “energy-efficient,” because pot-holed streets, traffic jams etc. waste energy in megatons.

For this reason, today’s editorial in the Times of India titled “Urban Futures” should be considered poppycock. Not one word is mentioned about roads. Instead, the entire argument is based on the phony philosophy of “sustainability” – a philosophy that finds poverty sustainable, but prosperity not so. In India, TERI is the fountainhead of this false philosophy – and the editorial is based entirely on ideas propounded by TERI.

Without any mention of roads.

What about New Public Management? – which prescribes a barebones local government that provides basic services by contracting them out to private firms; a public administration that does not require an elaborate bureaucracy.

These are the kind of ideas we need for running our cities and towns, not “sustainability.”

Cities are eminently sustainable: today, 60 per cent of the globe is urban, living on just 5 per cent of the total land on the earth. If these people dispersed into rural and agrarian communities, it would not be sustainable. Millions would starve.