The Human, Urban "Environment"

My previous post talked of Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi's "six-point programme." One of these read:

Fourth: environmental sustainability.

Now, this is all about tigers and elephants, about "climate change alarmism," about the Coastal Zone Regulation Act, about the Forest Service, about plastic...

What about the "human environment"? What about the "human habitat" - which is The City?

This lead editorial in the Indian Express of today is telling: it is about the deep level of "resentment" that the citizens of Bombay are feeling after the recent real estate scam involving the armed forces. This is the concluding paragraph:

Mumbai is not strangling itself. Its people remain as they always have, among the most entrepreneurial in the world. Its government is strangling it. Nothing is needed more than a straightforward reform of how property is managed; this has been known for years, and yet it hangs unimplemented. Old-fashioned, land-ceiling thinking must go. A proper register of land holdings must be created. Places still in thrall to half-century old rent legislation must be freed to have a proper market operate. Only then will political and criminal control of apartments, which the people of Mumbai so resent, end.

Methinks we should forget about the tigers and elephants in the wild for a few years and focus on getting the cities - the ant-hills of human colonists, where markets exist - fixed. No "panchayati raj" nonsense either - the focus should be on Mayors, each running his own city. A historical model that I have an essay on in my new book is the Lord Mayor of Olde City of London - the "one square mile" that in one of the world's oldest centres of Capitalism. This office is older than the Magna Carta. The interesting thing is that the Lord Mayor is never paid. Indeed, he has to spend a lot of his own money during his term on lavish banquets and so on. He is one of the richest men in the city - and he loses money because while in office he cannot "mind his own business" during his term. Thus, many times those elected have refused the office - and then they are fined! It is a very interesting history - and I hope you will enjoy my essay.