Hijacking Chandigarh

Under the esoteric title, Chandigarh: 50 Years of the Idea, a cast of international and Indian architects assembled there to debate the city’s future. But why was the ChandigarhAdministration keen to hold this seminar at this point in time? Since when are “ideas” celebrated at a cost of Rs 40 to 50 lakh? If money to pay for the air fares of delegates from the US, Britain and elsewhere was provided by overseas sources, how was the Chandigarh Administration able to exercise such leverage with them? Or was an Indian architect with a vested interest instrumental in setting up this seminar? While the fund’s source is immaterial, its timing isn’t.

Because clearly, the entire exercise — over a mere idea — was undertaken to first validate the trashing of Chandigarh’s master plan and architectural controls, then open the way for architects to land ego-inflating jobs in Corbusier’s city with the help of an all-too-eager administration. If in the process the overall design concept of the city had to be sacrificed, so be it. Big deals are not swung by thinking small, and they are seldom swung by the squeamish or the faint-hearted.

A few words about Chandigarh’s founding will placethings in perspective. With Lahore, capital of the truncated state of Punjab falling to Pakistan’s share after the partition of India, Jawaharlal Nehru took the brilliant decision to send two emissaries, P.N. Thapar and P.L. Varma, around the world in search of the finest designer for a new capital for the portion of Punjab left in India. Le Corbusier was the man they chose and the Himalayan foothills 160 miles north of Delhi was the site selected for the new city.

Meeting for the first time in February 1951, Corbusier and his team took six weeks to draw up plans for the city’s first phase which would contain 150,000 people, its eventual population being 500,000. The plan was approved in the same year and work proceeded at such an impressive pace that the new capital was inaugurated on October 7, 1953 though many sectors took longer to finish. The city plan was not entirely Corbusier’s since it was based on a proposal by New York’s Albert Mayer who had been earlier asked to prepare a concept plan but hadwithdrawn after the tragic death of his creative young assistant, Mathew Nowicki, in a plane crash in 1950.

Corbusier designed the four principal buildings for the `Capitol’: the State Secretariat, High Court, Legislature, and the Governor’s House which is still to be built. His architecture exudes vitality, strength and an amazing exuberance, the 800-foot-long, eight-storey secretariat being one of the most exciting buildings designed anywhere in the world in this century. The rest of the city is divided into self-contained sectors, with provision for adding more. Neighbourhood markets and shopping centres cater to their needs in addition to which there is the major City Centre with its offices, shops, restaurants and such. Carefully planned roads knit the city together and care was taken to ensure that “no house (or building) door opens on a thoroughfare of rapid traffic”. This humane and sensitive attempt to insulate its residents from fast-moving vehicular traffic led Charles Correa — a leading lightof the seminar — to rather tastelessly call Chandigarh `a zanana city’.

To prevent its haphazard growth Chandigarh’s founders had with commendable foresight legislated the Capital (Periphery) Control Act of 1952 which disallowed major constructions within its 10-mile radius. They also established architectural controls for its orderly and disciplined development in the future. The first was flagrantly violated by the Punjab and Haryana governments who built the satellite towns of Mohali and Panchkula next to Chandigarh, while the violation of architectural controls is now advocated by the professionals themselves. In its own way this does reflect the perverse state of affairs in India today in which both the state and the professionals violate laws meant to preserve India’s urban sanity.

One of the more grotesque remarks at the seminar was made by MIT’s Julian Bienart who said of Corbusier, “The man is dead. Forget him and move on to plan for the future…” Equally dead is L’Enfant, the man whodesigned Washington D.C. in the 18th century. Why doesn’t Bienart scrap Washington’s master plan instead of Chandigarh’s?

“After listening carefully to each word at this seminar”, says Jeet Malhotra, Corbusier’s assistant for many years who went on to become Punjab’s Chief Architect, “I had the distinct feeling that the conference was planned by two or three architects for their own benefit in an intellectually and professionally dishonest manner. It would be a criminal act to destroy a unique city made possible by Nehru’s vision and Corbusier’s and Mayer’s creativity”.

Chandigarh’s runaway growth cannot be stopped by self-seeking, orchestrated expressions of concern for the city, but by first curbing the insatiable appetite of its Administration for doing the wrong thing. The right thing would be to develop more sectors for the unorganised categories of people and give them houses similar to those provided for the lowest rung of government employees in the original plan. But a strategy is required toprevent misuse of this facility. Existing industries which do not provide housing for their workers must also be compelled to do so.

The next step should be to develop an industrial town 70 to 80 miles away and permit no more industries around the city. The third step must be to rigidly enforce architectural controls and the Periphery Control Act.If the Chandigarh Administration drags its feet or insist on short-changing the country its motives and actions must be investigated. Chandigarh is too unique a national asset to be wasted so openly and wantonly.