Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours
by Gita Dewan Verma
Penguin Books India, 2002, New Delhi, paperback, pp xxiv + 183, INR 200;
ISBN 0-14-302875-8
"What are we waiting for? A bloody revolution?" Gita Dewan Verma demands with a mixture of old-fashioned anger, frustration and impatience in the concluding lines of Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours. The book is a passionate critique of the haphazard and insensitive urban development initiatives that have converted more than half of modern India's city spaces into slums that no society with even a modicum of sensitivity ought to consign its citizens to. And her suggested method for resolving this appalling chaos is typically simple and old-fashioned too:
Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours
by Gita Dewan Verma
Penguin Books India, 2002, New Delhi, paperback, pp xxiv + 183, INR 200;
ISBN 0-14-302875-8
"What are we waiting for? A bloody revolution?" Gita Dewan Verma demands with a mixture of old-fashioned anger, frustration and impatience in the concluding lines of Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours. The book is a passionate critique of the haphazard and insensitive urban development initiatives that have converted more than half of modern India's city spaces into slums that no society with even a modicum of sensitivity ought to consign its citizens to. And her suggested method for resolving this appalling chaos is typically simple and old-fashioned too:
I do not have yet another 'original' theory for a new, improved model for urban development arising out of my limited understanding just to pander to my own desire to be original. I only suggest that since the path we have taken in the last few years does not seem to be going anywhere we want to, we should just get into reverse gear and reach a better point to trace a new path…
Accordingly, she reserves her most bitter criticism for what she terms Contemporary Urban Development (CUD). Verma's formulation is simple: over the years, a number of master plans, programmes and policies, including the Draft National Slum Policy of the late 1990s, have been put together at the instance of various arms of government, often with the help of planning professionals and non-governmental organisations (that might or might not know anything about city planning). Many of these plans have provisions built into them that, if implemented, might actually make a difference for the better. Then why is it that nothing is ever done until some kind of crisis situation is reached, and even then, instead of going back to follow the provisions offered by existing policy documents, the first – and often only – thing that Those in Charge (another of Verma's terms) do is to call for a fresh set of studies or policies?