Sunday Posts

William Gibson had a point when he said - the future is already here, just that it is not evenly distributed. The same thing can be said about the past, which refuses to go away.  The city I come from - Kolkata, India - retains a large slice of the past. A visitor may see in Kolkata people who have lost hope. A people who is clinging to the past - they are justifiably proud of their great citizens - but the future has been erased out of all conversations. All the dilapidated buildings, all the great clocks situated all around the city which have stopped working, the noisy tram cars and the procession of Ambassador cars, modeled after a GM model from the 60s which is now out of production, make this a city of all-embracing nostalgia. It is no surprise that the young people leave. They go away searching for better education, jobs, money and lives - to other Indian cities and abroad. They leave behind parents who talk incessantly about them - even their bright future...

Indian cities today represent different layers of Indian history: Cities like Varanasi our distant Hindu past, Delhi and Ahmedabad our Muslim heritage, Surat, Mumbai and Calcutta sport the symbols of British times and the new ones, Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar and New Delhi, reflect the ambitions of Independent India. I shall argue that time has come to build a new layer altogether. That of small city talent clusters. Many large Indian cities are at a breaking point. Their population is too large, the public services inadequate, the local governance too remote and ineffective, and their development in reverse gear. For all the mystic of Mumbai , anywhere to anywhere takes more than an hour to travel. All the joys of Calcutta gets undone by the remoteness, insensitivity and corruption of its city fathers. The story is same for all the large cities, not to mention the pollution and the social disconnect it invariably creates. We seem to be following the Industrial Revolution model, that...

I referred to my discussions with Sudhakar Ram previously and my interest and association with his New Constructs initiative. While he looks at seven such constructs - success, work, consumption, learning, governance, wellness and globalization - one of his idea is particularly intriguing. That of a future of villages. It is counter-intuitive, as the model of development we know is based on cities. In our minds, more cities mean more progress. We acquire farming land to build factories, and housing for workers, and count that as a sure sign of economic development. Besides, if someone talks about village-based development, we take the person as either Maoist, or Mad, or an impossible idealist without any grounding of reality. Since Mr Ram is clearly not one of those, it did make me listen up and think through what he was saying. And, it made sense. To start with, cities are industrial creation. Or, more correctly, modern cities are. Medieval cities were primarily trading outposts. The...

Every bit of statistic indicate India is making great economic progress, except in the look and feel of its cities. It is rather obvious in what one sees while the plane approaches to land in Shanghai, the glittering towers, or Dubai, the Desert trail melting into an always busy metropolis of tall buildings and shiny cars, and in Mumbai : Endless slums with blue tarpaulin . Then, once outside the airport, the hustle of bazzar ; on the streets, the feel of swelling population and poverty, and chaos everywhere. Looking at this, every commentator wonders how India actually works. One marvels at the achievements of the Indian Industry and asks around how businesses could still function with the crumbling infrastructure. Non-resident Indians endlessly complain how nothing actually works as it should, and residents display a studied indifference or immense ingenuity to find ways around when they don't. India was in the public imagination through two award winning attempts last year. Two ...