How Gandhinagar Transformed From Gandhian To GIFT City !
BY R.K.MISRA
More than a decade after Chandigarh was built, the
planners of Gandhinagar had the opportunity to re-envision a city with
different or local influences. Instead, Gandhinagar was an opportunity lost. It
furthered the experiment in independent India’s urbanisation trajectory which
began with the famed Le Corbusier planning Chandigarh and Otto Koenigsberger
drawing Bhubaneswar, but Gandhinagar had neither the political symbolism of the
former nor the blend of modern and traditional of the latter. In the last two
decades, driven by a political-industry push, Gandhinagar expanded well beyond
the plan to become almost a twin city to Ahmedabad. Even as the planned capital
appears somewhat frozen in time, the master plan means little as newer areas
see a swathe of land transactions and large-scale constructions which could
have adverse ecological implications.
Well into its 63rd year of
conceptualisation, Gandhinagar which was planned and built on a greenfield site
north of Ahmedabad as the capital city of the then newly-carved out Gujarat
state has an identity crisis. The question about this third Indian city to be
planned and built in the post-independence years, after Chandigarh and
Bhubaneswar, is simply this: Will it retain its identity or become another suburb
of Ahmedabad?
When it was
formed in 1960 by separating districts from the erstwhile Bombay Presidency,
Gujarat needed to have a showpiece capital after its attempts to get Bombay
failed. Ahmedabad was a crowded and bustling commercial hub. Gujarat chose to
seed its new capital city in the image of its most prodigious son, Mahatma
Gandhi.
When cities
are birthed – planned from scratch and built with political purpose – they are
laden with promise and grow with aspirations. They carry hope, motives, and work
as platforms for dreams that people and governments bring to them. A few cities
rise above their brick-and-mortar structures to symbolise something larger;
others remain at the basic level never really acquiring an identity of their
own. Gandhinagar, perhaps, falls somewhere in between.
Given that
it was newly created, it cannot flaunt heritage and history as Ahmedabad can or
Mumbai as a state capital can. There is little to conserve. Like Chandigarh,
Gandhinagar too was planned and built as a political-administrative capital but
without as many flourishes of Modernism. So, it carries a functional look with
straight lines, unornamented facades, and wide tree-lined roads along neatly
laid-out sectors.
In its initial days, as the
government of Gujarat moved in, employees and even journalists resisted going
26-30 kilometres away from Ahmedabad. Stories abound of how the government
would arrange for buses to ferry people and how it allotted plots or bungalows
to accredited journalist-representatives. The Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar corridor
now has better infrastructure and more people can afford cars. The commuter
traffic remains heavy and the fortunate have homes in both cities. There is a
torrential rush to buy in Gandhinagar but land is scarce, so the prices are
steep and come with conditions attached.
A fair
share of the original 30 sectors was apportioned to the Raj Bhavan, government
offices, ministerial enclaves and so on. Then came the residential quarters of
serving government officers and staff, and thereafter subsided plots and easy
loans for officials who built houses back then. Some of these are up for sale
but at exorbitant prices; also, part of the sale proceeds has to be deposited
with the government. This is the old tranquil Gandhinagar. When peripheral
areas were de-reserved for the private sector, multi-storey residential and
business establishments came up, encircling this city.
The
backstory
The idea of Gandhinagar,
according to published accounts, had been floated before Gujarat was formally
inaugurated on May 1, 1960. Dr Jivraj Mehta, chief minister-designate had
announced nearly two months earlier that the capital of Gujarat would be the
newly created city of Gandhinagar named after the Mahatma. The site selected
was no more than a cluster of some dozen dusty villages, north of Ahmedabad on
the banks of Sabarmati River.
Gandhinagar
was furthering an experiment in independent India’s urbanisation trajectory
which began with the famed Le Corbusier planning Chandigarh and Otto
Koenigsberger drawing up Bhubaneswar. But Gandhinagar had neither the political
symbolism of Chandigarh nor the blend of modern and traditional of Bhubaneswar.
It emerged as an alternative in the political struggle between the princely
Baroda and industrial Ahmedabad to be anointed as the capital city. The
preliminary report, in 1961, noted that “various alternative sites near Baroda
and Ahmedabad were considered, a rapid reconnaissance was carried out, and the
advantages and disadvantages of these sites was carefully examined”. However,
both the cities were overlooked in favour of the greenfield site.
The first
stone was laid on August 2, 1965. Planned and implemented by HK Mewada and
Prakash M Apte over the next five years with support from a helpful group of
architects, planners and industrialists, Gandhinagar was visualised as a
verdant green city. It was designed to mirror the best of Gujarat’s rich
heritage by merging traditional town planning with a modern outlook, yet
reflecting the principles of the Mahatma whose historic Sabarmati Ashram stood
south of the planned capital.
For nearly
four-five years after the formation of Gujarat, there was hardly any movement
on the making of Gandhinagar. It took an editorial in Ahmedabad-based
newspaper, Prabhat, on June 24, 1964, pointing out that “a backward country
like Morocco had shown more efficiency and planning in developing its capital
at Agadir than the Gujarat government had” which stung the government into
action. Officials were forced to admit that the master plan of Gandhinagar had
not been finalised.
Modernism through Mewada
In January 1965, the
Cornell-educated HK Mewada, who had worked in Chandigarh with Le Corbusier, was
appointed the chief town planner and architectural advisor for the new capital
city project. He was also made head of the newly created Town Planning and
Architecture department. By April 1966, the master plan for Gandhinagar had
been prepared and approved by the Gujarat government.
Mewada was
influenced in no small measure by Le Corbusier but he was also influenced by
Karl B Lohmann, Professor of Landscape Architecture and City Planning, at
universities across the United States. Lohmann’s ideas were expressed by Mewada
in planning Gandhinagar and the former wrote this: “Mewada has shown not only
special talent for hard and creative work in research design and in other
aspects of the planning field but he has also demonstrated an unusual
capacity.”
Mewada was
inducted into government service on a salary of Rs 3,000 a month. Being US
trained with a year’s experience of working with Le Corbusier made him
attractive. Like Chandigarh by his master, Mewada too imagined the greenfield
city as a display of Modernism with touches of Gandhism.
The plan
Gandhinagar was divided into
30 sectors, each of one kilometre by one three-fourth kilometre size. The
government buildings – Secretariat and the Legislature or Vidhan Sabha – was
placed at the heart of the city in Sector 10. The majority of sectors were
residential, and each was planned as a complete unit with all basic facilities
such as schools, shopping, and gardens in its centre for easy accessibility.
Roads were in a grid pattern and a hierarchy of roads connected individual
sectors. Private housing had been provided along with government housing. Defence
establishments were situated on the eastern bank of Sabarmati River.
As in
Chandigarh, here too the urban growth around the capital was regulated by a
Gujarat New Capital (Periphery) Control Act, 1960, which restricted the
expansion around the Gandhinagar Notified Area (GNA). The Act was repealed in
2003, after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the state in 2001, on
the grounds that establishing the Gandhinagar Urban Development Authority
(GUDA) in 1996 had made it redundant.
In its
imagination and scope, Gandhinagar was a version of Chandigarh. And therein
lies what possibly is its drawback. Coming to the drafting table more than a
decade after Chandigarh had been built, the planners had the opportunity to
fill in the lacunae in the Chandigarh approach and re-envision a new city with
other – different or more local – influences. In this sense, perhaps
Gandhinagar was an opportunity lost.
However, in
later decades, the master plan itself has meant little as Gandhinagar outside
the GNA has seen massive development with land transactions and large-scale
construction with the involvement of the private sector, even as the planned
capital city appears somewhat frozen in time. This raises questions about the
viability of planning cities that outlive their scope in a few decades.
A planner objects
Gandhinagar’s expansion in
recent years made architect Apte, who had partnered Mewada, express his angst.
In 2011, he wrote a well-travelled essay titled ‘Gandhinagar Endangered: A
Capital’s Plan Dismantled’ which laid out a number of points. I understand that
it was marked to then chief minister Narendra Modi, but if there was a
reaction, it is not known.
Apte, in a
forthright manner, had pointed out that by design or otherwise, the re-planning
of Gandhinagar by consultants of the Gandhinagar Urban Development Authority
(GUDA) had obliterated its identity as a capital city, weakened its consciously
designed axial plan and egalitarian approach, and dismantled the Gandhian
ethos. The juggernaut of unbridled capitalism, he added, had led to the
debasement and inorganic extension of Gandhinagar, and it was becoming just
another suburb of Ahmedabad. In about a decade after this critique, Gandhinagar
is well on its way to be that suburb or a twin city.
Could this
have been avoided? Apte’s contention was that the master plan had provided the
basis to ensure that Gandhinagar retains its identity and does not become an
extension of Ahmedabad. The growth of the city, according to him, was planned
towards northwest, the Sabarmati being the border towards the east and the
industrial area to the north. The original city was planned for a population of
1,50,000 but if the floor area ratio (FAR) was increased from 1 to 2, it could
have easily accommodated twice that; additional sectors planned in the
northwest could accommodate another 4,50,000 thus providing for nearly 7,50,000
population.
This
planning has been turned around on its head as Gandhinagar was made to expand
southwards, towards Ahmedabad. It became profitable for people to have
properties in both cities. As private land developers inevitably became part of
this expansion, the market value of land outside the planned Gandhinagar
soared; the land market here is now the most profitable and attractive part – a
far cry from the plan.
In this
expansion, which came from political-private capital push, the original plan
was neither reviewed for what it offered nor were the planners consulted,
according to Apte. The southward expansion, driven purely by the profit motive
and detrimental of the original urban design, would dent the identity of
Gandhinagar, he feared.
Whither
Gandhinagar
Even as the old Gandhinagar,
built according to the plan, seems stuck in time – opening up a possible future
market of redevelopment – the scope of the city has moved well beyond the plan.
In fact, the Gujarat government is set to appoint a committee to make Ahmedabad
and Gandhinagar into twin cities. The committee, from information sourced by
this writer, will be responsible for synchronising development projects of the
municipal corporations of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar as well as villages and
small towns under Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar urban development authorities (AUDA
and GUDA); these two may also be merged.
The
Metropolitan Area Planning Authority, first planned in 2009, is likely to be
brought into existence too. Highly placed sources in the government are clear
that considering the fast-paced growth of the two cities, “the state government
(has) planned merger of the two urban development authorities”. The Periphery
Act was repealed in 2003; this brought 68 villages of Kadi, Kalol, Daskroi and
Sanand talukas into the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority. Two decades
after the repeal, the safeguarded green cover around Gandhinagar has virtually
disappeared yielding a concrete jungle, making the old city an island
surrounded by high-rises.
This
expansion to the south, towards Ahmedabad, has ruined the original plan’s most
important concept, the central vista, according to Apte and others. It was to
be naturally extended to the southwest maintaining the axis as the city
expanded. More than 6,000 acres of green cover to the southwest have been
bought or taken by big land developers; similarly, seven gamthans (village settlements) abutting the city
have been arbitrarily allowed private residential development; and a
five-kilometre belt of land on both sides of the Koba-Gandhinagar expressway
has been designated for commercial use with a FAR of 2. Together, these major
design changes will impact Gandhinagar.
According
to the Census of India and local records, the population within the Gandhinagar
Municipal Corporation area grew by 6,791 people from 2001 to 2011 while the
population outside it grew by 46,073 in the same decade. Repealing the
Periphery Control Act had a major impact; additionally, the land use changes
along the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad corridor which increased commercial area from
0.66 per cent to 3.9 per cent also left its impact.
Mega project changes city
The setting up of the Gujarat
International Finance Tec (GIFT) City, a pet project of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, in the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad corridor meant a boost to areas outside the
originally planned Gandhinagar. The GIFT City with 886 acres worth Rs 78,000
crore (in 2015), billed as a better business hub than Mumbai, rivalling Dubai
and Singapore, still remains a work in progress despite a massive push from the
highest levels in the government.
The Prime
Minister’s Office reportedly set up a monitoring cell for GIFT City in the
early days of Modi as PM, and inter-ministerial meetings were held every month
to iron out glitches in this colossal project nestling in the armpit of
Gandhinagar. Corporates that were reluctant to move earlier discovered a
new-found love for the ‘city’ and many banks shifted their backroom operations.
Within a year, GIFT City had sold rights to 12.5 million square feet space
though its target was only 10 million; by 2015, two 30-storey towers, each 123
metres high, were reaching for the sky.
With the
focus on GIFT City and similar large projects, other areas of Gandhinagar are
mostly starved of attention. In many ways, the deliberate push to GIFT City as
an international financial hub also marked the erasure of Gandhian principles
which formed the original plan of Gandhinagar. For all the advantages that
accrue to Gandhinagar from having a chief minister welcoming the private sector
and later as the prime minister of the country, the state capital itself has
come to symbolise little of value in India’s urbanisation. It has been
deliberately allowed to be overtaken by a largely privatised expansion whose
imagination of the city is different.
The credit
for dwarfing Gandhinagar must go to Modi, who showed little patience for the
city’s old plan and ethos. By the time he left the state to be the prime
minister in 2014, Gandhinagar had changed beyond recognition. It had drifted
far from the vision of its founding fathers – dwarfed by later versions of
development and high-rises, a pale shadow of its imagination.
https://questionofcities.org/how-gandhinagar-transformed-from-gandhian-city-to-gift-city/
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