Don’t keep parks open 24*7
BMC’s 24×7 garden policy is unfeasible and would also cause law and order problems. Free public parks in the city are mostly used by the poor as lavatories wherever there are toilet facilities available by those who don’t have toilets at home. Public toilets in the city are crowded during morning hours and parks as well as gardens become a convenient alternative. Public parks after sunset are mostly frequented by couples for sexual activities which makes them unfit for children and elderly. Drug addiction at these places too are common during night hours.
Proper lighting at big parks throughout the night for a few people too would be a costly affair apart from policing them that would be an additional cost. Toilet facilities at parks should be charged a nominal fee so that they are not misused and kept clean by the house keeping staff. Every public place needs maintenance as well and keeping them open at all hours in a city like Mumbai is untenable as well as unadvisable. Even the local trains don’t operate for a few hours at night and so should be the parks and gardens
S.N. Kabra
Why not construct a new capital for India?
It refers to ambitious plan to build a new most-modern and spacious building for Parliament, and a composite big complex to house offices of all the central ministries at one place. All this coupled with other related plans like to develop Rajpath and other areas of Leyton New Delhi will cost very heavily to the exchequer. Presently capital-city of New Delhi has become over-saturated and unplanned with so many new buildings being erected from time to time to originally systematic planned New Delhi way back in the year 1931.
Many countries in the world and even states in India have preferred developing new capital-cities rather than spending too much for added requirements in the existing capitals. India presently virtually has a separate economic capital Mumbai in addition to main capital-city of New Delhi. Any heavy expenditure like on a new Parliament House in outdated capital-city will be like spending on a costly silky patch-work on an old costume.
Best is to develop an altogether new well-planned capital-city of India somewhere in middle of the country to be almost equi-distant from remote corners of India, and may also serve as economic capital of India. New city can be planned in a manner that residences of office-goers may be near to their offices requiring minimum local transport. Site for new capital should be chosen keeping in view future systematic expansion, and may be least affected by natural calamities like floods etc. Delhi should be expanded to be a full state by taking some nearing areas of bordering Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
Madhu Agarwal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
