October 2 : Indian City/Town Planning & Development - “I regard the growth of cities as an evil
thing, unfortunate for mankind and the world, unfortunate for England and certainly unfortunate for
India. The British have exploited India through its cities. The latter have exploited the villages. The
blood of the villages is the cement with which the edifice of the cities is built. I want the blood that is
today inflating the arteries of the cities to run once again in the blood vessels of the villages.” –
Gandhi in 1946.
October 2 is the birth anniversary of “the father of Indian nation”, M K Gandhi & it is also the
birthday of “the father of Town-Planning”, Patrick Geddes. The two actually met briefly once in 1917
in Indore & Geddes subsequently sent a copy of his magnum opus, “Indore Town Plan – Volume 1 &
2” to Gandhi. But after a brief exchange of letters in 1918 where Geddes chided Gandhi on his
English aesthetics in “using customs & rituals of British congress” instead of the more democratic
“amphi-theatres of the Greeks” ( Gandhi replied that he personally preferred “India style MorningMaidans”), the two didn’t collaborate. Rabindranath Tagore on the other hand seized every
opportunity to interact with Geddes & their correspondence on various facets of Education & on the
concept of a perspective changing Museum as a form of emphasizing global citizenship over
nationalism, makes a compelling read even today. Tagore & Geddes’s sons took their collaboration
even further. Rabindranath Tagore even dedicated a poem he wrote on education, to Geddes.
Patrick Geddes, the Scottish polymath was exactly 15 years elder to Gandhi. Trained as a botanist, he
saw the adverse impact of the Industrial age on towns like Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool etc
around him. He took on planning experiments in his neighbourhood in Edinburgh town, and
developed an analytical model on the evolution of Social life in towns & urban habitations, which
today is recognized as the foundation of Urban Planning globally. In his lifetime, much of the urban
plans he developed ( including 44 for Indian cities, over 8 years living in India), were rejected by the
British ( Raj) Government because they often took the local resident’s lifestyles & perspectives into
consideration & advocated a slower assimilation rather than big construction to facilitate new
transportation ( cars & railways introduction years). Geddes’s analysis of a town always focused on
the correlation between Work (Occupations), the Place ( Geography/Ecology around) & the Folk (
People living there & their customs). Such sympathy to the local population was always frowned on
by the English men in the Raj government & it was the primary reason why he, the best townplanner in the world , nor his friend & admirer, the London based famous architect ( Henry Vaughan
Lancaster), were given any role in the making of a new capital city of India, in Delhi in 1911. Lutyens
& later the Freemason, Herbert Baker were invited to create Delhi instead. Much of Geddes’s work
has only been recognized in hindsight, nearly 60 years after his death in 1932, when the real value of
his central message of keeping a “ Culture & Nature balance” is really being understood in the
concrete jungles of modern cities. His model forced one to look at “bio-regionalism” i.e. the
“city/town in co-relation with the ecology of its region”. The city is never seen as dis-connected from
its villages.
Gandhi’s dislike for the cities had the same source as Geddes. He too had a first-hand experience of
seeing the English industrial towns & then an imposition of that industry in South African towns.
Upon returning to India at the age of 40, he travelled extensively across the country & understood
the value of villages to an agrarian economy. All his writings then focused on the village as the centre
of economic growth. He was strongly against the spread of Railways connecting different Indian
cities. Nehru on the other hand saw the Cities as the centre of economic growth. He rejected
Gandhi’s development ideas of India (as articulated by him in Hind Swaraj) when India became free
& argued with Gandhi just before his assassination saying - ‘A village, normally speaking, is backward
intellectually and culturally and no progress can be made from a backward environment. Narrowminded people are much more likely to be untruthful and violent.’ Through his long tenor as India’s
first PM, Nehru pushed for a city-centric, modern India taking on large development projects,
building dams, new cities ( with European designers) & expanding the transport networks. Its only
towards the end of his life that he appears to have realized the value of Gandhi’s ideas of “Small is
beautiful” development. The diversity of India had seen far too many grand project plans falter in
implementation.
With a better understanding of urbanization models globally, its now quite clear in planning circles
that it is not a City versus Village development, which should be debated but a bio-regional City in
the context of the villages & ecology, which should be the focus of development. What a pity that
Geddes & Gandhi didn’t spend much time together & Nehru never met him either.
Gandhi Quotes on Cities Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus, every village will be a republic having full powers. It
follows, therefore, that every village has to be self - sustained and capable of managing its affairs
even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world.
In this there is no room for machines that would displace human labour and that would concentrate
power in a few hands. Labour has its unique place in a cultured human family. Every machine that
helps every individual has a place.
Economic equality is the master key to non-violent independence. A nonviolent system of
government is clearly impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions
persists. The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the poor
labouring class nearby cannot last one day in a free India in which the poor will enjoy the same
power as the richest in the land. A violent and bloody revolution is a certainty one day unless there is
a voluntary abdication of riches and the power that riches give and sharing them for the common
good.
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Everybody should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to mak