Anagha Speaks

Ganesh utsav is just over and streets are in the process of regaining the sanity (?) that they had prior to the festival in Pune. Last week, everyone (that is, every middle class person who drives a car), was talking about the inconvenience of the streets - the large pandals, the distracting banners and generally an atmosphere where groups of people were together on the streets. The result was obviously, traffic jams, delayed travel times and generally high level of frustration! Despite tha above, I cctually feel that the ability of Indian cities to 'multi' use its streets is amazing. The conversion of streetscapes from plain to festive, overnight, is something that amazes most people abroad. The informality of the use of our streets, or their 'adaptability', is something most cities in the West try and fail, while we have it here in our Indian cities. Of course, you will argue that conversion of streets is fun, but what about the traffic jams! But I will counter arg...

I recently read an interesting study article published by CNN sent to me by a Belgian friend, who, unfortunately, happened to meet me in Pune at my busiest time of the year! All through our lunch together, I was either receiving calls, responding to calls or furiously writing emails on my Blackberry. And when he found this article on Indian women, stress and their time commitments, he immediately forwarded it to me. Here is the article in a nutshell: " (CNN) - A recent study released by the Nielsen Company that examines the consumer and media habits of women in emerging and developed countries has found that women in India are the most stressed. The Women of Tomorrow Study, which examined 6,500 women across 21 different nations from February through April 2011, found that an overwhelming 87% of Indian women said they felt stressed most of the time, with 82% claiming they had no time to relax. Indian women are not alone. The vast majority of Mexican (74%) and Russian (69%) w...

Two days ago, I came across a very pertinent news article in Hindustan Times of May 16, 2011 titled as 'Our Forbidden Cities'. In my Environmental Planning class, for Masters students in Architecture, I make it a point to point out that Cities are Beautiful and Cities are the future! I often get glances from students suggesting why I should prefer rural over the urban, as most of 'us' fondly remember our sojourns to villages and yearn for the calm pace of life it offers. But it is necessary for India to accept the fact that cities are here to stay and sooner we accept this, better equipped we will be to tackle the so called monster of 'urbanization'. The author Francesco Giavazzi of 'Our Forbidden Cities' argues the case that today a youth in Mumbai gets a heavy pay packet to carry home, promising a comfortable lifestyle in India, yet the yearning to choose Singapore or Dubai or even London is because this representative Indian youth is looking for a c...

In January 2011, the new year began with an amazing three day interaction with Philippe Vandenbroeck, from Belgium, who conducted a workshop on Building Scenarios . He introduced to us the wonderful tool in which we, as Planners, can start envisioning what our cities, our neighborhoods can be, say 20 years from now! Of course, the envisioning happens in a structured and logical manner, where we look at current existing issues, policies, political and governance frameworks to understand and evolve the possibilities of "where will we be in 2030". The Scenario Methodology, in the past 2-3 decades, has emerged to address the growing 'uncertainty' in knowing what the future can be. It is a way to address the realities of people and people behaviors in projecting a 'future', which cannot be accurately derived from data crunching. The process is participative, where citizens become a part of the envisioning process for their own cities. Unlike the 'non people ori...

On Sunday, I attended a lecture by renowed theatre and film personality Girish Karnad. He was speaking on the subject of 'Colonial Influences on Art forms of India' as a part of a programme organized in the memory of Master composer and musician Bhaskar Chandavarkar on Sunday 25 July 2010 in Pune.As an Architect-Planner, I was thrilled to hear Girish Karnad make references to the formation of cities in India by the British, which in turn was a major turning point for all visual and performing arts in India. He brought out the fact that before the three British cities namely, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, were established, the Indian cities like Pune, Lucknow, Kolhapur and many others were more contiguous with its hinterlands. So while these urban pockets were primarily 'urban' in character, the lifestyles of people and economic wealth was closely linked and similar to those in the rural fringes and the hinterlands. When the three British cities were established, these we...