Connaught Place: A classic case of heritage let down by inadequate policy

You can tell that the place is buckling under this substantial mass of people. Dhruv Munjal revisits a public pity; photos by Dalip Kumar

I  curse myself the moment I deboard at the Rajiv Chowk Metro station. Coming here on New Year’s Day is almost never a good idea, but today looks particularly bad. Rajiv Chowk, New Delhi’s inescapable vortex of chaos, is teeming with more people than usual. At the gate I exit from, entry has been temporarily suspended. A Central Industrial Security Force guard is holding back a large, argumentative group of people. “Andar saans nahi ayegi. Wait karo (You won’t be able to breathe in there. You must wait here),” he tells the group, before making an exception for a pregnant woman.

Outside, a sea of humanity has taken over the streets of Rajiv Chowk — better known as Connaught Place  and, to Delhiites, as CP. Thousands, dressed in all their finery, are here to revel in the festivities of the new year on a bitterly cold evening, the teeming numbers like endless specks on CP’s colonnaded expanse. You can tell that the place is buckling under this substantial mass of people. The Inner Circle is clogged, the bins are overflowing and the parking lots are in disarray. Somewhere in the distance, you can even hitch a ride on a camel — the spectacle that is Inner Circle from three metres above the ground is all yours for Rs 200. All this as more vehicles try to force their way in from the Outer Circle. What’s worse, the capital’s notorious smog is evidently peaking, but the stream of visitors shows no signs of ebbing.

Most corridor walls are besmirched by paan stains | Photo: Dalip Kumar

Disha Seth, a 22-year-old dental student, has had enough. The commotion has overwhelmed her and she is happy to soak in the warmth at the popular Smoke House Deli and sip on a tall mug of café mocha. “I came here for a stroll. But that’s just not possible,” she says. “You can’t do much about the number of people. But you can do something about the illegal hawkers that block the way and make moving around so difficult.”

The history notes etched on the black-and-white restaurant walls behind Seth tell stories from another time: of how CP was once a hunting ground for jackals and partridges; and before Metro construction began, there existed a jungle of kikar, gulmohar and jamun trees. “I’m guessing that must have been a much better time,” she laughs.

Seth’s ire is understandable. CP, once a prime exemplar of colonial architecture, is now symptomatic of everything that can go awry due to inadequate urban planning. The sad part is that all this comes after the 85-year-old market experienced a revival of sorts only a few years ago. Fuelled by a lengthy refurbishment drive and a string of new cafés, restaurants and pubs, CP once again became a popular hub for Delhiites, who for once stopped thronging the malls and instead embraced the fresh, open-air vibe of a space that had fallen off the public radar.

The mood has changed again. Frequenting CP now means routinely encountering hawkers selling earrings, handicrafts, world maps, phone covers, woollens, sunglasses, toys and fake Kylie cosmetics, and politely refusing volunteers from some NGO or the other badgering you for a donation. CP is no longer made for a peaceful amble.

A  day later, with the revelry of the new year over, CP is calmer, but not without its usual nuisances. At 5 pm, with dusk rapidly descending, hawkers are frantically setting up shop at the intersection between Block A and Block B. This crossing is especially busy and most prone to choking. At the corner, adjacent to each other are Wenger’s and Keventers, two classic joints that attract mad crowds on most days. The congestion is made worse by hawkers who block the passage, sometimes taking over entire benches meant for public seating.

 

Unlike the tobacconists, most hawkers here operate without licences. Until two years ago, the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) clarified that only 60 vendors would be allowed in and around the Inner Circle. The evidence of my eyes suggests that the number of vendors operating here is more than double.

When probed, some of them brandish old documents, most of these outdated stay orders. Two brothers selling phone covers outside the H&M store in B Block, show me a dodgy looking Supreme Court order. “This ‘shop’ has been around since 1975. When the police or the officials trouble us, we show them this. The others are illegally occupying land, not us,” says the younger one. You hear the same story elsewhere, too.

Hawkers have made walking around CP a nightmare | Photo: Dalip Kumar

“Efforts have been on to decongest CP. But there are multiple cases in court, and removing all the hawkers in one go is much harder than it seems,” says an NDMC official, on condition of anonymity.

According to Paras Khurana of the New Delhi Traders Association (NDTA), the NDMC runs checks every day and does its best to clean up the area, but the vendors keep coming back. “We try to inform the authorities whenever we can. But the moment the officials arrive, the vendors vanish. After a point, there is very little that you can do,” says Khurana, who owns a petrol pump in CP.

Decongestion efforts in the last few years haven’t been limited to just the eviction of unauthorised vendors. In February 2017, the NDMC, in collaboration with the urban development ministry and the Delhi Police, was poised to make the Inner and Middle Circles no-vehicle zones as a part of a three-month pilot. The programme ran into rough weather soon after its announcement, with traders protesting that the move would drastically impact business and also cause traffic snarls along the Outer Circle.

“If only pedestrians are allowed in CP, it will become another Chandni Chowk. The parking lots would be empty and the hawkers would multiply,” argues Khurana. “And what would I do with my petrol pump?”

Shop owners obviously don’t mind the swelling crowds, but paradoxically, business isn’t exactly flourishing. At the 84-year-old Jain Book Agency, the salesman tells me that despite the huge numbers outside, business is thanda (cool).

The rooftop that collapsed in February 2017 | Photo: Dalip Kumar

At the newly opened Colonnade, a restaurant complex that launched with the popular Big Chill Café, few are walking through its roadside-themed courtyard, complete with checkerboard floor tiles, artificial palm trees and dazzling miniature streetlights. Other cafés, mostly places for a quick drink, are only half full — the sheer volume of restaurants in the area means that competition is stiff. Which is not to say that business opportunities have shrunk; serial restaurateurs such as Priyank Sukhija (Tamasha, Lord of the Drinks, Warehouse Café, The Town House Café) and Umang Tewari (The Vault Café, Garam Dharam, Local) continue to remain bullish on CP for its central location and popularity as a nightlife zone. Gym chain Anytime Fitness and phone-maker OnePlus, which recently opened outlets here, are hoping for the same. 

Incidentally, Jain Book Agency is in the same building where a rooftop collapsed in February 2017. The caving-in led to the NDMC sealing the terraces of as many as 21 restaurants; they continue to remain shut. Restaurant owners were blamed for excessively burdening CP’s heritage structures.

“The fact that CP has gone from being a shopping district to mainly an entertainment hub is not a bad thing at all. You have to adapt to the newest trends,” says historian Swapna Liddle, whose latest book, Connaught Place and the Making of Delhi, was released last November. “What worries me as a heritage lover is that there are too many ad-hoc changes to the buildings. Structurally, there is very little concern for whether the changes are sensible or not.”

Some traders say that the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC), the body that approves renovations and repairs, sits on requests for months. “Some of these structures are really old. They break down not due to neglect or extra load, but because we are not allowed to repair them in time,” says Rajender Khanna, who owns a textile shop.

No member of the HCC or the NDMC’s chief architect’s office responded to emails or text messages for this article.

The problem of crumbling infrastructure has been compounded by the presence of multiple begging cartels and an overall lack of cleanliness. NDMC workers sweep the area daily and dustbins are around in plenty. But almost all corridor walls — painted an immaculate white — are besmirched by ghastly red paan stains. Moreover, despite the authorities’ best efforts, upkeep is perhaps made all the more difficult by a dearth of civic sense.

“A lot of people prefer malls because you just don’t face these problems. Dirty streets and beggars everywhere ruin your experience,” feels Seth.
 

For the longest time, CP’s egalitarian appeal has held it in good stead — even over the ever-burgeoning malls, with their fancier stores and swankier settings. “A lot of people get intimidated by the malls. The challenge is to not make CP too pristine. At the same time, people must be afforded as much space as they can,” says Liddle. “As it is, public places in Delhi are extremely limited.”

The NDMC, for instance, hopes to use subways for exhibitions and other public events. In August, the one on Janpath (one of the “radial roads” leading off CP) was transformed into a temporary art gallery. But here, too, maintenance is in a shambles. The interior is dingy, feels unsafe and the escalators almost never work. What’s more, the gates are locked as early as 9 pm on some days, making the challenge of getting to the other side of the road potentially fatal. “Because the volume of traffic is high, pedestrian traffic lights are needed, and we have made a request to the Delhi Traffic Police for those,” says Khurana.

The Outer Circle seems relatively untouched by all the merrymaking from New Year’s Day. A lone paanwallah sits opposite the Lazeez Affaire restaurant, whose modern, elegant façade is in perfect juxtaposition to the very 1940s architecture of Hotel York next door — the present and past of CP. As I buy chewing gum from a paanwalla, he makes sure I throw the wrapper in the cardboard bin at his feet. That’s when I think: All may not be lost for CP just yet.