Visitors from less privileged cities (and less privileged parts of the the city) marvel at the broad avenues and splendid greens that mark the colonial heart of the capital. More frequent visitors (and Delhi-ites, of course) notice that every now and then the shape and colour of kerb-stones in the central "bungalow zone" has changed - yet again. This has been going on for decades. One year the kerb-stones are made of local stone, the next they have been replaced by concrete blocks, only to be replaced in turn by local stone - but of a different shape. Sometimes they are square with sharp corners, other times the edges have been smoothed into curves, and on occasion there is even some bevelling done as an extra flourish. Sometimes red sandstone, associated with the city ever since it was used for the Central Secretariat, gets used for kerb-stones as well.
This creativity is overseen by the cash-rich New Delhi Municipal Council (which is responsible for this privileged zone), while less wealthy municipal bodies in the rest of the city struggle for funds. The babus who play with the shape, size and raw material of kerb-stones also fool around with their colour. The current talking point is a strange pink-green combination, introduced in recent weeks. The pattern earlier was either black and white, or yellow and black - both of which get easily picked up by car headlights. Pink and green do not, so as an after-thought they are adding intermediate stripes of white. What next? Mamata Banerjee's Kolkata blue?
The desire for constant change extends to the fencing around parks and lesser green patches. Early denizens of the city will recall a uniform pattern of single green wire that used to be curved and serially overlapped, making for fencing that was simple, low-cost, attractive and people-friendly (you could step over them and get onto a patch of green without the risk of your trouser or sari ripping because it had got caught in a sharp edge to the metal). That simple and elegant design made way long ago for a vast and ever changing array of fencing designs. All of them taller, sharper, with complicated curly-wees, and all of them more costly and reflecting an undisciplined creativity. Gone in the process is a signature design.
The Commonwealth Games of 2010 became an opportunity to re-introduce uniformity - which naturally meant ripping up every kerb-stone in sight and putting in new ones. New flagstone walkways were laid as side-walks, and new signages came up (personally hand-picked, it was said, by the then chief minister - who also chose new lamp-post designs and got into trouble for the bother). Nothing was wrong with most of the earlier lamp-posts; and many of the new signages came up in the middle of the new walkways, so you have to either walk around them (which means getting off the flagstones) or risk banging your head. If you have a sharp eye, you would also have noticed the mangled spellings used for roads named after illustrious personages, national and foreign. (As an aside, the sense of abundance reflected in such spending finds reflection in the vast, cavernous offices that government people have given to themselves in new buildings, like the ones that house the comptroller and auditor general, the Defence Research and Development Organisation, the new Prithvi Bhavan for the ministry of earth sciences, and such. Ditto with the new housing for senior government personages in "New Moti Bagh", as though acres of prime land cost nothing.)
Galbraith wrote half a century ago in his Ambassador's Journal that New Delhi was a city that was perennially being dug up for one reason or other. That has not changed. Either the babus in charge of the zone are under-employed and feel the need to create work for themselves, or (more likely) new contracts for public works mean more kickbacks. Whichever the reason, the privileged heart of the capital tells us of the problems with governance, even (or especially) when there is no shortage of money: the lack of systemic thinking, the absence of attention to detail, the penchant for wasteful spending, the poor comprehension of design and consistency, and at bottom an absence of plain good sense.
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