Greening the roadsides

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Akbar's favourite - the Sheesham tree

In History lessons in the primary school we were told about the penchant of the Afghan King Sher Shah Suri for improving the then-existing administrative set-up. An ethnic Afghan, born in Hissar in Punjab, he took control of the Mogul Empire in 1540 and established the Sur Dynasty after overrunning Bengal. Being far away from the centre of action which used to be Delhi, he was obsessed with better communication with it. He, therefore, organised a postal service and, in order to make it effective, we were told, he built the Grand Trunk Road. What is more important for our purpose is that while building the road Sher Shah spared a thought for the road-users, which included his postal couriers. For their benefit he had plenty of shady trees planted on the road sides under which the tired long-distance travellers could rest and relax and take the strain off their aching feet.

The history of roadside trees in India is that old, if not older. One supposes, even in earlier times paths used to be laid for the sake of establishing connectivity and trees would be planted along them for the benefit of man and animals. This has been the tradition right down to modern times. Emperor Akbar ordered that all avenues and arterial roads be covered with the graceful sheesham tree. The British were tree-lovers too, and the British architect Edwin Lutyens went to great pains to ensure that all the main avenues in New Delhi were lined with handpicked species. Jamun (black berry) trees were planted along the Raj Path and likewise, I remember, some other Lutyen’s Delhi roads having only neem (margosa) and tamarind trees on their respective sides.

During my stay in the Curzon Road Apartments in New Delhi in the early 1970s I had observed that Curzon Road had two rows of trees on each side of the road with a small asphalted strip for movement of two-way traffic with the sides left kutcha, un-asphalted. Compulsions for accommodating the burgeoning vehicular traffic made the authorities asphalt the entire available surface. Within a year or two, however, I noticed, a row of trees was being felled to meet the increasing

An avenue of Lutyen's Delhi

demands of the Delhi traffic. Thankfully, the British had provided a total of four rows of trees on the road as otherwise Curzon Road, as indeed many other roads in Central Delhi, would have become bereft of any greenery long years ago. 

During those very years if one happened to visit the newly-developing areas of, say, South Extension using the still up-‘n’-coming Ring Road one would get that bare and arid feeling. The Ring Road was being laid but none ever thought of planting trees on the sides. That goes as well for numerous other colonies that kept coming up during those years. It was, apparently not in the Public Works Department (PWD) or, shall we say, the Delhi Development Authority culture? Probably they never included the cost of tree-plantation in their projects but, perhaps, would readily include the cost of felling them if these happened to obstruct the road alignment.

In Bhopal in Central India during the construction of the BRTS corridor when trees were being felled right and left to widen the existing roads the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum took up the matter with the Commissioner, Bhopal Municipal Corporation. Strangely, the Commissioner countered the Forum’s objections on felling of trees by saying that compensatory plantation was being undertaken on a hillock outside the town. Apparently, trees on the roadsides for him and his minions had no role and could be dispensed with. That the trees render ecosystem services hosting colonies of birds and other creatures and also beautify the roads seemed to be much beyond their comprehension. Hence no space was provided along the widened tarmac which, most likely, will play havoc with the citizens when the city sizzles in the peak of summer in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 F). Worse, he was not aware of the “Actions” adopted under the Urban Environmental Accords signed at San Francisco during the World Mayors’ Conference on June 5, 2005 in pursuant of which the city government was to maintain canopy coverage at least of 50% on all available sidewalk planting sites. 

Showing exemplary persistence, the Forum persuaded the Commissioner to consider translocation of the huge, mature, decades-old trees, an enterprise that was reported to have met with success at Indore. Accordingly, as many as eighty-odd trees (against a few thousand felled) were reported to have been translocated with the help of an expert summoned from Indore. Yet, on the day the massive trees in front of Kamla Park, a heritage site, were being uprooted I happened to witness a pathetic sight. Hundreds of bats roosting on those trees were rendered homeless and were flying round and round during the high noon, seemingly not knowing where to go. The effort and the sacrifice of the bats and other creatures, however, seems to have been in vain as recent reports indicate that the survival rate of the translocated trees was very poor – just about 10 to 20 percent.

Perhaps better counsels could have been obtained. The Minister of Urban Administration always used to claim that he would turn Bhopal into another Singapore. That being so, one wonders as to why help in this matter was not sought from that City State which has developed an expertise in replanting imported fully-grown trees. Planting a sapling and nurturing it to grow over many years is too much of a hassle for it. It also wants the trees to decorate and not shed leaves or drop ripe fruits to mess up the roadsides. Only such trees, non-messy and fully grown, were therefore imported and replanted. Despite its rather peculiar attitude none can deny the State’s love for civic aesthetics and the roadside trees, which, it believes, also decorate them.

 

Taiping Street, Nanking, China - 1982

The role of trees in beautifying roads can also be seen in China and Japan which I happened to see for myself in the spring of 1982. Particularly in Beijing and Nanking roads were lined with trees of uniform heights and width. The trees also branched out from a uniform height. Standing on the pavement one could see the bare stems of the trees and branches radiating from all of them from a pre-determined height. The Chinese and Japanese appear to go to great lengths to care for them. To prevent sprouting of branches up to the desired height the civic workers would tie ropes around the stem then leave the trees to grow. Later controlling the height and width of the tree is, apparently, managed by tree-surgeons or arborists. The then tree-lined empty, almost devoid of automobiles,  roads of Beijing and Nanking looked fascinatingly beautiful.

Unfortunately, we in India suffer from lack of concern for citizens as also lack civic aesthetics. Our public bodies are devoid of them, especially those like the municipalities, PWD, housing boards and other urban development organisations. Their big wigs know only beautifying their own offices or those of their bosses – political or civil. What they build for the people is generally bland, which frequently are also ugly. Worse, they refuse to improve. 

NB: Except the photograph of Taiping Street, Nanking which was taken by me the two other are taken from the Internet

Asiatic lions get a reprieve

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Hanging fire for decades the Supreme Court resolved the issue the other day. The issue was about relocation of a few Asiatic lions from their only home in the Gir National Park to the already-prepared Kuno Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh (MP). It was stonewalled by Gujarat for all these years claiming, as it did, the lions as its own The Court ordered in favour of the proposal and went by the considerations based on scientific reasoning that one couldn’t really put all one’s all eggs in only one basket. The proposal had been mooted by the wildlife experts of central and the two state governments concerned and the MP government had prepared the Kuno Palpur sanctuary for reception of the Asiatic lions. Gujarat, however, had a change of heart and started opposing the shift with all its might. The Sanctuary patiently waited out the decades nursing its ecosystem in the hope that better counsels would prevail someday.

That day has come now. But, strangely, a matter that is purely administrative in character and should have been decided within the governmental framework had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court at great public expense for the reason of mulish defiance of all scientific reasoning by the Gujarat administration. 

Though the Court gave a decision as logical as it should be, the reactions in Gujarat defy logic. Its people are fuming. The decision sparked protests in Junagadh and a bandh (forced stoppage of all activity – commercial or whatever) has been called at Sasan, close to the Gir Park. One wouldn’t be surprised if some activist adopts the Gandhian method of undertaking a fast unto death. Gir is not far away from Porbandar, the birthplace of the Mahatma. The villagers residing within the Park have been so well brainwashed that they are reported to have said that they would part with their lions only over their dead bodies. The sense of appropriation for themselves and for Gujarat of the rare, critically endangered species appeared to be complete as, indeed, was their instigation at the hands of the propagators of “Gujarat asmita” (Gujarat’s Identity). True, survival and increasing numbers of the Asiatic lions in Gir is a success story worthy of being proud of, yet, the lives of the lions are held together by a slender thread, acutely vulnerable as they happen to be to any mishap – an epidemic, for instance, the like of which had wiped out about 90% of the Tanzanian lions during the last decade of 20^th Century.

Once spread over a wide area in India and its neighbouring countries, trophy-hunting and poaching drastically reduced the numbers of Asiatic lions. I recall having read somewhere that a British officer had claimed to have shot as many as half a dozen lions in one outing somewhere close to Hissar, back then in Punjab, in the 19^th Century. Much earlier, Mogul Emperor Akbar is reported to have hunted lions near Rewa, now in Madhya Pradesh, hundreds of kilometres away from Gir. Lions shared their extensive habitat in the plains of India with three other big cats – the tiger, leopard and the cheetah – indicating its richness and ampleness of the prey-base in the forests of the country. But over the centuries and decades hunting and poaching took their toll, as also the rapid rise in population necessitating clearing of vast tracts of forests appreciably reducing their once-thriving habitat. 

In the process while the cheetah became extinct the three other big cats saw drastic reduction in their numbers. By the last count tigers were around 1700 in number, surviving in a few pockets across the country and are under severe threat of extinction because of persistent poaching and indifferent management. Though the leopard seemed to have somehow survived, its count, though hardly ever methodically taken, is surely not more than in a few hundreds. Due to shrinkage of its habitat it often comes in conflict with humans in almost all corners of the country and reports of its being trapped or being mercilessly done to death by insensitive villagers and urbanites frequently appear in the press. A project for conservation of leopards on the lines of that of the tiger is indicated if the species is to be saved and propagated in the wild.

The Asiatic lions are, however, much worse off. Having lorded over better part of the sub-continent for centuries human insensitivity drove them into a far western corner of India where the late Nawab of Junagarh, having been instrumental in wiping off lots of them and faced with their precariously low numbers in the early parts of the 20^th Century, had the sudden realisation that the beasts needed to be conserved. Howsoever rudimentary in nature the conservation effort was it, at least, stopped the animals’ wanton killings. Post-independence conservation efforts, mainly by creation of a sanctuary for the lions at Gir and later converting it into National Park yielded better results. Today they are around 400-odd in number (by a Gujarat count). Packed within the limited confines of the Park they are too many for it and are reported to be wandering out into neighbouring areas of Amreli district. They have also been sighted in other small settlements in Junagarh district outside the Park and even near Diu. The Park is virtually bursting at its seams, so to say, crawling with Asiatic lions as it would seem.

Having once belonged to the entire country the lions could not be justifiably converted into Gujarati lions with the state exercising exclusive rights over them. The animals surely have found succour from the state government which has nursed and cared for them; but the entire nation, and why, even the world has contributed towards their protection and conservation through personnel, expertise and finances. Since they happen to be located in India the country has the right over them as also the duty to ensure that this endangered species endures and enriches the country’s wildernesses with its presence. Appreciating its obligation in this respect the Centre showed unusual alacrity in conducting a countrywide survey to look for a suitable site for a second home for the lions and pitched on Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in 1993-94. It also pumped in the required finances to prepare the Sanctuary over the last two decades to enable it to host the lions. That no mishap occurred during the intervening period has been a matter of luck for Gujarat or else “Gujarat asmita” would have seen the end of this significant species. The loss would have been not of Gujarat alone but of the entire world.

The orders of the apex court place onerous responsibilities on the MP government, especially the Wildlife Wing of its forest department. Its performance in recent times has not been very encouraging and the same had been forcefully argued out at the apex court by Gujarat lawyers against the proposed shifting of the lions to the state. “Panna” still stalks them as also 12 tiger deaths in 10 months of 2012 and 3 in 2013. Poaching of tigers and their electrocution by farmers has gone on unchecked. Reports have also consistently appeared about poaching and hunting of game from the constituency of the state’s forest minister. While his tenure has been crammed with controversies, the chief minister of the state has displayed definite aversion towards wildlife when it comes to a crunch – a crunch that has political overtones. The foresters, therefore, will have to exert their utmost to ensure safety and wellbeing of the lions, as indeed of other animals in the wild, as  history does not quite foster faith in their commitment to the wild.   

Gujarat government, on the other hand, is yet to come to terms with the judgement of the Supreme Court and is, quite unwisely, mulling a review petition against the apex court’s orders. One hopes better sense will eventually prevail and the judgement will be accepted, if not for anything else, at least for the sake of the lions.   

Photo of Asiatic lion: from the Internet

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Vote against Sri Lanka - India's muddled diplomacy

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News came in the other day that the already agitating students of Chennai are going to launch protest rallies when the internationally popular Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty-20 cricket matches take place at the city’s hallowed Chepauk ground. They have also decided to pressurise the Hyderabad Sunrisers, a participating IPL team owned by Kalanidhi Maran, brother of Dayanidhi Maran who represented Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a Tamil party, in the Union Government, to sack Kumar Sangakkara, a Sri Lankan cricketer.

Protest rallies are a democratic right but the demand for sacking a player of a team on whom its franchisee has spent a fortune is surely encroachment on the rights of others. DMK sympathisers of Sri Lankan Tamil’s cause have been encouraged by the BCCI’s (Board of Control for Cricket in India) prompt acceptance of the request of J Jayalalitha, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, sent to Prime Minister to direct the authorities concerned not to play Sri Lankan players in IPL matches in Chennai as she could not assure them their security. 

The virtual ban on Sri Lankan players was a curious decision. It is the duty of the state government to provide security to everyone including foreigners. It does not have powers to prohibit their entry or, for that matter, exit unless so advised by the Centre. Constitutionally such a decision has to be that of the Centre. Besides, the illegal ‘ban’ puts quite a few franchisees of IPL to disadvantage eliminating from Chennai matches some key Sri Lankan players. Sangakkara himself is a key player, the captain to boot of Hyderabad Sunrisers and the team will have to keep him out at Chennai. Likewise, there are other Sri Lankans who have been bought by various teams at great cost but will have to cool their heels away from Chennai.

One presumes that the BCCI was advised by the Centre to do the needful. The simplest solution, however, would have been to take the IPL matches away from Chennai. This would have been to the satisfaction of the Tamil Nadu government as also the franchisees concerned. And, it would not have been the first time for the IPL management to have done so. Due to inability of the government of India to provide adequate security on account of the general elections in 2009 the entire tournament was shifted to South Africa. That was an international shift at a short notice; here it would have meant shifting of only the Chennai matches elsewhere in India.

The competitive politics in Tamil Nadu have already caused enormous embarrassment to India. Under DMK’s threat of desertion from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ruling at the Centre, the government voted in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) against Sri Lanka souring up relations with its small neighbour with whom it has had centuries-old ethnic, cultural, political and sporting relationships. Perhaps, the DMK would have parted ways with the UPA anyway, waiting as it seemed for a suitable opportunity. It found this issue handy and it withdrew from the coalition even before the voting in the UNHRC took place. The Indian diplomats were, however, directed to vote in a manner, as senior journalist Swapan Das Gupta said, “to impress upon the DMK and the global Tamil diaspora that India's sympathies lay (strangely) with those who have been trying unceasingly to secure the partition of Sri Lanka... making India a laughing stock in the region”.

The UPA thus sacrificed national interests for observing “coalition dharma”, although the partner for whom the sacrifice was made had already deserted it. It had earlier sacrificed its acknowledged precept of probity and integrity in the government for the same reason just for maintaining itself in power. At that time also members of the same political outfit were in the reckoning.

  

There was, however, no respite for the UPA; its pummelling continued, this time by the counterpart of the DMK, the Anna DMK, a splinter of the former, which is currently ruling Tamil Nadu. Its chief minister upped the ante and demanded that India should boycott Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet to be held later this year at Colombo. And, politicians being what they are, members of every party joined the chorus in passing of a unanimous resolution in the state assembly wanting India to stop treating Sri Lanka as a friendly nation, to slap sanctions on it demanding a referendum for Tamil Eelam. Thankfully, the government, weak though it is, did not bend and rejected the demands out of hand.

 

Cho Ramaswamy, a well-known thinker, journalist and editor of Tamil weekly Tughlak feels that Tamil politicians are using Sri Lankan Tamils for their own political gains. According to him, the Tamil question was never an electoral issue in Tamil Nadu. Cho says that even the Sri Lankan Tamils have not made any big noise about declaring President Rajapaksa a war criminal and they never used the word genocide which DMK wanted India to have incorporated in the UNHRC resolution. According to Cho, it is some marginal Tamil parties in the state that have been hammering away at the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. Presuming that their thunder was being stolen away, the two major parties got into the act. Finding a weak Centre, these two parties led by arch political rivals started raising their bids to strengthen their respective support bases.

In a gratuitous article the other day in a prominent newspaper Hardeep Puri, former Permanent India Representative at the UN, justified the recent Indian action at the UNHRC. While doing so he seemed to have been oblivious of India’s unbecoming role in fostering terrorism in Sri Lanka that eventually led to tragic fallout over the country. No wonder, it drew a prompt riposte from Sri Lanka – recalling India’s ill-advised manoeuvres in regard to the recalcitrant Tamil Tigers fighting for what they called Tamil Eelam (Tamil Independence).

The diplomatic muddle at the UNHRC meet impaired the country’s relations with a traditional neighbour that has been ethnically and culturally close to it for ages. The Indian vote against Sri Lanka that was justified by Puri was decided upon without any diplomatic initiatives determined, as it was, by regional political pressures. If internal political compulsions become determinants for the conduct of the country’s foreign relations, why then have a full-fledged highly qualified diplomatic corps?

This is, however, not the first, nor perhaps the last, instance of states influencing the Centre in conduct of foreign relations, especially with neighbours. Foreign relations are a central subject and the states, barring consultative or advisory, generally have had no role to play. What one witnessed in respect of signing of Teesta Waters Treaty with Bangladesh and now in regard to the Sri Lankan Tamil question are extraordinary instances of intransigence of states to the detriment of the Union.

One wonders whether the Indian federalism was being taken advantage of. But, then India has had a federal structure from the inception of the republic and the Centre hardly ever faced, i.e. until the UPA came to power, such a situation where it had to tailor and remodel its foreign policy to suit the extravagant demands born out of exigencies of populism of the politicians of a state. One can think of only two reasons. The first is that the government at the centre is dependent for survival on its powerful regional allies, howsoever unreasonable and demanding they are, and would not let slip power from its hands whatever might be at stake, including adverse national repercussions. Secondly, politics in the country has turned so coarse that the prestige and image of the nation mean nothing to the self-serving politicians, whether at the Centre or in the states.

With the failure so far of the Centre in asserting its powers and authority what comes across is an image of the tail wagging the dog and, curiously, the dog merrily wags.

Recent rumblings about Bhopal Lakes

Sunset on the Upper Lake

Occasionally a wrong step may eventually lead to what one may call course-correction. Something similar happened recently in regard to the Upper Lake of Bhopal. The Urban Administration Department (UAD), under the leadership of its minister, rustled up a project of a couple of hundred crores for conservation and beautification, inter-alia, of the Upper Lake for onward transmission to the government of India for approval. The UAD, under the minister, having been used to treating itself as the owner and decider for its development, conservation and beautification, ignored the Empowered Committee for Management of the Lake and overlooked the fact the Centre for Environmental Planning (CEPT), the renowned institution of Ahmedabad, earlier engaged by it for recommending measures for planning, development and conservation of the Lake was yet to submit its report (for reasons attributable not to it but to the state and government). 

On being highlighted in the vernacular press, the Mayor, who is also the chairperson of the Empowered Committee, is reported to have expressed her unhappiness. Even the Chief Secretary got into the act and summoned a meeting of the Empowered Committee. At the meeting the UAD, however, got a face-saver in the shape of approval of the project but it seems to have been kept on the back-burner. The good that came about from the imbroglio was about the report of the CEPT. Instead of being delayed until the next assembly elections as was being reported, it will now come out by May next. That will, hopefully, put an end to all unilateralism of the UAD, which under the directions of its minister and in association with State Tourism Development Corporation has converted the shores of the Lake into a museum of sorts, planting there an old steam locomotive, a model of a Indian Navy ship and a squat and ugly representation of the legendary ancient king facing the main artery of the town. The department and its handmaiden, the Tourism Corporation, have played havoc with the water body and its ecosystem in several ways details of which need not be mentioned here.

It might be of interest that the UAD in its project has also proposed development, beautification and conservation of the three other water bodies, famously known as the three “cascading lakes”, a part of unique heritage of the city. While the one at the very top, the Motia Talab, is somewhat alive, the two others in descending order are being choked to death by encroachments. Over the years encroachers have had a

Part of Motia Talab with Tajul Masajid in background

free run and houses have been constructed and continue to be constructed even today with the municipal corporation and the UAD acting as bystanders and mute spectators. It seems, the encroachers have secured stay on orders of their removal from the courts and the orders have been in force now for more than a decade. While the municipality, seemingly, is in deep slumber encroachers have gone about grabbing more and more of the two lakes.

Even the so-called marriage-gardens located by the side of the Upper Lake and spewing their waste into it are reported to have obtained stays from the local courts on orders of their removal and these have been in force for years on end. One wonders whether these stays will remain in force till eternity. One can only think of two possibilities: either the lawyers of the municipality are thoroughly incompetent or the whole lot, including lawyers and municipal officials from top to bottom, are corrupt being in the pay of the encroachers. It is astounding that a civic body with all the administrative and financial support it can muster and with all the paraphernalia at its command is unable to get for years the stay(s) vacated to free the lands and structures of the city’s heritage of which it is the custodian. Nothing could be more reprehensible than this.   

Photos: Bandana Bagchi 

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