 Hello and welcome to this show called CitySense that we've been hosting on NewsClick since October 2 and what we're trying to build is to understand the whole concept of how cities are being built, evolved, the challenges that exist in the cities and right from Latin America to different parts of the world and of course our own Indian cities and towns. Today we have a very special guest, Romi Khosla, from whom I have in fact learned a lot in this stint of urbanization and Romi perhaps requires no introduction. He is a by profession trained architect planner who has built a large number of cities across the world and especially the war-torn cities of Bosnia and Herzegovonia and was quite instrumental into building plans of some of the towns, mountain towns in Himachal and also Ladakh that's lay. So with Romi what we're going to discuss is you know the whole question of why is it that the Himalayan towns require an altogether different paradigm approach and why is it that month after month we are experiencing disasters taking place and the recent one that is in Uttarakhand where the Uttarakashi tunnel where 41 people have still not been evacuated and are there since last two weeks and it has said it may take another few weeks for us to evacuate them. So what is the flaw in the current model of urbanization or do we require a new definition that Romi really speaks about that it's not just the classical definition of census and statutory towns it has to go beyond that and there's another interesting thing that Romi talks about and that's what we are going to discuss with him is he talks about a separate institute to understand the whole process of mountains and urbanization the mountains and he calls it the institute of Montology. What kind of institute of Montology is it just one central or every state should have such such institutes what would be the role of such institutes who will govern such institutes and what could be a desirable outcome of such institutes if we build but the bottom line and the silver line is that the current model of urbanization or the current model of development in the mountains is is unsustainable over to Romi. Thank you. Thank you very much the kinder. I think what you have precipitated a discussion on the mountains at this particular crucial time is very important because you see when when a series of crisis takes place then it is an opportunity for all of us to rethink because we have the future in front of us and we really should learn lessons from our failures in the past. Now most people imagine the city sense to be a city in the plains. I mean let's not forget when you talk city first of all you conjure up in your mind a metropolitan city a city. Today we will discuss another aspect of a city another kind of city and it's the ability to have some kind of appreciation and sense of settlements in the mountains which mistakenly we call cities because mountain settlements do not form the kind of city that we generally imagine in the plains and not only that the academic and research and teaching component of cities around the universities and institutions focuses on plain cities. Nobody talks about mountain cities so it's a vacuum. So let's call this discussion today mountain sensibility we're having sense about mountains. I place before you three arguments I'm making there are many arguments there's a lot of discussion on mountains but I like to place to you three arguments because I'm speaking in one way to the mountain focus we're all mountain folk I was born in the mountains I was educated in the mountains I lived in the mountains for many years so I'm well aware of the fact that we have we have got a completely different sensibility about our settlements when we sit in the mountains. So I've also noticed the kind of problem that mountain folk have that when they are in touch or come into contact with plains people who arrive there for various reasons there is a sense of a sense of inferiority which is comes out of the plains people as if these are slightly backward people as if they're slightly more poor people slightly living in a dream you know the real life is where we come from there is this kind of undercurrent and I want to but but for me apparently that is also true for the not that is legitimately true but why I'm say apparently true because if you see this whole constitution debate the constitution assembly then even the constitution it doesn't speak about mountains it only speaks about forests okay as a utility so I think it all evolved from there I mean I mean what work do you think it's absolutely true this is kind of set into our psyche so I would like to propose that actually we mountain people are more advanced than plains people because we know how to live how to how to respect our culture respect our sense of environment our relationships the mountain people's relationship with the environment is of a much higher order than it is in the plains so I would like to argue from that point of view that mountain sensibility is a many high level of consciousness and we should not just imagine that mountain people are lesser people so my first argument is let us first understand how we can deal with mountain settlements now you see about 12% of our population stays in the mountains so they you know they are settled so we I am proposing a completely that's across the globe you're talking about across the globe it's 8% in India but it's 12% global now I'm proposing a different form of description of mountain settlements I like to call them sparse settlements let's say that the urban city in the plains is a dense urbanization because you see the idea of a city implies that there is a boundary you know when we talk of city we talk of boundary generally a municipal boundary or something but cities don't have boundaries anymore even the plain cities don't have their urban conventionally we had two distinctions urban rural but today with the with the electronic media with the cars with the finances and the facilities and the shops coming we are now in a situation where we have dense urbanization and we have sparse urbanization nobody so what you're trying to say is to get rid of the conventional you know the the dichotomy or the definitions that we have the census towns and the statutory towns so what are you saying is far beyond that yes I don't think we can I am using the opportunity of all of these sad occurrences and accidents happening in the hills to he think the fundamentals of our knowledge of how we take for granted our human settlements whether they be in the cities or in the mountains so in the mountains since we are talking about that today I'm saying let me first call it sparse urbanization now as soon as I say this I will say Uttaranchal Himachal Nagaland these are urbanized places but they are sparsely why should that's very interesting just I mean that's very interesting I mean just all those who must be watching the take for example 2011 census the terms that Himachal is just 10% urban but what you're saying it's not like that it's complete I mean it's a different definition that you're all and what do you get out of it suppose if you build that definition well first of all the the whole idea that rural area is backward rural area is only agricultural now when we take the settlement pattern Himachal you do get a city or a dense urban settlement like let's say like Simla but when you go beyond Simla which is a governmental center and which was a colonial town so there is an origin if you look at Himachal settlements which are not colonial they are sparse urbanization because today which road do you not get run over by somebody driving crazy in the hills going to the villages the villagers going to the shops in the towns and going back he is using tractors in order to convey his agricultural produce to the market now these are not rural behaviors these are urban behaviors he's arguing he's taking money he's selling so we have to forget it we have to just talk about sparse urbanization so therefore and I'd like to suggest that mountains are sparse and we need to change the way we look at the more important part is the way we are going to study and I have some very important issues here regarding how to study the second part that I would argument that I would make is with the plains people I'm having this conversation let's say we are mountain people talking to place people and we are saying listen we are very fragile in the mountains you don't take us for granted these are not places you can just create there is an obsession about creating vertical infrastructure go up to Simla go up to Mussooni go down through this take a cable car because there's no horizontal infrastructure in in in the mountains it's only vertical everything is vertical in that process we we take we do horizontal infrastructure and we make a tunnel we have accidents so we have to really see we have to study this that we we have to study it in in in our mountain study that you know do we need horizontal infrastructure or vertical infrastructure cable car is much less damaging than a tunnel or a road for that absolutely yeah so what I'm saying is let's take a take a typical subject like infrastructure where in the cities we talk about infrastructure we take it for granted in not in mountain areas you cannot take infrastructure for granted you have to design it to suit it for the particular needs of the mountain you see the the mountains the our mountains we stretch from Indus to Brahmaputra is about 2500 miles now a kilometer sorry and there are 11 states I can't remember the off end but I'll say 11 states and two ut's yeah yeah 13 so all together right 13 all yeah yeah now these these are for me very special places which require which have the responsibilities for their mountains they live in the mountains and I am going to suggest that these mountains should be treated like gold mines everybody wants something out of them they want to suck the power out of them yeah they want to suck the minerals out of them yeah they want to suck the agriculture out of that's what the British did and we continued the same pace we want to carry on in fact we we have come in that sense microcolonial because the planes are taking you see let us look at a simple subject like water the entire Indo-ganjatic plane is watered from the mountains so we have a huge responsibility we are the guardians of that water we cannot sort of we send pure water mountain people send pure water to the India-ganjatic plane and it is hugely polluted so I'm saying that you know this kind of distinctions new ways of thinking about what is happening to water what is happening to power you cannot you you generate a lot of power but sparsely urbanized centers don't require huge power consumption we don't have huge industries in the mountain that means the power is all getting taken away so there has to be some sense of asset management by the mountain people that these are our assets these are our gold mines hello hello we are not offering it so so Romi this is very interesting I mean what you're suggesting is a completely new architecture both financial as well as governance and since we are so passionate about settlements so what is it I mean I mean when you say asset management I mean how do you visualize it you know because we have a very top bottom approach right now of asset management so what do you think think of it especially from a mountain urban settlement perspective look let's let's take an example that we have an option to generate electricity right one option is that we can put up solar cells in the planes let's say there's three times more expensive than putting hydroelectric power I would I would ask the mountain people can we take your power away because if I said if the mountain people say no I'm sorry that what you are going to do to our mountains in order to generate these dams you just go and do the solar yeah I'm managing my assets better because I don't need my landslides I need to preserve my agriculture so in that sense it's the same with water it's the same with water you can't just build a dam and you know flood half the stuff here and take the water away because drinking water is not there in Delhi so I'll say but settle less people in Delhi now why are you taking it out on me yeah that's what I've always been arguing that to quench thirst of Delhi you are constructing a Renuka dam in Sirmor and submerging last if you can ask why are you stealing my water okay have be less thirsty you know spread your people so my my like the way we can get over it which I'm suggesting for the all the 11 states is that we set up our own institutes of Montology now Montology is the study of mountains it is a elaborate dam that's very interesting that's that's I'm hearing for the first time you know what is Montology in so it is a study of mountains done by mountain people so nobody nowhere is a mountain study so tomorrow if I'm digging a tunnel in a mountain in Uttaranchal who do I get I get a metro company you know what is the experience where is that that continental clash the two continents are meeting there's a special type of subsoil there are you aware of when you're digging metros of all these complications we have huge machines doing it so it's a very difficult problem you don't understand the mountains so my argument has been that the first first task of preserving the mountain environment is to set up study centers I call them the institutes of Montology and I'm suggesting that every all 11 states have their own institutes of Montology which are interconnected almost like a university now the kind of things they would study would be physical features what is a mountain what is a zone what is a high zone what is a low zone what are the differences where should the before before before you elaborate what they do I mean because it just stuck my mind when you said about the whole question of you know can we not suggest it in the financial architecture of the 16 finance commission because that's really coming up so and and you know disasters are like really on our head and can we just argue or articulate it in that sense that look here's the 16 finance commission so help us in establishing these institutes in respective states or you want to keep it just limited to the states and through their fiscal you know interventions they will be able to do it should it also not be a point I'm very clear on this that the capital expenses in the institutional establishment finances cannot be done by the states the states will run it the states will provide the knowledge base for it if these are international institutes we have proposed and people should come from Switzerland and Austria and cross cross what's got it so the center please yeah and and what what are you what are you arguing for so what we're saying is that let us separate out you know physical features geological chemical biological processes what is infrastructure what is horizontal what is vertical what is democracy what is the settlement patterns of these settlements that we have here we have cultural issues how do cultures mix in the hill areas now what what we will find when we start gathering the knowledge base for mountain montology is that there are huge amounts of studies being made since colonial times of our populations and cultures and the interaction with the flora of honor 25 percent of the biodiversity of India is in the mountains yeah all of these huge amounts of studies has taken place but nowhere is it collected as a source of core knowledge about the mountain so what I had in mind was an idea that let's say the Institute of Montology in Uttaranchal or in in Gangtok or in Dharamsa these are great centers which start collecting the experiences the cultures the narratives the stories the science of the mountains so that when somebody comes for that means we first define our identity in modern times in modern language this is our scientific this is a state called Uttaranchal or Himachal or Meghalaya this is our scientific identity we are not some rural community staying in the past employing our fields so we have a scientific base to our identity so these institutes are very critical for us because they would they would define in the eyes of the nation and in the eyes particularly of the inhabitants of that state that this is who we are today and this is what is we have to prevent happening from us because development economic growth these are like juggernauts and sometimes you wonder who's driving it a lot of people are benefiting from it they're they are not careful so you can drive a bulldozer in third desert there's no problem but if you drive it in Himachal they are a lot of problem absolutely the juggernaut of growth has to have some sense and that's what I say from the juggernaut of growth juggernaut of disaster is yet to come you know once you have some melting of glacier you know at this top of sattva then the entire mark that has been done then that juggernaut I don't know how will be okay please go ahead so let me when I just my concluding remarks are in the form of requests to all hill people to guard their gold mines because a lot of people are after your natural health in other words natural assets they don't care let's say that they're not particularly exploiting you but they are very careless because you are very delicate you are growing apples potatoes in farming in between crevices these are not places you you need care how you walk in those areas even please look after your wealth on your own terms create your own knowledge base let the shell be made by the central planning let the institute be set up but it is mountain people who have to fill the knowledge into that place that's a very important thing and they have to safeguard it you see the assets of the mountains are centuries I cannot say this about the indo-ganchetic plane across Haryana Punjab and I can't see this is century is not so absolutely true but the mountains of India are century know what they mean what they represent what they can offer so it's very important that these things get looked after by those people who inherited it they have to pass it on to their own children everybody's welcome tourists are welcome everybody's welcome but not at the cost of those people so I hope one of one of my my dreams is that in the Institute of Montology they will create a new kind of tourism so no no no if you want to come and stay in hotels and watch television please no no no this is not for you this is a very you can do it jolly well in Delhi or in any other part so if you're coming all the way to the mountains let us tell you what you can do yeah about about our food about our culture have you ever tasted pure water here is a stream here is a spring just taste it because you haven't all your life tasted pure water have you seen some pure air have you seen the sky blue these are the assets which the institute as a study of tourism etc will start producing and give a new consciousness in the relationship between the mountains and the physical relationship in terms of the ecology and mental relationship in terms of people who cross and mix with each other but for me I have a question maybe the last question that I want I mean it's fascinating to talk to you and I would like to talk for another hour or so maybe we have another discussion that's coming up with you one on another platform but my point is you know this whole key of development that has been like put on our on our keyboard that look if you do not have hydropower I mean you know if you do not have a tourism how will you sustain so you know that's how if you do not have roads you know how would you bring your crops the diverse diversification that you've done to the market so that's generally an argument I don't buy that argument by the way so how do you place this argument in the overall discussion or in the overall ambit of what we've been discussing about this let us just very briefly let me ask you a very fundamental question why do we make a parallel between human growth and human wealth why does wealth have to mean human development now what we have arrived at after 75 years of independence of economic growth of great progress we have perhaps simplified too much what human development means we have suddenly we have suddenly made it equivalent of savings and how much money you are in fact it is narrowly narrowly confined to money accumulation actually yeah that's true I'm glad you brought this whole yeah concept before us will be you know what what part of our life should be devoted to accumulating money what part of our life should be devoted to looking after our quality of life without money so if I say to a person if I meet a person walking on the malin symbol I say you don't look as if you come from the mountain he said I come from Andhra I said why he said I couldn't stand life in Andhra I have come to know how many people have you met like that yeah quite a number of them yeah so there are there are there are people who value the quality of life I'm making a distinction here so first we need to separate out our awareness about quality of life and not make it completely subservient to money saving can I really have less money and better air so these are decisions that individually people have to make but also the government also the government the government has to give the awareness that it's everything is not about taxing great yeah thank you for yes sparing the time and I think that's the two or three very important points that have come out of this discussion one for the first time is the Institute of Montology I mean you've never heard of it you know and treating forests as not some not from the perspective utility but as gold mines and how it's important to manage the own assets and I think also the last point that at the end of the day I mean in this whole race of blatant or rapid development that we talk about we end up actually gaining nothing we end up like Kenor if I tell you Rumi I mean Kenor every third day gets blocked because we have landslides the projects are almost done there but still the landslides are continuing because of the inherent disturbance that we've done to the rock rock formations there so yeah I think thank you so much and I hope that we are able to bring in some churning you know some kind of discussion across the mountain states and we are going to have this very interesting mountain conference taking place in Delhi soon on the 4th and 5th where I'm sure this interview would also be one of the precursors or one of the triggers or a catalyst to you know think beyond beyond the limits that we are generally given thank you so much it's been a lovely one one concluding thought I would leave you with please remember the mountains are the life mountains are thanks thanks