 Hi, welcome once again to this series of hours on the news click and the series that we are running on the Central Vista. And as many of our viewers are aware of the fact that earlier this series used to be walk the Central Vista, but now we can't walk the Central Vista because of the pandemic and because of the corridors that have been developed. But at least we can discuss through the web and through online meetings and today we are very happy and glad to have Mr. Prem Chandavarkar who is an architect by profession, but who's also a very prolific writer and who writes on different subjects from architecture to philosophy to politics and of course he is quite inherently and organically linked to this what I call which many architects don't believe and don't think that it is true the movement against the kind of Central Vista that we are seeing in Delhi. So thank you and welcome Prem to be here with us. Well, I think Prem in these series of episodes and also enormous writings and phenomenal kind of work that we have seen actually who are contesting the whole idea of the Central Vista, we have seen people from different shades actually and people actually contesting the basic premise of the idea, terming it very fascist, very despotic, very totalitarian, but also someone pointed out that look it's also to do something with the vast to that's why dates are very, very important. Then also usurping the public spaces, how the public spaces have been occupied in this whole decision making process, but then we also know the trajectory and of course then we had people who went very recently to the Supreme Court and again came back to the High Court that during the pandemic at least spare the workers, but the workers weren't spared. In fact, the petitioner was fined I think Rs. 1 lakh for making such frivolous petitions. So we have all that on record, but something very new happened, but this one I think very important undercurrent flowing and that is despite the fact that the government has got a very clean sheet from the Supreme Court by a 2-1 ruling, the government is actually a little shaky and panicky and that's why we are finding many dozias, many rebuttals from the government, myth and realities and we have also seen the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs responding to one of the articles which they shouldn't have, I mean if they're so clear. So we can easily understand that there's something going on which is which is really jittering this government. So what is this new that has developed? I mean that really bothers the government and I think Prem from there. I think what is new is it's in the context of the critique the government has received in their response to the second wave of the pandemic, which as you know was a very traumatic second wave for many people and a lot of unnecessary deaths just because the infrastructure could not cope up, the slowing down of the vaccination program. So in the context of that when the critique of central vista also arises they feel they're being attacked on multiple fronts. So they're a little more sensitive now and feel they have to come to some kind of defense. So I think that is the change, otherwise they're really not too much. So it's more of a cover up exercise that they're trying to do. Yeah, it's a contextual and but one of the things that they have not really addressed in the sort of justifications they've given and unfortunately that was not the yardstick, the majority judgment from the Supreme Court followed either is this is the epicenter of our democracy. So it should really represent the highest democratic ideas, not the lowest common denominator. What does that mean Prem? It means that it should be democratically debated, it should have been public, parliament should not have been bypassed, parliamentary oversight which is normal in such projects should have been there, all the things that you'd expect of a democracy should have been there. And actually if you see the dissenting judgment of Justice Sanjeev Khanna who comes from an interesting lineage because he is the nephew of Justice Ajar Khanna who was the sole dissenting judge in the Supreme Court verdict on the emergency in 1976. He has been quite strident in saying that the government has fallen short on issues of public consultation, taking consideration of public objections, heritage conservation. So this Supreme Court, it's just one judge who helps, it was a three judge bench and it was a two one judgment and the dissenting judgment is quite strong in shortcomings of the project. Okay Prem, so yeah I think that that's quite important, the ufakeness of the entire project, I mean that has been I'll let you write since the beginning. But I think something new has also happened and that just correct me and that's what I'm going to ask you, the central common secretary that is going to come up and the kind of design, the kind of built-in area and the impact that it will have on the environment. So what is new in it and what is faulty in this entire process that is being done now? What is new is that they've just submitted that for environmental approval. So some data has come but not complete data. So this central secretary extends from where to where? It extends from Vijay Chowk out up to the Indiagate Hexagon. So it's really the main Vista itself. And what they have done which that was known right from the beginning of the project, they have removed all public space from this section of the Vista which is the main Vista. They're saying we've compensated with 50 acres of public space in the new algorithm carved out of the president estate and things like that. But that algorithm is entered from the area west of Kastropati Bhavan from other cities are crescent. It's not part of the main Vista experience. And the Vista which was center of the Vista which is the junction of Rajput and Janput which was supposed to be a culture hub which had three culture institutions over there, the National Archives, the National Museum and the Indira Gandhi National Center. All that's displaced and now the entire Vista is lined by government institutions. And the architect likes to compare what he's doing to the Washington Mall without taking into account that great care was taken in that project to ensure that the whole Vista is lined by public institutions and not by government buildings. In fact, the Macmillan Commissioner of Pioneer that plan fought very hard to ensure that no there was pushback from some of the federal government departments. But they fought very hard to ensure that it was completely a public space and not a governmental space. Whereas what we have done is what was a culture hub in the original Latvian plan functioned as a culture hub post independence is now being turned into the spectacular government. Prem, I think this is something very interesting and at times government thinks and feels that public institutions and government both are congruent. So there is no but what you have been saying is it's usurp of the public institutions by the government. Where is the thin line? I mean, what debarkates between the two? In public, I mean, you can't just walk into a government building any time you want. You have to get a pass that are visiting us. Whereas if I want to go to the National Museum, I can go at any time that the museum is open. The museum is open on weekends. None of this space will be a dead space because all the users surrounding it will shut down on weekends. So the museum, the Indira Gandhi Center, these are public places. The public could walk into them. And then when you have public spaces are like flanking the lawns of Central Vista, the Rajput lawns, then those enliven the lawns because those that usage spills over and it creates a whole very public nature to the landscape. If you have government buildings, which will shut down by 6 o'clock in the evening, which will be closed on weekends and the whole vibrancy of that as a public space changes. And the whole idea of government in a democracy to me is to make it friendly and accessible, not make it dominating. Whereas now the spectacle of government is visually dominant. They mentioned that another justification is that from Rajput, you won't see the government buildings there behind the trees. But Rajput is not the determining experience. You should talk about what the experience is from the lawns because those are the public spaces where pedestrians see it at a slower speed and scale. And there you can look under the trees, you can look through the trees and you will be aware of the spectacle of government. Okay, Prem, I think that this is something interesting that you have probably seen for the first time hearing the spillover of the public space. I mean, it's not just the public but the land adjacent to it. I mean, you can just walk through that place. Tell me if I ask concretely because what I could make out from the initial plans, I think it's almost 220 acres of land which is being converted from public to government spaces. Do we have the exact number of acres or the exact area which is going to get transformed? Because the government has been timing again saying, look, nothing is going to happen. I mean, we're definitely constructing buildings but we're not taking the public space. We have to see, I haven't heard this number of 200. What I've heard is a number of about 80 or acres on the main list and which has been converted. Now, they're saying the compensation of public space, they're talking about the arboretum out of the President's estate and they're talking about a new public park on the banks of the river. Neither of those are part of the main VISTA experience. They're talking about North and South Block being converted into the National Museum. However, the DDA change of land use that was ratified does not change the land use of the North and South Block and it changes the land use of the National Archives faster from public semi-public to government office. So those kind of statements are not gelling with the land use changes that they have affected and so that raises a concern that they are talking about North and South Block being converted into museums to just ride over this wave of loss of public space and that eventually at some point they might say, oh, we've done a security assessment and a space so close to the Prime Minister's house, Vice President's house, but the government cannot be a major public space like this. I'm sorry, but it's turned out not to be possible. So they need to be very explicit that they are making this commitment after a security assessment and they will abide by it. Okay. So I think, yeah, yeah, please. There's one other point I want to make is that since there has been no disclosure, we do not know why so much space is being built. So I just like to show some illustrations here of the Vista and these are illustrations published by the architects, so they're accurate to the plans and they compared the first slide compares the opening and the before and after just as is as published by the architect. If you go to the second slide, you see the land currently occupied by government office buildings before and after and you see after much more land is given over to government office buildings. And if you go to the third slide, which just outlines these parcels within which where the government office buildings are, you'll see that the average ground footprint of buildings there is much higher. Ground footprint higher, but the average height of the new buildings is higher because the existing buildings average between 5 and 7 floors, whereas these buildings all consistently 8 floors higher. So they're building a lot more area than what seems to be needed and they need to be very clear on what really the needs are, what are they building for. I think that's a disclosure that is needed. You know, giving the statistics per capital availability of space, probably a minister is getting a space equivalent to a football field. I mean, it's really not just serious. I mean, that's true. See, in my experience of many years of designing office buildings, the square foot per person varies down to about, you know, below 100 square feet per person for an IT office. Going up to about 250 square feet per person for a corporate headquarters. But in a corporate headquarters, the percentage of people in private cabins is very high. In my experience, a government office building should be more in the region of about 150 to 160 square feet per person. And if they're filling this with just the common secretariat, then that is, one doesn't have data to judge, but just visually the impression seems to be that the space provision is far more lavish. So any idea, what is the space that they're building per capita? See, I don't know there in the EIA submission, they have said that the total built up area is 17.21 lakh square meters on a land parcel of about 5 lakh square meters. But how much of that is office space? How much of that is car parking? How much of that is the central conference center, which is also part of this complex? That data I don't have. So I don't have an exact data. So it's just like visually comparing the before and after conditions, it looks like a far more lavish identification of space. So is there a linkage that you can build a linkage to actually assess that linkage? And in the Supreme Court, the government was very categorically saying it's not a TOD project. But now we've seen to one of the replies to a news item from the Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, they say one of the guiding principles happens to be TOD. And we know what TOD is, what to do with land monetization, housing and all that stuff. But is TOD also to do with a larger FAR and then eventually what you're saying more space for whatever is being planned? The government has used the phrase transit-oriented development, but whether they're using it in the broad sense, saying the central secretary or secretary, it is now connected to the metro, which will then have its own private underground rail link to all the buildings. Whether they're saying it in the general sense of being served by transit, or whether they're talking about the specific use of the term where under the master plan, TOD scheme can get exemption via FAR. That is not clear. If it is not the TOD exemption and on the one hand the government has filed affidavits in the Supreme Court hearing, and you have to remember the hearings where before the plans on the central secretary were made open for the EIA submission. And before they were finalized in that current form also. But they've very explicitly said that the whole central WISTA project is not under the TOD exemptions for FAR. They've said that very explicitly. So if that is... So we're not clear, I mean what does that mean now? But if that is the case, somehow it doesn't gel with the kind of built-up density I'm seeing. I get the feeling that the built-up density is higher than what they allow the left to have. Okay. Prim, it's just a hunch. I mean, maybe it's a very wild hunch. You know, we've seen the connection between the prime minister and the architect who's designing and we've seen also some of their works in Gujarat. And of course you know better than me on that front. This is a hunch. I mean, TOD at this stage, does it also mean land monetization? And then allowing, okay, this space, so let's hand over to some players in the market and then we also get some money out of it. Do you think is that possible or is it just a very wild hunch which has no relevance, no basis? But yeah. I don't know. I sense that it might be a wild hunch. I haven't seen any data on this and so I'm reluctant to make any statement without seeing any data supporting this. If you were asked me to sort of hazard a wild guess, I would think that the motivation is more similar to what happened in Berlin in Albert Spear's plans commissioned by Hitler to remake Berlin where the whole intent was to make governmental buildings of a certain scale, not necessarily related to need, but of a certain scale so that they struck awe in the citizenry. So the citizen was struck mute by the spectacle of awe and grandeur and therefore through that they expired in. So I suspect that might be the intention that they wanted a certain scale and grandeur of the project and it didn't necessarily derive from actual analysis of needs. Okay, that's very interesting actually where in modern democracy you do not allow the citizens to actually come closer to the centers of power and then just remind them, hey, you know, we are the rulers, you better, I mean, better be in tandem to what you said and that's very interesting. Instead of being equal participants. I've written on this in more detail in an essay titled the Architecture of Democracy where it was published in the India forums and online publication and in that I compared three major urban axes which is Central Vista, the National Model in Washington and Albert Spear's plan for Berlin and actually Central Vista had a bit of the National Model intention in the original plan and what eventually happened which was to have cultural institutions at the hub. But if the plan was being remade, they could have made the choice to reinforce that aspect of it but they seem to have moved closer actually to the Albert Spear model and make it a place completely dominated by governmental office. So and to claim that public space is created elsewhere is which is not part of the Vista experience, I don't think is a valid explanation and if they're saying North and South will become public space then that should be backed by the land use changes which it isn't right now. So and they should be open about the security assessment of a public space like that. Great Prem, I think thank you so much for making those observations for actually bringing in the perspective. I think that's something very important where what I could make out is actually it's a complete usurp of public spaces but at the same time also dominating I mean the whole idea of a dominating government and I mean this is what we were laughing the other day I mean jokingly we were sharing those anecdotes that look we'll be sitting on the lawns but the sniper would always be pointing a gun at us and that's the kind of public spaces we imagine once this is done. So thank you so much but the last question which I ask everyone Prem, what next? What's going to happen? We have to keep resisting and see what happens. Perhaps there's a middle part like Gautam Bhatia the architect who wrote recently in the Times Media saying that maybe we have to accept that some battles are lost, the parliament building is going to happen but let's at least keep the battle alive to reinvent the main Vista itself and I mean even if they build those office buildings one can always repurpose office buildings into cultural institutions so maybe we should keep fighting that battle. Yeah I think we should keep fighting that battle. Thank you so much Prem.