Guha's Central Vista fiasco.

This blog has frequently marvelled at the cretinism Ramachandra Guha displays in his Hindustan Times Articles. Now he has decided not to write for them because they spiked the following article of his which the Wire has obligingly published. 

I think the HT editor was doing Guha a favor. After all, the man is supposed to be a historian. He should be adding some value rather than simply repeating what someone else has said in some website which the HT would scarcely want to advertise.

In a two-part article published last month in the website Newslaundry, the writer Alpana Kishore subjected the project to redesign New Delhi’s Central Vista to critical scrutiny. The first part asked the question: “Why is redeveloping Central Vista a bigger priority than fixing the capital’s catastrophic air pollution or plummeting life expectancy?”

The answer, of course, is that it isn't a bigger priority at all. But fixing air pollution is a massive task which requires the cooperation of neighboring States. Redeveloping the Central Vista is a relatively small project which should enable the Legislature to function better by giving it a modern building fit for purpose. Furthermore, the Government could save a good chunk of the Rs. 1000 crores a year in rent in pays for office space scattered across the Capital.

In answering this question, Kishore focused on one key element in the project: the provision for a grand new house for the prime minister, on Rajpath.

It was the wrong thing to focus on.  People know that Modi doesn't have a family living with him. Thus his Residence & the PMO will be used for Government purposes- rather than to glorify a dynasty and their sycophants. It makes sense for the PMO to be closer to Parliament and the Secretariat. In this way, both the Executive and the Legislature can function better. Furthermore, ever since the attack on the Indian Parliament, there is an obvious Security concern as well as the efficiency angle. Furthermore, Bimal Patel, the chief architect, is going to beautify the area which otherwise makes the post Independence developments look rather shabby in comparison with the heritage from the British.

Such self-indulgence, she argued, may be common in dictatorships, but was inappropriate for a Republic.

This is a nonsensical argument. Dictatorships generally are Republics. Both Democracies and Despotisms have impressive residences for their Heads of Government. Mussolini's residence was the Chigi Palace. It is now the official residence of the Italian Prime Minister.

If one thinks of Delhi as akin to London or Berlin,

then we ought not to be surprised that Parliament is being rehoused in a more ample building which uses modern technology.

a capital of a democracy, then, argues Kishore, spending hundreds of crores “on a second house for the prime minister ahead of fixing Delhi’s pressing problems like its catastrophic air pollution which causes 80 deaths per day and 45 percent of all premature deaths is a spectacularly insensitive move that puts a powerful elite firmly above the people’s good. On the other hand, if we are in the Beijing-Pyongyang-Moscow axis where citizens are passive spectators, it is absolutely normal.”

Kishore is pretending that this plan is about building a big house for the P.M. It isn't. It is about a big new Parliament building with the V.P (ex officio head of the Rajya Sabha) and the P.M.O located close to it. Symbolically it affirms the Executive's dependence and answerability to the Legislature.

The second part of Kishore’s article focused on the process by which the project was awarded: a process marked by secrecy and subterfuge, ending in the contract going to a firm of architects from Gujarat known to be particularly close to the prime minister.

This is nonsense. Bimal Patel has done a good job on projects like this. If there really was 'secrecy and subterfuge' why has no P.I.L been launched?

This firm’s previous projects, wrote Kishore, had depended for their execution  “upon the removal of “obstacles” like due process, impact assessments, public consultation, and well-established global best practices”.

If Kishore has evidence of this why has she not launched PILs? Where there is a judicial remedy, why has it not been availed off? The answer is that this is fake news run by an unimportant website- not a proper Newspaper. The HT editors could scarcely have been pleased at this extended panegyric to a much smaller rival news outlet. Clearly, its own investigative journalists are utterly shite. That is why Guha has to turn to some poxy little web-site.

The firm’s past record, in sum, was one of consistently manifesting “an innate disrespect for the citizen”.

In the opinion of some two bit scribbler publishing on a 'website'.

In concluding her two-part essay, Kishore remarked:
“The biggest irony remains that a prime minister from the humblest of backgrounds should yearn for a house on Rajpath, no less, to endorse his vision of personal greatness and legacy.'

There is no such irony. The P.M isn't exactly living in a jhuggi. In any case, he knows that this building will stand for a hundred years. His occupancy of it will be brief.

'Would Emmanuel Macron demand and, more importantly, get a house on the Champs Elysées?'

Is this woman utterly daft? Macron lives in the Élysée Palace just as the Emperor Napoleon did.

'Can even Trump order himself a second home on the Mall?'

Why would he want to? This is sheer stupidity.

She added: ‘It brings back embarrassing memories of his name-embroidered Rs 10-lakh suit, only this time the vanity will be at the taxpayer’s expense.”

But the 10-lakh suit was a success. It advertised the superior quality of the Indian textile industry and was sold for a profit to raise funds for charity. There is no vanity here. Rather there is a highly utile building and beautification problem which will enable the Legislature and Executive to work better with improved security and the utilization of modern technology.

Kishore’s essay has no mention of the COVID-19 crisis; evidently it was written before the dimensions of the crisis became known. I shall come to this crisis presently, but let me first state that I share her concerns entirely. This project has been pushed through without wider consultation with the public, or even with domain experts in architecture and urban planning.

But Parliament represents the Public. They certainly have a say in the redesign of their own meeting place. Guha can't get elected rat-catcher. What should concern him is the fact that he has nothing to say for himself and has to rely on repeating an article by somebody else in a rival news-outlet.

In fact, as one who has seen the work of this firm of architects in Ahmedabad at first-hand, I have an additional concern: that they are utterly indifferent to history and heritage.

But Guha is entirely indifferent to his own history and heritage. He can't even speak Kannada or Tamil properly. He isn't from Gujarat. Patel is. If what Patel did was not in keeping with Gujarati heritage, Gujaratis would have told him so in his own language- and, what's more, he'd have listened to them and taken their notes.

A prime example of this was their design of a second campus for the Indian Institute of Ahmedabad. The original IIM-A campus, designed by Louis Kahn,

a very traditional Gujarati man who was immersed in Gujarati history and heritage

beautifully blends traditional and modern practices, using red brick, open windows, and courtyards. It is a joy to see, walk through, study and teach in. Its successor is cold and soulless, built entirely of concrete; those assigned offices there yearn for a transfer to the original and much more welcoming campus.

This may well be true. But Patel won the competition because that is what his client wanted. It may be they wanted something 'soulless' and 'unwelcoming' to stupid jhollahwallah cretins like Guha. The point about Business School is that you should leave it as soon as possible so as to actually do Business.  Those who teach there should be yearning to get back into the Business World, not continue hiding out from it in a place where your students will, within a year or two, earn more than you.

The prime minister’s own justification of the project is that it was to mark not a personal but a national milestone – the 75th anniversary of Indian independence.

Modi found that his beautification projects in Gujarat were a vote winner. He hopes something similar will happen with his plans for Benares. Thus he is backing this project. What he isn't saying is that it will help Parliament work better. The reason for his reticence is that people have a low opinion of legislators.

This is disingenuous, because past anniversaries overseen by past prime ministers had not called for such a spectacular extravaganza.

Because past prime ministers were puppets of a dynasty which has impoverished the country by its corruption, incompetence and ideological cretinism.

Both the 25th and 50th anniversaries of independence had been suitably marked, by a special session of parliament. Apparently, what was good enough for Indira Gandhi and I.K. Gujral wouldn’t quite do for Narendra Modi.

He is expanding the Parliament building so the 'special session' won't look quite so shitty.

To my mind,

but your mind is full of shit

the Modi government’s redesign of New Delhi brings to mind not so much living Communist autocrats as it does some dead African despots.

Did those dead African despots win two general elections? No? Then there is something wrong with your mind- viz it is full of shit.

It is the sort of vanity project, designed to perpetuate the ruler’s immortality, that Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and Jean Bédel-Bokassa of the Central African Republic once inflicted on their own countries (for more on the first, see V.S. Naipaul’s essay ‘The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro’).

Because everybody knows Modi is a cannibal.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit us, this expensive redesign of the core of the national capital seemed a wasteful and self-indulgent exercise.

Only to shitheads like Guha.

It has now become much more so. For, an economy that was already flailing has been brought to the brink by the pandemic. The ill-planned lockdown has led to enormous human suffering. Working-class Indians, already living on the edge, are now faced with utter destitution.

Had the lockdown been implemented earlier, it could have been lifted by now. What this pandemic shows is the need for superior efficiency and speedy decision making by the Executive and Legislature.

As many economists have argued, the millions of poor Indians rendered poorer by this crisis urgently need financial support from the Central government. Why can’t the funds currently allocated to the Central Vista scheme

currently estimated at 1000 crores not twenty times that sum

– estimated at Rs 20,000 crore and counting – be diverted to help ameliorate their condition?

Because they would be a drop in the ocean. This is not an either/or question. However, it may be that the scheme will be postponed.

Politically, the burden of this economic, social and humanitarian crisis is being borne by the states.

No. It is being borne by both the Center and the States.

They desperately need money – not least, the money the Centre already owes them. A staggering Rs 30,000 crore are still due to the states from the Centre as their share of Goods and Services Tax revenues.

They will get the money. These sums are not 'staggering' to economists.

Why does this still remain unpaid,

It is being paid in phases.

while the Central Vista project has been sanctioned and a schedule for its tendering announced?

in other words, no money has been spent yet.

It will be at least a year – probably longer – before the economy can begin to fitfully recover.

So, no money will be spent nor work commenced till this is behind us.

The restoration of the social fabric may take even longer. Altogether, the country may take at least five, more likely ten, years before it can return to where it was before COVID-19 came to our shores.

Economists don't believe this. Guha is pulling this shit out of his ass.

Surely the moral, political and intellectual energies of our leaders must be devoted above all to this economic and social rebuilding.

But that is exactly what is happening. The Central Vista scheme has no opportunity cost in this respect.

In his speeches to the nation since the pandemic broke, the prime minister has repeatedly asked Indians to sacrifice – sacrifice their time, their jobs, their lifestyles, their human and cultural tendency to be gregarious. Now citizens must ask the prime minister to sacrifice something for the nation as well. His project to redesign Central Vista was always controversial. It is now absolutely untenable. He should drop it.

Nobody knows or cares about this project. There is no popular clamor about it. Once the thing is completed it will be welcomed. Guha's attempts at stirring up controversy through his articles in the HT have always failed. His position there is now absolutely untenable. He should drop the pretense of having anything to say to the Indian public.