Architectural Review reports on India

Architectural Review is probably one of my favorite architectural journals that is still surviving. While not immune to the print diet that has been afflicting most of the image intensive monthly publications, it still manages to feature innovative international works with good photography, readable plans and well written commentaries. As an added bonus it comes with little or no advertisements that features anorexic women caressing unaffordable stainless steel bath fixtures - how refreshing !!

Given that it is a rarity to have works from India featured in AR, it was a treat to browse through the September 2010 issue that was entirely focused on India. But make no mistake - it only took the editorial team 20 long years to revisit the country for an entire issue.  Not  too many surprises in terms of featured architects - Bimal Patel's IIM extension in Ahmedabad, Stephen Paumier/Spa Design,  Rajeev Kathpalia/Vastu Shilpa Foundation among others. And off course they has to be an essay on Dharavi. The most lyrical project of all is the minimalist Shiv Temple in rural Maharashtra by Mumbai based Sameep Padora.

A lot of things have changed in twenty years, and some have not. The Delhi-Ahmedabad-Mumbai triangle still retains its monopolistic stronghold in getting its work noticed in the international arena. With a big share of the Ahmedabad design diaspora settling in Bangalore, coupled with  self-made emerging talents from less glamorous architectural schools, there are certainly lot more stories waiting to be told from beyond the established architectural triangle.  Perhaps we need to wait for another twenty long years.

Death by Asphalt

A not-very-helpful New York Times article on the sorry state of traffic safety in India could be summarized in two lines:

"The fast-growing Indian economy has resulted in a steady increase in traffic fatalities.  No one really knows what to do about it !!"

You don't need a 1500 word article to arrive at this conclusion. Pretty much any Indian resident  or even a regular visitor can tell you that. However, one line caught my attention -- newly privatized highways in Brazil have much lower rate of fatal accidents compared to other roads. Wish the reporters had more to say about how Brazil is doing better.

Link to a  bit more substantive article in BBC ( June 2008) on similar topic has a shocking revelation (no sources provided) : Traffic deaths claim more people in India than AIDS, TB and Malaria combined.

McKinsey report on the future of urban India

In April 2010, McKinsey Global Institute published a comprehensive report on the current trends and projected course of urbanization in India for the next twenty years until 2030, complete with a series of policy recommendations. It's a pretty impressive piece of consultant-speak -- extensive research and analysis  presented with alarming clarity peppered with generous sprinkling of diagrams, charts and data. The report is no light bedtime reading and it is bound to turn into one of the early influential documents for physical and policy planners focusing on urban India and for the strategy planners in national and multinational corporations who stand to gain enormously from India's growth. The report is structured and framed around five topics -- funding, governance, planning, sectoral policies and shape of urbanization.

Even if the future reality doesn't match with MGI's projections, the growth trends and the practical challenges that lie ahead are too sobering to ignore. Firstly 2030 is not too far off. Most of you who are reading this blog now are very likely to be around during the next twenty years. By then the Indian city dweller will have plenty more company - an additional 250 million people swelling the ranks of city population from an estimated 340 million in 2010 to 590 million in 2030. Cities will account for 70% of  GDP and will provide 85% of total tax revenues that MGI claims will benefit the 200 million rural population who live in proximity to 70 of the largest cities in the country.

To realize this urbanization-on-steroids, MGI estimates India will need:

• $1.2 trillion in capital investment


• 2.5 billion square meters of roads to be paved


• 700-900 million square meters of commercial and residential space


• 7,400 kilometers of subways and transportation to be constructed

Just to put things in perspective, to realize 700-900 sq.m ( 7.5 - 9.6 billion SF) of commercial/residential space, India would need to build a city that is twice the size of Mumbai or city the size of Chicago every year for the next 20 years. How do you move around these super-sized cities ? Certainly not in dumpy Tata Nanos if you want to get to work in less than four hours from where you live. We would need a world class network of public transportation where you don't have to cling for your life...or share a cosmopolitan sweat-fest. Enter the grade separated Metro that doesn't have to stop when ever there is a stray cow or a chief ministers convoy or a political demonstration...where the maid and the mistress can travel in the same Chinese-made air conditioned coach . MGI estimates we would need 7,400 km of subway by 2030. The current length of Delhi metro is around 110km - in other words we would need more than 3 Delhi metros at its current length to be completed each year for the next 20 consecutive years. By all accounts the realization of Delhi Metro is an impressive piece of public sector miracle completed with a successful public-private partnership in a record 25 years from planning to implementation. Completed on schedule and even close to turning a profit, Delhi metro is a miracle of sorts in the history of Indian infrastructure planning and implementation. But then it is the nation's capital with independent governing authority, inextricably linked to the nation's power center, with a plenty of cash and political will. And the benefit of being headed by the incorruptible CEO/project manager extraordinaire Elattuvalapil Sreedharan  who at 77 is yet to exhibit any biological traits of cloning himself for other metro projects.

This brings another key issue highlighted by the MGI report - the need for a fiscally independent Metropolitan governance to realize large scale urban infrastructure projects. Similar to most successful cities in industrialized countries, this would be a true devolution of power towards metropolitan democracy and leadership powered by active civic participation and public oversight where cities can envision, manage and implement their own physical destinies with a fair share of their tax revenues. What does this mean in practical terms? The city mayors will call the shots and would have more power and financial resources at their disposal compared to the Chief Minister who would be dealing mostly with the big picture issues affecting the entire state. The mayors of Mumbai and Pune would have to compete with each in wooing the next corporation that would deliver thousands of new job while they make sure they don't suck the ground water dry for its residents.  The planning departments in Chennai and Kolkata will have more trained planners and policy makers than civil service bureaucrats who had successfully memorized the geological significance of silurian and devonian periods in cracking their Union Public Service Commission examinations. The middle class would have to get off their butt and start playing a more active role in their civic duty and get used to imbibing politics that they have so long loathingly referred to as sewage

Because this study is primarily about cities the report also conveniently doesn't talk about the other 685 million  rural population that wont be living in proximity to the cities. While the report mentions that rural areas that are currently outliers of the metropolitan regions  would stand to benefit from the urbanization, the fate of the bulk of the rural population far removed from the metropolitan influence is left unanswered. Perhaps that is not the the objective of the report. Yet, any projections and recommendations on urbanization is bound to be incomplete if it does not take in account the future of under-served rural economies that are bound to gravitate toward the pull of the cities constantly overwhelming the limits of the urban infrastructure.

Link to MGI report

Orient Express

John L. Flannery, the President and CEO of GE India was smiling in Chennai late February.  I doubt if the smile had anything to do with having to accept a pointless award made-up by the Indo-US Chamber of Commerce to honor GE's role in Indo-US cooperation. But he certainly seems to have his reasons. The central cabinet has just approved a multi-billion dollar proposal for GE to manufacture diesel locomotives for the Indian Railways.

It all sounds swell until you realize that GE-USA has recently signed a preliminary agreement with China for building high-speed electric locomotives where China will be licensing the latest technology for building high-speed electric engines. While GE is claimed to be the world leader in diesel locomotives, the fastest trains in the US -  the Acela Express, powered by GE engines - with a purported maximum speed of 150 mph (240 kmph), typically averages an underwhelming  80 mph (130kmph). Just to put things in perspective the high-speed trains running on electric engines that connect provincial capitals in China are operating at speeds averaging more than 200 mph (320 kph).

That's a long way from the 19th century when the Chinese sweat, muscle and tears were shipped to California to help build the western railroads to the 21st century licensing offer from the land where you cant really 'google' the meaning for intellectual property.  A fitting completion of the Karmic circle drawn with indelible capitalist ink.

Perhaps somebody should remind the Indian railway minister Ms. Mamta Banerjee that the distance between New Delhi and Beijing is only around 2400 miles compared to 7,300 miles between the Indian capital and GE corporate headquarters in Fairfield, CT.  In abstraction, that would be 12 days to Beijing powered by Chinese electric engine compared to 90 days to Connecticut in a GE locomotive.

Surely we all know who the winners are going to be in this multi billion dollar deal between GE and Indian Railways ; after all GE could use a small share of those handsome profits to seek oriental wisdom on magnetic levitation.

New York Times article on China bringing high-speed rail expertise to US

Economic Times article on GE and Indian Railways

And then there were none...

[slideshow]

Tuesday April 26, 2050.

As Chennai gets ready to roast in 50 degree celsius (122F)   during the weeks of "Agni Nakshatram,"  in the month of May, its citizens will pay their final tributes to what was once called the Marina beach. Thanks to rising sea levels, Chennai will now relinquish her last remaining strip of public open space - the Marina beach - to the non-negotiable terms of nature. The people's place would exist no more, leaving the congested elevated freeway standing alone with their 60' high supporting pylons sunk deep onto the erstwhile Kamaraj Salai. On the night of April 25th the freeway will be  closed to accommodate thousands of Chennai'ites who would jostle for a ringside view to see the high tide from Bay of Bengal gobble up the last remaining public open space in the city for good. For those who cannot make it to the seaside expressway the event would be streamed live into their living rooms and communication equipments by every major television channel.

Between 2040 and 2050 the Tamil Nadu government put up a brave face trying to save the last remains of the beach next to Kamaraj Salai with corrosion-resistant concrete tetrapods manufactured with technological know-how from China. But the untimely low pressure depression from the Bay of Bengal during the heat of summer would finally wash away what has always been the signature open space for Chennai for more than one hundred and fifty years.

Given the relocation challenges the Tamil Nadu government had to face in the last ten years, the loss of the last twenty feet of beach land almost seemed like a non-issue. Unlike the Tsunami that hit the shores of Chennai on Dec 27, 2004  the government didn't have to be bothered by the fisherfolks this time. For in the place of fishermen's village now exists a floating luxury eco-resort constructed on pneumatic  foundations designed to  rise with sea levels and to survive cyclonic wind speeds. Besides, why would you need a fishermens village when you can order a fresh vacuum sealed pack of genetically modified and locally farmed Alaskan salmon from your neighborhood Walmart?  Walmart may be fighting another round of class action charges in the United States, but their business in India is doing better than ever. With their headquarters moved from Bentonville, Arkansas to Naypyidaw, Myanmar, they are a virtual retail monopoly in entire Asia.

The biggest political challenge the government would face in the recent years with the rising sea levels would be the relocation of the final resting places of four ex-chief chief ministers of Tami Nadu  - the tacky memorial tombs that populated the entire northern end of the beach.  The samadhis of M.Karunanidhi and his son M.K.Stalin were the first of the four memorials to be transported to higher grounds promptly followed by those of M.G.Ramachandran and C.N.Annadurai. Briefly the government considered the proposal for floating memorials put forth by the engineering conglomerate that owned the floating eco-resort, but the timing of general elections would favor a more controversial yet traditional approach to the relocation of the final remains. Earth was preferred to water. There is a lot more money to made from salt water these days and giving away prime waterfront real estate for free to dead heads-of-state did not amount to a smart strategy to fund future elections. In the name of culture and tradition, the Tamil political flock may still prefer the five yard long cotton 'Veshti" in place of western style trousers but sartorial sentimentality doesn't come in the way of cold logic required for political machinations. With the high profile memorials  transplanted to higher round, they now need to attend to official business. There is a bidding war brewing between Reliance Industries and AquaChina to grab the  memorial lands for the next generation desalination plants that would join the existing marine-industrial corridor that would extend all the way  from Eranavurkuppan in Ennore to the north to Pondicherry in the South. And bidding wars are a good thing for party and personal coffers.

In the middle of the heightened media frenzy that revolved around the the live telecast of the anticipated high tide event, the remains of one other political personality was turning in his grave - that of Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff, the governor of Madras from 1881 to 1886, who concieved and built the promenade along the beach and christened it  " The Madras Marina."