In 2008 my hometown of Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, India, underwent a massive exercise in urban design. The city was to get a new skyline on its long shore of the river Sabarmati — that in its serpentine fashion, bifurcates the city into two. Modelled around the modernist riverfront projects (the likes of which we have experienced in other Asian cities signalling wealth, ambition, and the rise of global infrastructure), the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project was the biggest urban design exercise that the city had undertaken in decades.
The proposition was to give the city a facelift by building a permanent promenade, taming the river by lifting the shores, creating spaces for private companies to grow their footprint, and making common access areas — parks, restaurants, recreation spaces — for the residents of Ahmedabad. The expensive public development project would put the city on the landscape of foreign investors and technology companies that the government was wooing to come Make in India and contribute to the India Shining campaign. It would bring international focus and a renewed lens of looking at the city and the river which runs through it.
Overlooking communities in the design phase
The voices of the poor, the vulnerable, the weak, and the disposable, were not considered important enough
In the many feasibility reports, environmental scans, consultations with architects, urban designers and policymakers, it seemed like a win-win situation for all. When the project was set in motion, it came as a surprise to many — those who were involved in making it as well as those who were excited at getting this new glorious riverfront — that there was resistance to the project. It would seem that ‘all’ were not happy with it.
What had been completely overlooked — deliberately rather than accidentally — was that this river shore was an entire universe of life and livelihood. On both sides of the river, informal settlements, slums, and legal settler colonies that rehabilitated refugees and migrant workers had grown to keep up with the city for over five decades. At an estimate, more than 50% of the city’s informal labour market lived in these neighbourhoods. A large part of the invisible domestic, construction, manual, and informal labour that is the hidden lifeline of post-industrial cities, was supplied by the lowincome groups and communities that had called the river its home. Around their homes, other economies that followed the ebbs and flows of the river had sprung: second-hand markets, small-scale farming, raising and rearing of small domestic animals, repair shops, and small-scale entrepreneurial enterprises that thrived in the region.
It turned out when specific civil society organisations started inquiring into this, that none of the representatives of these communities were consulted during the design phases of the city. The project was very deliberate in who the ‘all’ were that was going to be designed for in the making of the riverfront. The resistance that was mounted by the small group of civil socie ty actors, however, was easily quelled. The voices of the poor, the vulnerable, the weak, and the disposable, were not considered important enough, before or after the project was set into motion. The resistance was completely overridden by offering meagre and unsustainable compensation packages and rehabilitation options that did not pay any heed to local habits, customs, aspirations, or ambitions of the people who were being forcibly dislocated from the land that they called home. In state-leaning media and in public propaganda, the fact that 150,000 people were being rendered homeless was considered a small price to pay for progress.
SPREKER VOORNAAMNISHANT ACHTERNAAM SHAH
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