R K Handa
Jammu Master Plan 2032 is a vision document for catering to housing, commercial, industrial requirements of Jammu urban area. It is a beautiful document covering around 234 pages but the author of this note can say with confidence that senior officers in the Housing and Urban development i.e JDA, Municipal Corporation, besides Traffic Deptt , PHED, Irrigation Deptt, UEED, Pollution Control Board-have not bothered to go through this document word by word with interest. This may be due to the fact that whole of day they are busy in attending various office files, and meetings. Whenever they have to discuss the issues they depend on their subordinates who brief them as per their choice and understanding with the result , such documents remain in the library of their offices and nothing concrete happens on ground. The Master Plan is a document advising as to what should happen till 2032 so that problems of people are addressed in Jammu urban area. In case a comparative chart is prepared as to what is to be done and what has been achieved by now, it will be seen that nothing has happened on ground and only 8 years are left for the life of this Master Plan and after that another Master plan preparation shall start .What a mockery? Master Plans have to be prepared as these are guide lines for urban
development. The author is of the opinion that all heads of concerned organisations should take a day off from their offices ,sit at homes and go through such important documents word by word-and the very next day they should have discussions with their officers down below ie town planners, environment , social, financial, economic experts, and engineering experts. Thereafter Heads of all other concerned depths should have a few rounds of meetings and discuss the issues and programmes spelt in the master plan and prepare a PERT chart to decide the date of start and date of completion of a particular activity. This is possible in case they put their hearts and souls together which is very rare in Govt set up because the APR formats are not designed separately as per the job requirements.
The author has tried to study the document within his limits of ability and understanding.
SOME COMMENTS:
At page 60, Para 6.4 ,it is mentioned that the main objective of the housing policy is not only to meet the housing demand but also to improve the residential environment at large but this beautiful objective remains on paper only when the Master Plan recommends ground + three storeys in Housing Colonies and another funny recommendation that single storied Govt quarters at Gandhinagar should be dismantled and multi-storied flats should be constructed over there on the pretext that the land in Gandhinagar is very costly.UT Govt has not taken into consideration that ground+3 storeys will add to following loads:
Traffic, Water requirements, Electric power requirements, Noise, Pollution, Sewerage, Solid waste, Drainage
The planners seem to have not taken PHED into confidence before advising and implementing ground +three storeys .Currently the pressure of piped water is so low that fresh water does not come in washrooms and kitchens on the ground floors what to talk of four storeys . People have constructed under ground storage water tanks. Then that water is pumped to roofs of their buildings .Let us study that PHED first pump the water from tube well to over head storage tanks and then again the people are pumping the water to their roof tops. what a wastage of electric power besides expenditure on construction of over head tanks, underground tanks purchase of motor pumping set .Going in for four storeys may require construction of new overhead tanks by PHED to meet the added pressure head or the people resorting to the existing system of installation of pump sets in their premises. Similarly the planners should have taken all other relevant departments into confidence.
Parking requirements.
All these are worries in Gandhinagar which was planned somewhere in 1957-1958 and at that time the planners had conceived infrastructure as per the requirements at that time and about fifty years ahead. At that time only ground+1 storey with sufficient setbacks were fixed for construction. In case one studies houses constructed from that period upto 70s and even 90s it will be found that no building is having more than two storeys. How will the Govt meet the added load requirements. To substantiate their his view, that ground+3 floors in existing residential colonies should not be permitted ,the planners and building operation and control authority should visit the plots where they have passed the building plans and see for themselves as to where will they park their cars.
Secondly the proposal of constructing flats in place of single storied Govt quarters ,the planners have forgotten that the approach road feeding these quarters is already overloaded and has district Hospital, School, Gurdwara on one side. Do the planners want to kill patients, school children and people going to Gurdwara? The junctions shall become jammed and traffic chaos shall get created .Loads of traffic, water, power, sewerage, solid wastes, parking and noise pollution shall increase. The proposal is ill conceived and needs to be shelved once for all.
Housing slums para 6:
Survey of notified slums need to be got done from social angle. Rajiv Nagar Ward no 19 has 35 households and population of approximately 230 as mentioned in the master plan at page no 57.This is totally a wrong figure and it seems that the master plan has been prepared while in sleep.The figure is definitely much more.JDA allotted small plots to people to construct dwelling units but the scene now is that all those people sold off those plots to moneyed people who have constructed multistoreyed buildings by clubbing two to three plots and the very purpose of rehabilitating poor has been defeated.Some via media need to be thought ,that such things do not happen in future.It needs to be investigated as to how the entire colony has changed its shape and what the Municipal authorities were doing when the plots were being clubbed and huge constructions were being carried out.Simply corruption at mass scale happened.
Para 9.1 Development Issues:
The planners have visualised that rampant land use violations have happened in the entire city.The master plan was prepared about 12 years back but till now no concrete step has been taken by the municipal corporation in this direction. Even if any violation is reported, the complaint is not entertained and in case it is taken ,the staff below does not bother and the bosses also have no system of monitoring as to whether their instructions have been followed in true sense. Unless the head of the organisation is serious , this unending issue will continue to exist. The concerned officers do not open the WhatsApp or sms messages of complaints with regard to illegal constructions.
The planners are aware that insufficient road width is another issue. While it is not possible to increase the width of the roads but the authorities can definitely ensure that existing roads are not encroached by the shop keepers and the owners of plots do not park their cars on the roads. Inspite of the fact that planners are aware of this issue still they have proposed ground+3 storeys in residential colonies. The Municipal Corporation has allocated street food vendors on road opposite convent school .In the evening, hundreds of cars are seen parked on this road, making the road congested. Even traffic Deptt does not object to this. Of course street vendors are important but the planners should allocate some suitable area for them. Nothing has been discussed for earmarking spaces for street vendors.
Another issue :
In Gandhinagar on some of the roads like Green Belt Road, road from Green Belt towards Lakshmi Narayan temple and road from Auqaf market towards Goal Market, the allottees of the plots are in possession of land more than the size of plots for which they made the payments to Govt. This is not new but at the time of handing over the plots to the allottees the concerned officers gave the possession of plots wrongly which was a mistake at that time some fifty years back. Accordingly the electric poles, drains footpaths were constructed by the Govt . The straight line of the forewalls will prove that no individual has done any encroachment. Now after fifty years the housing board has awaken and are asking the allottees to go back and release the extra land. Naturally this will be resented by the allottees .Now a device has been invented by Housing Board to retrieve the extra land which is explained below:
In case any one wants to modify his building ,he is not being given permission by the Municipal Corporation unless Housing Board gives NOC. The Housing Board issues NOC only when the applicant dismentals his fore wall and releases the extra land. Of course every one has not to modify his house or construct a new one by dismantling the old structure, what will the Housing Board do with the land retrieved from a very few. They can neither widen the road or foot path nor can they shift the alignment of electric poles. Why do fruitless exercise of harassing the public.The Secretary Housing and Urban Development Deptt should visit such plots and take a decision whereby public is not harassed……….TO BE CONTINUED)
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