Delhi Master Plan: Six decades of unsolved housing woes

Going by the contents of various Master Plans, one would have to concede that these are fine documents, products of diligent work of long years.
Representational Image. (File photo | EPS)
Representational Image. (File photo | EPS)

For the national Capital’s civic edifice, Master Plan of course is the guiding document. It is to the credit of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the Urban Development Ministry (UDM) that they have, without fail, brought out Master Plan Document (MPD) every two decades, which have been accepted by the government with some delays and changes here and there.

Going by the contents of various Master Plans, one would have to concede that these are fine documents, products of diligent work of long years. However, these documents have often found acceptance only in words and seldom in spirit.

If one were to recall the civic history of post-Independence Delhi, name of much-admired administrator- statesman Jagmohan, who recently passed away at the advanced age of 93, would emerge as someone who was one of the biggest custodians of the Master Plan documents. Jagmohan had a long affair with Delhi starting from the desk of DDA, to being its commissioner, becoming the vice chairman and exofficio chairman as the Lieutenant Governor of the national capital and later heading the Urban Development Ministry in the Vajpayee government.

The DDA was created in 1957 for planned development of the national capital. In due course, it developed and released the Master Plan for Delhi in 1962 “to ensure an organised and structured development”.

The first Master Plan document essentially looked at the identification of new land that could be developed into residential properties and make self-contained colonies by providing ample commercial office and retail complexes as well.

In 1982, following the Asian Games and a boom in real estate sector, the document of 1962 was revised to formulate the Master Plan 2001 and again revisited in 2007 to form the Delhi Master Plan 2021. And in 2021, we have the draft Master Plan 2041, which is being variously debated in newspaper columns.

The imprint of Jagmohan was there in all the previous documents. Despite his rightful claim to be a connoisseur of planned urban development, Jagmohan’s ideas did not deliver to the national capital a perfectly planned city. “No document was bad but they were all marred in their implementation,” one remembers Jagmohan saying at a deliberation soon after the third Master Plan was released.

Implementation of the Master Plan needs participation of the municipal bodies and the Delhi government. Both being elected beings, the objectives of the Master Plans have often been stained by the demands of electorate during their implementation. An unadulterated certificate of the failure of the Master Plan has been the unabated rise of unauthorised colonies across the national Capital.

At the time of drafting of the first Master Plan, Delhi had just 110 unauthorised colonies with around 221,000 people living in them. During the last count ahead of the 2020 Assembly elections, there existed 1,797 such localities, and not to forget that a large number of these colonies have been authorised in the past, the previous instance being in 1993.

The judicial system in the past has objected to the rise of unauthorised colonies as unplanned urbanisation of the city adds to its environmental woes.

A Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee had submitted a report in July 2019 saying that regularisation of unauthorised colonies puts strain on the existing infrastructure ofthe national capital.

In a recent interview, a former senior official of the DDA said that the last Master Plan was violated to the effect 50 per cent in the areas of North and South municipal corporations and close to 70 per cent in East Delhi municipal corporation. It may be recalled that the standard international rate of Master Plan violation is just about 25 per cent.

So, one may now imagine how these documents have been mauled in the past. Given the scenario, MPD 2041 would again remain a document or a benchmark for violation to gain quick electoral returns consigning sage advice of urban planning to the dustbins.

Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice

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