The fierce debate triggered by the recent Supreme Court order to the Delhi Government to re-locate industrial units in the national capital in the conforming areas has lessons for all urban areas in the country. Several common factors have led to the ghettoization of almost all our cities and towns. The increasing pressures of population, unremitting poverty, bad planning, the evil nexus between corrupt politicians, builders, bureaucrats and local bureaucracies have all combined to make our urban areas living hells.
Squalor alone defines the conditions of our cities and towns.
There are no Beverly Hills here. The point is that one cannot wish away the smell of poverty whichever way one goes in this country. Having said this, it does not mean that there is no need to plan the growth of our cities and townships. And all those who are now crying themselves hoarse over Union Urban Development Minister's courageous stand to instill some much-neeed discipline and order in the national capital realize it as much as anyone else that without orderly development our cities and towns will die sooner than later. Yet, if they still oppose Jagmohan, they do so for purely ulterior motives.