Vadodara lacks professionals, facilities to run town planning department

By Rohit Prajapati*
A city or an urban area is a dynamic entity comprising of many systems working together. All progressive cities across the world, who boasts of high quality of life for its citizens, have effective planning or other similar departments comprising of a team of diverse, multidisciplinary qualified experts from the field built environments who help shape and translate the city’s visions into successful implementable projects. In Vadodara, while there are many officials who talk about visions and lofty goals for the city to compete with other world class cities, the city lacks both, necessary facilities for effectively running a good planning department as well as qualified professionals to take these visions to fruition.
Various government authorities are undertaking many initiatives, like the so-called Smart City Project , Vishwamitri Riverfront Development Project, Mission Million Trees, beautification of urban water bodies (lakes), City Square, Ring Roads, Slum Rehabilitation, etc. But there is neither sync nor rhyme (a common guiding vision) among them. They seem like ego trips conceived by individuals, running in different directions, creating chaos in the city, and leaving the city in a state of disrepair.
The execution of these projects is done by unqualified or under qualified staff who have little or no expertise related to the complex subjects they are asked to deal with. The current status of the case against Vishwamitri River Front Development Project and the many interim orders, including stay orders, are a testimony to and offer a prominent example of the unplanned and sorry state of affairs.
Vadodara has not had a Town Planner since 2005 and the defunct Town Planning Department has little or no connection with the other Departments like Futuristic Planning Cell, Special Project Vehicles for the Vishwamitri River, Smart City, etc. Shockingly and surprisingly all the projects are outsourced to private consultants who impose their own values and philosophies on the city and the citizens of Vadodara are expected to lap it up due to the inability and inefficiency of their own city to set visions and plans of their own, provide proper directives for the consultants, or even evaluate the merits of what these consultants propose.
If Vadodara is to see successful coordination and implementation of any crucial projects for exemplary and comprehensive development of the city, it needs to have a smart and qualified City Planning Department staffed with dedicated, qualified planners as well as experts from related professions.
A dominant issue on the front burner has been how we treat our natural and human made water systems (such as rivers and ponds). Whenever we talk about a river we should keep in mind a crucial point that she should not be considered merely as a water channel flowing between its two banks but consider her in totality, as a watershed level layered system. We should stop using the term ‘water body’ in the context of rivers and associated tributaries, wetlands, and ponds. Since we have termed her as a ‘body’, it is meant to be over-exploited and abused.
Our rivers have sadly become default receptacles of all kinds of industrial effluent, solid waste, and sewage. The present development model and its policies have done two things to the rivers, either we have dried out some rivers systematically or, those rivers we cannot dry up, we have been polluting them very severely.
Most of the River Front Projects by design deliberately ignore the importance and uniqueness of the river, her wetlands, ravines, inter-connectivity with other water bodies, floodplains, flora and fauna, biodiversity, etc. Many times fancy jargons, images, and concepts are used in the project report and its propaganda, but if one closely examines these reports, it becomes abundantly clear that those words and ideas are intentionally misleading and many of these cannot be and are often not manifested at all in actual projects.
The problems resulting from such grave conditions and malpractice are exacerbated by other critical inadequacies as well. The major ones include, making plans without proper contour and site surveys, lack of any understanding of ecology or landscape values, and absence of genuine and continuous public participation. Making a quasi-governmental authority of local experts, NGOs, voluntary organisations and other project-relevant individuals to anticipate and guide future development projects and to review and sanction proposed projects is the need of the day.
It is high time we call a spade a spade. It is time to change our definitions of development, engage ourselves with our city’s future, and re-learn to design and live with nature.
—
*Well-known environmental activist, Gujarat

Comments

Lata Mangeshkar, a Dalit from Devdasi family, 'refused to sing a song' about Ambedkar

By Pramod Ranjan* An artist is known and respected for her art. But she is equally, or even more so known and respected for her social concerns. An artist's social concerns or in other words, her worldview, give a direction and purpose to her art. History remembers only such artists whose social concerns are deep, reasoned and of durable importance. Lata Mangeshkar (28 September 1929 – 6 February 2022) was a celebrated playback singer of the Hindi film industry. She was the uncrowned queen of Indian music for over seven decades. Her popularity was unmatched. Her songs were heard and admired not only in India but also in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other South Asian countries. In this article, we will focus on her social concerns. Lata lived for 92 long years. Music ran in her blood. Her father also belonged to the world of music. Her two sisters, Asha Bhonsle and Usha Mangeshkar, are well-known singers. Lata might have been born in Indore but the blood of a famous Devdasi family...

The soundtrack of resistance: How 'Sada Sada Ya Nabi' is fueling the Iran war

By Syed Ali Mujtaba* The Persian track “ Sada Sada Ya Nabi ye ” by Hossein Sotoodeh has taken the world by storm. This viral media has cut across linguistic barriers to achieve cult status, reaching over 10 million views. The electrifying music and passionate rendition by the Iranian singer have resonated across the globe, particularly as the high-intensity military conflict involving Iran entered its second month in March 2026.

'Batteries now cheap enough for solar to meet India's 90% demand': Expert quotes Ember study

By A Representative Shankar Sharma, Power & Climate Policy Analyst, has urged India’s top policymakers to reconsider the financial and ecological implications of the country’s energy transition strategy in light of recent global developments. In a letter dated April 10, 2026, addressed to the Union Ministers of Finance, Power, New & Renewable Energy, Environment, Forest & Climate Change, and the Vice Chair of NITI Aayog, with a copy to the Prime Minister, Sharma highlighted concerns over India’s ambitious plans for coal gasification and the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Food security? Gujarat govt puts more than 5 lakh ration cards in the 'silent' category

By Pankti Jog* A new statistical report uploaded by the Gujarat government on the national food security portal shows that ensuring food security for the marginalized community is still not a priority of the state. The statistical report, uploaded on December 24, highlights many weaknesses in implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in state.

Why Indo-Pak relations have been on 'knife’s edge' , hostilities may remain for long

By Utkarsh Bajpai* The past few decades have seen strides being made in all aspects of life – from sticks and stones to weaponry. The extreme case of this phenomenon has been nuclear weapons. The menace caused by nuclear weapons in the past is unforgettable. Images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 come to mind, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities.

Subaltern voices go digital: Three Indian projects rewriting history from the ground up

By A Representative A new wave of digital humanities (DH) work in India is shifting the focus away from university classrooms and English-language scholarship, instead prioritizing multilingual, community-driven archives that amplify subaltern voices . According to a review published in the Journal of Asian Studies , projects such as the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), the Oral History Narmada archive , and the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre are redefining how the country remembers its past — often without government funding or institutional support.

Beyond Lata: How Asha Bhosle redefined the female voice with her underrated versatility

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* The news of iconic Asha Bhosle’s ‘untimely’ demise has shocked music lovers across the country. Asha Tai was 92 years young. Normally, people celebrate a passing at this age, but Asha Bhosle—much like another legend, Dev Anand—never made us feel she was growing old. She was perhaps the most versatile artist in Bombay cinema. Hailing from a family devoted to music, Asha’s journey to success and fame was not easy. Her elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, had already become the voice of women in cinema, and most contemporaries like Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, and Noor Jehan had slowly faded into oblivion. Frankly, there was no second or third to Lata Mangeshkar; she became the first—and perhaps the only—choice for music directors and all those who mattered in filmmaking. Asha started her musical journey at age 10 with a Marathi film, but her first break in Hindustani cinema came with the film "Chunariya" (1948). Though she was not the first choice of ...

Search This Blog