Smart cities, broken communities: From New Delhi to Varanasi, what we lose when urban planning is not inclusive

Indian Express

19 hours ago

Written by Shruti Dubey
On the night of June 17, around 30 shops in Varanasi's Lanka crossing were demolished by the authorities to decongest the area and make way for a road expansion project. The demolitions included two iconic shops selling popular street food — the 100-year-old Chachi's stall of kachauri and jalebi and the 75-year-old Pehelwaan lassi shop. Both establishments, frequented by actors, politicians, and administrators, have been integral to the identity of the locality.
Varanasi has witnessed similar demolitions earlier, too. In 2019, for instance, around 300 houses and shops in the dense and congested Pucca Mahal area were cleared to expand the ancient Kashi Vishwanath Temple into a corridor complex. The Pucca Mahal area, the heart of Varanasi, is characterised by narrow lanes, old houses, and bazaars. It holds tremendous heritage value, having witnessed various phases of Indian history — from the rule of the Mughals to the post-Independence era. Some residents who lost their homes during the demolition were treasure houses of stories; their prized possessions included historical artefacts such as photographs with Dr Rajendra Prasad and a patta (property deed) by Dara Shikoh proving their rights to look after the temple.
The loss of iconic stalls rooted in popular memory and of historical neighbourhoods representing the traditional Banarasi way of life has rightly drawn media and scholarly attention. The current vision of development — four- and six-lane flyovers, malls, multi-storied apartment complexes, stadiums, multi-modal transport systems, grand temple corridors, and signature buildings monitored by integrated command and control centres — stands in stark contrast to the city's traditional lifestyle. It forces us to ponder whether people will still be drawn to an ancient city like Varanasi as its very character changes.
However, the issue I wish to highlight goes deeper than nostalgia for an ancient, spiritual, and authentic Varanasi. It concerns how to make urban transformation in Indian cities — including Varanasi — truly inclusive, sustainable, and future-ready. There is a prevailing notion that development requires replacing dense, congested, encroached, and chaotic areas — typical of most old Indian cities — with wide roads and grid-patterned housing and markets. The vision of smart cities with world-class infrastructure and Information Technology integration is only the latest manifestation of this idea. As a result, demolitions of slums, squatter settlements, and other densely populated areas have become a common feature in cities across India, paving the way for projects ranging from road expansions and riverfront developments to stadium construction and temple corridor extensions.
Indian cities are not new to such urban utopias. The post-Independence period saw advocacy for planned cities such as New Delhi and Chandigarh. New townships like Faridabad, Noida, and Navi Mumbai promised to solve the urban challenges of congestion, encroachments, and overburdened infrastructure. However, seven decades of planning have shown that these promises remain largely unfulfilled. Indian cities continue to be fragmented and unequal, with over 70 per cent of the population living and working in unplanned and informal conditions, and only 30 per cent in planned, formal areas.
How do we make sense of this situation? There is a pressing need to rethink what we consider suitable, inclusive, sustainable, and smart for Indian cities. Density, chaos, and congestion do not automatically become undesirable when they are an intrinsic part of urban morphologies and provide residence and livelihoods to a significant portion of the population. The labelling of dense old city areas as slums — as diseased, illegal, and congested — was a result of planning ideas borrowed from Europe by colonial masters. These ideas persisted into the post-colonial period, despite their unsuitability to Indian contexts. The preference for modernist development — with wide roads, spatial segregation, zoning, and grid patterns — was rooted in colonial planning principles designed to ensure security, hygiene, and distance from the native population.
The conditions of Indian cities are, however, quite different from quintessential Western cities. India never experienced the kind of industrial revolution that shaped Western urban development. Thus, urban theorists argue that the strict separation between the rural and the urban doesn't hold true for India. Moreover, it is the informal economy and the unorganised sector that are the drivers of urbanisation in Indian cities. Cities are places of work for construction workers, hawkers, vendors, auto rickshaw drivers, small traders, shopkeepers, and domestic helpers, who provide affordable goods and services not just to the poor but also the middle class. The dense, congested neighbourhoods and bazaars give shelter and working space to these groups who have not been included in urban planning. More often than not, it is these informal settlements and shops that are demolished to make way for developed cities.
In order to be truly future-ready, it is important to plan for not just the middle and upper classes but also for the lower-income groups who may be residing or waiting to enter our cities. Cities should not just be made affordable for the poor, but also give them opportunities to grow. The urban transformation taking place right now, which focuses on constructing state-of-the-art infrastructure in select areas, seems to be chasing a utopia misaligned with Indian realities. The need of the hour is to make cities amenable for public transport and accommodate the needs of various lower-income groups, integrating them into the planning process because they provide essential services to the urban economy.
Inclusive development of Indian cities may appear chaotic and unlike the Western imagination of smart cities. Instead of demolitions and decongestions, conservation and upgradation of dense bazaars and neighbourhoods by providing basic infrastructure may be the way out. Dense old cities in India often performs several functions: They have heritage value; they provide livelihood to thousands of people, and they give shelter to lower-income groups. Every time the authorities undertake demolitions, a large number of people have to rebuild their lives in already hostile cities from scratch. Indian urban development can be called smart and future-ready if the chaotic, vibrant density of its cities can be complemented with necessary infrastructure to modernise it while preserving their heritage and economic opportunities, not just for the privileged but for all sections of society.
The author is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, Banaras Hindu University. Views are personal