Life in big cities
Another sem starts. :-(But it's last sem. So plenty to cheer about. Just five months left to escape from this hectic routine.
And it involves a lot of travelling. When you are in Mumbai or , for that matter any big city, one has to travel a lot. And that's what I find worst about them. Spending one eighth of your day in traveling can be considered miserable, especially considering the rush in the trains and buses.
Consider a normal day like today. I decide to travel by road to avoid rush in the trains. But the traffic on the way meant wasting too much time and reaching college late. What else can you expect when all the people in the suburbs are moving towards southwards? Government's solution to this mess is the improve the roads and trains. It is feasible to an extent. Widening roads helps to a certain extent ( I am not sure whether MMRDA is trying to to widen the roads or block them. On my way to college, which is around 18 km from my home, I encountered around 10 bottlenecks, created because of the digging and debris by MMRDA).
Enough of digression.
Coming back on the track, better trvelling facilities facilitate the quicker movement of people, thereby cutting down traveling time. But it doesn't hit the root of the problem. Why do we need moving of such a large number of people? Solutions to these questions may give the possible solution.
Small is beautiful.That's what Schumacher says (well! he was an economist. I came to know abou him in an article with same title by Marathi author Anil Avachat. Before I read about him, Michael Schumacher was the only Schumacher I could have thought of. Here's wikipaedia link for him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful). He may provide the answer. Mumbai is extemely big city grown well beyond possible administrable population ( To get a picture, consider this-- Mumbai has population well beyond 1 crore. Compare that with 40 lakh New Zealanders).
So we don't need big Mumbai. It must be devided in the small regions which are self sufficient. One need not to travel more than half an hour to his or her workplace. These smaller regions will also provide a sort of identity to individuals, which often gets lost in the big cities.
These views might prove wrong in the age of Internet, which may make traveling redundant. No doubt, big things are necessary and they mark the human progress. But they shouldn't complicate the inherent simplicity of human life.
Mumbai has to evolve into better city. But I am not that much sure, if that will be the case.
posted by ninad @ 7:57 pm
3 Comments:
Forget about names, Kaushal. But, have you thought whether division into small parts is a solution in the first place.
Imagine Mumbai getting divided into small parts, and your part does not have a good college or your workplace, then what do you do? Stick to your own 'small division' bad college or travel cross-city to a better place. I think this is the root of all our travel, isn't it?
And dont tell me setting up good institutions and offices in every region is the solution, whadya think?
I am not saying that people should confine themselves to their local area and thereby hinder their growth.
The point is in Mumbai, since most of the government and corporate offices are located on the southern tip, it creates a bottleneck. So we should decentralise these offices.
Take an example. Mumbai has only one Passport Office and it is located at Prabhadevi. So every Mumbaikar has to travel to Prabhadevi for his or her Passport. So if government establishes passport offices in say four suburbs, then there will be less congestion. With IT in our hands it's not difficult to do so. In fact, something like this has already been done for Railway Reservations.
Corporates should also try to do the decentralisation. I recall one passage from one of the GRE sample tests ( the GRE passages have really wide range of variety). It said that many of the corporates in USA have moved from big cities to suburbs or small towns for 'better lifestyle'. Check out the locations of Fortune 500 companies on Wikipedia. Apart from few financial firms, most are small towns with populations in lakhs or even ten thousands. Ditto with universities. Same is the case with any other Western country.
So my whole point is that we should be small for 'better lifestyle' and that does not mean compromising your career.
...So we don't need big Mumbai. It must be devided in the small regions which are self sufficient. One need not to travel more than half an hour to his or her workplace. These smaller regions will also provide a sort of identity to individuals, which often gets lost in the big cities...
This is what I actually commented on. It is simply not possible to let Mumbai be divided into smaller units which would be self sufficient.
However, it is true that a collective corporate effort can definitely help better the development of Mumbai.
And anyways, all this is easier said than done, coz everything's gonna fall on deaf ears, isn't it?
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