Are our Regional Plans, plans? They are clearly and only land conversion plans

As the state begins to ostensibly set right the planning process, it may be a good idea to see if the horses have indeed bolted the stables. From 1986 to 2012, for a good fifteen years starting from the time that RP 2001 was initiated to the “pausing” of the notified Regional Plan 2021, the decisions taken or sought to be taken as per the original Regional Plan have been mutilated.

We have thus far had a mutilated planning process. And the proof of it is in the painstaking calculations and tracking of piecemeal changes to plans done over the years not only by planers and architects of the GBA but by other researchers like Solano da Silva, a PhD scholar in BITS Pilani and others, by extensive, long drawn out tracking of gazette notifications of changes. And what emerges is a shocking tale of how much of Goa’s land has been converted from approximately 1987 to 2005 to start with. And this continued through to the disastrous Regional Plan of 2011, which was stopped in its path by a glorious people’s agitation. The difference in the two approaches was that while in 2001, the manipulations were at the implementation phase, in 2011 it was at the early development phase

Then emerged another phenomenon, the ODPs eating more and more into Regional Plan areas. We must at this juncture, instead of pausing or keeping on hold Regional Plans, pause to actually understand that the concept of ODPs itself has become mutilated. ODPs or Outline Development Plans were never meant to be stand alone plans of Planning and Development Authorities, which came up as urban planning authorities out of the domain of the Regional Plan. But this was never meant to be.

The step by step process of development starts with the Regional Plan which outlines the broad vision of planned development, followed by the ODP, which outlines the sailent features or principles of a course action prior to the initiation of detailed planning. And that should be followed by a Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) which goes into micro planning of each land area and the specific development within that area. Hand on heart, has that happened? And if that indeed has happened, we need to be enlightened so that we can stand corrected.

What has happened, to reiterate, are massive piecemeal changes  through a draconian amendment called Section 17 of the TCP Act, introduced during the Congress era which states — If the Government, at any time after a regional plan has been published in the Official Gazette, 6 , is of the opinion that a revision of such regional plan is necessary, it may direct the Chief Town Planner to undertake the revision of the regional plan and thereupon the foregoing provisions of this Act relating to the preparation of the regional plan shall, as far as may be, apply to the revision of a regional plan under this section. Section 17 is basically a license to kill. Kill carefully structured plans and introduce revisions which may go against what the plan for that area stood for. As a result of the amendment made to Sec 17 of the TCP Act from 1988-2005 more than 2200 piecemeal changes were made to the RP-2001 (See chart and graphic # 1). Yes, actually 2232 changes were made, increasing over the years but dropping considerably from 2002 to 2004. Section 17 which was sought to be used only when really needed has been made into a norm rather than an exception.

In order to get a sense of the agricultural land that has been converted to non-agricultural uses – using the above mentioned amendment, see chart 2. Across a ten year period from 1985 to about 2005, 2 crore 87 lakh 17 thousand and 244 square meters of land have been converted. The calculations for the period after that haven’t quite been done or documented but the trends haven’t changed. 94% of the land converted for other uses, mainly settlement for construction, is agricultural and natural cover, which includes orchard land. And out of the 2.87 crores of land converted, 2.11 crores is agricultural land and over 60 lakh square meters is natural cover land. If conversion of orchard land will now be “criminal”, perhaps we should start with this criminality.

And interestingly the third on the list of conversions is settlement land which has been granted higher FARs. Therefore the figures might change but the pattern does not. And the pattern is that there has been “settlement boom” at the cost of traditional land use. Here is a snap shot of settlement increase over the 2001 and 2011 plans.

The settlement area in RP 2001 was 29,297 hectares (1 hectare = 10,000 sq metres). In the draft RP 2011 it was 36,994 hectares including the ODP areas of Mapusa, Panjim, Margao, Vasco Ponda etc and in the final RP 2011 it was 46,061 hectares. These figures are also striking. The percentage increase of settlement areas from RP 2001 to RP 2011 is a jaw dropping 57% and from the Draft RP 2011 to the final RP 2011 is 24%.

This begs the question. How do you explain a 24% jump in settlement areas between the draft stage and the final stage of the same Regional Plan? These are obviously ad hoc across the table conversions granted by the minister and a body of powerful political lords.

And finally, the sections 16/16A TCP Act, which seek to exempt public utility projects of the government and PPP projects from the purview of RP 2021 plan. Out of 42 projects 33 have converted some amount of agricultural land (A1 & A2) to non-agricultural uses.

This story is not likely to have a happy ending. But the only glimmer of hope is to arrest the trend as desperately and as quickly as possible. The entire morass can be encapsulated very simply. Goa’s agricultural and natural cover is being eroded at a pace which outstrips any possibility of refuelling and that too to suit projects which are not based on micro land use planning. And this is dangerous and needs to be addressed by the Town and Country Planning department.

The entire planning template from the 2001 plan onwards has been reversed. Instead of projects being conceived to fit into proper ground level planning, the so called ground level planning is being altered and doctored to suit projects that are coming in, at the cost of agricultural and natural cover. This template has to be steered back and reversed and evidence of this happening needs to be on display. In short, the bogey of planning needs to be converted to real planning.