FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 2024
Albertina Almeida
Rivers are lifelines of cities and towns, says the preface to ‘River Centric Urban Planning Guidelines’ formulated by the Town and Country Planning Organisation of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. The same Guidelines also in their Introduction recognise that ‘flood plains of the rivers in urban areas have witnessed construction activities including the unauthorized residential development, a phenomenon which has severely degraded the overall natural environment and river ecology’ and further that “the pollution load in rivers has been increasing over the years due to disposal of human and industrial waste in the rivers. The introduction also recognises that “these river systems are not only used for irrigation, drainage and supply of potable water but they also have a close relationship with the social fabric”.
If this be so, the first thing that Urban Planners would have to do, to start with, is to recognise the presence of rivers in the cities in respect of which they are doing the spatial planning, and not commodify rivers instead of having a symbiotic relationship with the rivers. However, the reality on ground seems to suggest otherwise. The recently drawn up Outline Development Plans which were up for objections, appear not to have factored rivers appropriately, coming as they have been after the approval of the Coastal Zone Management Plans which have overlooked the River Sal, for instance, in Salcete, or the St. Inez creek in Tiswadi. Hence river-centric planning, from the point of conserving the rivers is far from reality.
Consequently, the social fabric that the document says the rivers have a close relation with remains unfactored. This in turn means that fisherpeople and other people, who have been living near the banks of the rivers, due to various social and economic circumstances that require them to so live, are not factored at all. Also, zoning is done in these areas including commercial zoning as a look at the Outline Development Plan of Margao indicates.
Environment Architect Elsa Fernandes explains that in a tropical climate such as ours, any planning must look at the monsoons, and also altered surface run offs. Rivers, she says are the lowest point where the water finally will run and will face increasing run off and increasing pollution due to garbage and sewage discharge. But rivers should not be treated as drain points. They are nature’s well devised systems, which sustain water and food, which are our basic available infrastructure from nature, along with air, for planning and any planning must ensure that the natural cycle is not disturbed. Spatial and land use planning is the basic planning with which all other planning is connected. Therefore settlement planning, health planning, education planning, all emerges from this basic spatial and land use planning, Architect Elsa states.
We are already facing the issue of dealing with altered surface run offs due to prior malplanning. And we will only be piling up further issues with further malplanning now, that does not factor rivers. It appears that planning brings images of increased FAR and not the saving of the infrastructure that nature has so graciously provided us, and the toil and labour of Goa’s working peoples has symbiotically developed. Goa has the age old silt based agricultural practice called Puran Sheti, for example. But these heritage practices are far from looked at in the planning processes.
Planners are bound to duly consider the Government of India’s URDPFI Guidelines, Architect Elsa Fernandes states. These Guidelines, formulated in 2014, set out a planning system framework. It is clearly stated that this framework must include perspective plan. To develop vision and provide a policy framework for urban & regional development and further detailing, and must include a vision statement. This appears to be missing, or if it exists, is delinked from the spatial planning process. When this basic perspective and vision plan is missing which could have provided a vision for rivercentric planning, consider that rivers are the lifelines of the cities, for example, in Goa, what can we hope for. What planning can we expect when water bodies are not duly factored?
In the draft ODP of Margao 2031, the ODP indicates the stream into the Sal river by way of a blue line, the land along which there is a proposal for high FARs and development zoning are, which will end up choking and adding to the pressure on the Sal River rather than mitigating its stresses including its pollution. If a forward looking plan does not recognise the rights of River Sal from the planning point of view, the Sal river will not be on track for recovery and will get further deteriorated. When the River Sal gets further polluted, it means the ecosystem of River Sal will get polluted, which means all the biodiversity connected with River Sal will be killed. This means the fresh water drinking sources which are at the surface and shallow depth will get polluted. The impact of the biodiversity will be felt by humans. The cycle of air and water pollution, will threaten health and survival. Diseases which are area borne will establish themselves. We are already familiar with what has happened in Canacona, in terms of kidney diseases, as the outcome of area based pollution of the air and water cycles.
There is no integrated planning. The lack of harmonisation between the various plans and guidelines, is only further compounding the problem. Not to speak of the vested interests that dictate the planning. Mhadei Diversion is only the tip of the iceberg of the river and water body neglect in planning processes because of larger dominant forces that dictate malplanning.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer and human rights activist)
