Beyond a coat of paint

Making India's cities more livable

In Kolkata, a long-discussed plan to push the city's residents into painting their homes blue and white is coming to fruition. However, it has hit the headlines again - although it has always been controversial - when a bench of the Calcutta High Court, including the court's chief justice, asked the West Bengal government to explain the "rationale" behind the decision. This has been one of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's chosen innovations. Cynics assume that it is because one of the earlier colours of the city was red, and Ms Banerjee was unhappy with the ubiquity of a colour associated with her bete noire, the Left Front communist coalition that ruled West Bengal for over three decades. The mayor of the city, also from Ms Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, has declared that the reason was in fact that the city has long looked dilapidated and unpainted. Thus the tax incentive - a year's house tax will be waived if a building is painted blue and white - which is supposed to nudge residents into painting their houses. The chief minister herself has said that she got the idea after visiting Jaipur. That city, of course, was famously painted pink for a visiting British royal and has been associated with the colour ever since, with the appropriate municipal interventions. Similarly, Jodhpur as seen from Mehrangarh Fort high above the desert town is a sea of blue houses - a product, in fact, of the distant past when it was a city with a disproportionate Brahmin population, and members of that caste painted their houses blue. What began as a caste-based tradition is now something the city takes pride in, and a tourist attraction.

There is certainly a lot that can be done to improve the look of India's cities. The desire to seek and impose uniformity of the sort visible in London's Mayfair and Pimlico is of course tempting - that in itself adds a certain impressiveness to a city with a rich architectural heritage. When Mayawati was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, one of her government's innovations was to revive the historic Hazratganj shopping district of the city with white buildings and uniform black-and-white signboards for shops. That in itself improved the overall look of the area, and helped revive the centre of the town. But much more can be done. For example, proper community spaces must be created not just in the centre of town, but in the places that actually live. For example, in Delhi, the centre of the metropolis is green - but the margins, which are densely populated and where much of the city actually lives, are severely short of green space. Mumbai, too, stands out in this respect - there are practically no real green areas. In the island city in particular, south of Mahim Creek, aside from the area at the tip between the university and Churchgate Station, there is just Shivaji Park, which therefore occupies an iconic status in the city's consciousness. Many more such spaces are needed.

The government has begun a "smart cities" programme, to upgrade urban infrastructure. This is a much-needed focus. However, a fascination with technology-based quick fixes must not take away from the real task: of building more livable cities. For example, cities should be made more walkable. In any trip in a real city, the two last-mile connections have to be made through walking. In the absence of pavements or sidewalks, this can be a nightmare. Roads also belong to pedestrians, not just to cars; and pavements belong to walkers, not just to hawkers. Kolkata's struggle with encroachment on pavements is a reminder of the danger of unrestricted rights for hawkers. That said, banning or harassing hawkers is a bad idea too - for they are the basis of street life, which gives vibrancy to any city and renders it more livable. These are difficult choices, but a solution must be found.