Urban nightmares

JALANDHAR witnessed a unique phenomenon on Friday when the demolition of a large number of buildings was initiated on the orders of a minister, Navjot Singh Sidhu. It was unique because elected governments rarely take actions that may anger any section of voters. The drive, however, was met with a much less surprising reaction from local MLAs, who came out vociferously against the action, and even succeeded in stalling it in most parts of the city. The buildings that were demolished were in blatant violation of rules; in some cases, none of the due land use or development charges had been paid. These were not lapses on the part of poor or ignorant occupants — as often happens in small residential colonies or slums — but deliberate exploitation of a corrupt system, paid for with illegitimate money.

The conflict between electoral politics and the rule of law is as old as democracy itself. But a point raised by the protesting Jalandhar MLA, that the government needs to provide for the needs of an ever-expanding population, is also valid. He, however, may be asked what he has done to prevent new gullible investors from being cheated by unscrupulous developers. The action that the government initiates against unauthorised constructions has to be calibrated to the stage of construction. Current constructions may be stopped immediately, recent ones demolished, and the old ones may be charged fines heavy enough to make it seriously hurt; the aim being to stop unauthorised development altogether. Retrospective regularisation is nothing but a scam perpetrated by governments infinitely.

As for the current drive of the Local Bodies Minister, who has warned of similar action in other cities too, there may not be much hope, going by the lack of support he has seen within the Punjab Cabinet. The need is to come up with a comprehensive plan that provides separately for various categories of violations, but may be implementable without getting bogged down in the rigmarole of notices, court orders and protests. If only taking on the well-heeled developers were as easy as bulldozing the slums of migrant vote-less labourers.