Sanjay Balan
Marina Park road is one of the more pleasant stretches of Sri Vijaya Puram. One side of the road still shows what simple greenery can do. A clean lawn, trees and open space add beauty to the road and create a calm public ambience. No major project, no grand beautification scheme and no heavy expenditure is required. Nature itself has already done the work.
The other side of the same road now presents a different picture. Stone filling and concretisation are being carried out, apparently to create more parking space or some similar facility. This raises a simple question. Was this work really necessary? Was the green stretch creating any public problem? In a city already struggling with limited land, limited funds and shrinking green spaces, could both sides of the road not have been allowed to remain green?
The concern becomes stronger when one looks at the larger pattern around Marina Park. Parking spaces in the vicinity have already been monetised by permitting vehicle-based food stalls and kiosks. Once the available parking space is reduced or exhausted in this manner, fresh open spaces are then taken up for development, but apparently to create more parking. Before long, there is every possibility that even such newly created spaces may also be monetized (read setting up commercial enterprise without land validly vesting with the local body for the said purpose, many a times). This cannot be called sound urban planning.
There is also an uncomfortable social angle to this issue (raised even by our Hon’ble Member of Parliament). Vehicle-based food stalls and kiosks, which require money, vehicles and investment, find space in and around prime public areas. At the same time, small street vendors and hawkers from weaker sections of the islands/ old inhabitants are pushed out from the same vicinity in the name of order and beautification. The richer vendor with capital gets access to Marina Park, but the poor hawker does not get the same access to livelihood. This almost looks like a “gareeb hatao yojana”.
Public funds are limited, especially in the islands. There are far more pressing needs before us: water supply, roads, drainage, public toilets, waste management, health infrastructure and basic maintenance of existing public assets. In such a situation, spending public money on avoidable concretisation of green spaces reflects a serious problem of priorities. “Boond boond se ghada bharta hai.” Small, unnecessary expenditures may look harmless individually, but together they drain public resources which could have been used for genuine public needs.
At a time when austerity, fiscal discipline and prudent use of public money are being emphasised at the highest level (by our Hon’ble PM), non-essential works of this nature should be reviewed and halted wherever possible. Funds released by the Centre are meant to address real public necessities, not to finance avoidable conversion of green public spaces into concrete stretches. Authorities and local bodies must exercise restraint before approving such works, and where public money is spent without clear necessity, responsibility should also be fixed in an appropriate manner.
Development does not mean converting every open space into concrete and then finding a way to collect revenue from it. Sometimes the wisest planning decision is to preserve what is already beautiful, useful and green. (The writer Mr. Sanjay Balan, though retired from government service, he continues to blend governance insight, land-law expertise, and candid public commentary in service of Island development) (Note: Views expressed in this column are writer’s own)
