EDITORIAL DELHI'S CIVIC ILLS Now that the Congress has been thrown out of the Delhi Municipal Corporation and the Delhi citizens' desire for a change has been fulfilled it has become possible to expect that a fresh approach will be made to tackle and rid the capital of its multifarious [civic problems. Miracles cannot be expected but it is hoped that the Jan Sangh will acquit itself better than its prede cessors. It is unfortunate though that the Jan Sangh, although it has a majority of 52 seats as against 48 of the combined opposition, in the 100-member house, will not have a free hold over the reigns of the Delhi Corporation. What may add to the ruling party's manifold difficulties is the certainty that the Opposition and the Sangh would end up with an equal share of members on the statutory committees including the powerful Standing Committee. This leads to the unsavoury conclusion that deadlock will become the rule in the Delhi Corporation, something which the Jan Sangh, having spared no effort to blame Delhi's civic ills on the Congress, would not like to happen. The prospects are that the Jan Sangh will have to fight tooth and nail throughout the five-year period to get even the simplest legislation passed in a house where the absence of even 4 or 5 members would make all the difference. The Congress Party cannot be expected to be cooperative in making the Jan Sangh rule a successful one. On the contrary it will be anxiously awaiting an opportunity to hit out and do its best to obstruct all measures, good or bad, proposed by the Jan Sangh. The situation is an unhappy one as far as betterment of Delhi's civic life is concerned. It will be known within a couple of months' time whether Jan Sangh is able to overhaul the civic machinery and at the same time win over the confidence of the bureaucratic cliche. Their functional success will depend a lot on this rather than on their ability to make political manouvres, a game of which the old Congress Councillors were exceptionally fond and which left them no time for improving the civic administration. Month Reviewed Fighting Oil Fires-Jan Sangh In The Saddle-Supersession Of Nagpur Corporation-Activities Of Civic Staff-Unauthorized Demolition Structures' Fighting Oil Fires Soviet experts have stressed that Indian personnel should be thoroughly trained in fire fighting operarions in oil wells. Details of the oil well fire at Rudrasagar and how it was fought last month are now available. While contradicting the sabotage INDIAN JOINS BRITISH FIRE BRIGADE Mr. T. K. Patel, the first Indian recruit to the fire services of the English Midlands town of Wolverhampton, tackles his first ladder climb during his initial training After passing fitness and intelligence tests, Mr. Patel was enlisted as a trainee fireman and is now doing his basic training. Later he will have further training at one of Britain's fire-fighting schools and will then return to Wolverhampton to commence duty. theory these underline the Indian oil technologists to get sufficiently familiar with fire fighting operations in oil wells. Russians were associated with the Oil and Natural Gas Commission's operations at well No. 25 at Rudrasagar and with the measures taken to control the "blow out". In the view of one of the Russians such a "blow out" and fire are not unknown in the history of the international oil industry, especially when work is carried on on new structures and the geology and the behaviour of different strata are not unknown. The 3,200 metre deep well was under a production test when it was considered necessary to have an additional perforation. This latter operation had gone on to a depth of 500 metres when an overflow of water and drilling mud was observed. Soon gas and oil started oozing out. But on account of very heavy pressure, according to the Soviet expert, all the 500 metre tubings were thrown out. In the process as the tubes rubbed against one another, sparks flew and the gas caught fire damaging the rig and the derrick which fell. Everything was on fire and subsequently the wall head was broken. More Soviet experts were summoned at this stage. One of them made it clear at the very first meeting with their Indian counterparts that Indian personnel would be trained for such fire fighting operations. It was decided at this meeting to put out the fire with the help of water pumped under great pressure. And the plan succeeded. After this some equipment fabricated on the spot was installed at the well to pump in water and drilling mud. Installing of the head has since been completed. The "blow out" has been controlled. Work on the rehabilitation of the well to enable it to produce crude oil and gas again is progressing satisfactorily. Jan Sangh In Saddle Having scored a phenomenal victory over the Congress in the poll, the Jan Sangh, will assume office in the two local bodies, the Metropolitan Council and the Delhi Municipal Corporation. Delhi being the only place in India where the Party has snatched power for the first time in its short history, leaders of the Jan Sangh are converging on the capital to join and help the leaders of the local unit decide on the future course of action. Immediately, the issue before it is choice of men who will hold the various positions of authority in the council and the corporation, the selection of the Chief Exe cutive Councillor and three Executive Councillors in the Metropolitan Council and the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor, among others in the civic body. The respective group meetings will take place within a week and by the middle of March the party will be ready with its team to take over the civic authority. This apart, the party is nursing fears on the possibility of its list of Executive Councillors being rejected by the Government. Technically the Councillors are appointed by the President on the advice of the Lt. Governor, who by convention forwards the list submitted to him by the majority party in the Metropolitan Council. Instead the Government may decide to select its own candidates from out of the five members which it is supposed to nominate to the 56-member body. While the plan of action to tackle the various civic problems will be made known later, thinking among the senior members of the party has crystalized on at least two points. In all probability the Sangh will ban the import of tinned beef. Also, once the party is armed with power to do so, plans to replace all statues of foreigners in Delhi with those of leaders like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, etc. Supersession Of Nagpur The order of the Maharashtra Government superseding the Nagpur Corporation was upheld by the Supreme Court and the appeal of the State against Mr. B. K. Takkamore Menon and others from the judgment of the Bombay High Court quashing the order was allowed. The Supreme Court held that there was material evidence with the State Government on the basis of which it could conclude that Corporation neglected to provide sufficient water supply for public and private purposes. Section 408 of the City Corporation Act entitled the Government to supersede the Corporation on the basis of such a finding and the High Court was wrong in holding that the State Government did not have any material relevant to this charge. On September 29, 1965, the Government superseded the Corporation. The respondents filed a petition challenging the supersession order and this was allowed by the High Court. The State preferred an appeal to the Supreme Court. Counsel for the State submitted that under Section 408, the Government could supresede a Corporation if the latter was found to be incompetent or had failed in its duties imposed upon it by law or abused its power. In the present instance, the Corporation mismanaged its financial affairs and neglected its duties concerning water supply. These grounds were sufficient to justify an order. Regarding the first charge that the Corporation was unable to discharge its financial liability, the judgment said the opinion of the Government could not be supported. It appeared that the Corporation was not given any opportunity to explain the charge. Regarding the second charge there was material before the State Government on the basis of which it could come to the conclusion that the Corporation Corporation neglected to improve the water supply system. This ground was sufficient to warrant an order of supersession. Activities Of Civic Staff What is the use of having a rule which can not be enforced? Worse still is the situation where the authorities are helpless spectators to a rule being violated blatantly. This is what happened in the Delhi Municipal Corporation. During the civic elections held along with the general elections, councillors, mostly from the ruling Congress party misused the civic machinery. It was an opposition councillor who had alleged at a meeting of the Corporation that the civic staff was being used for election purposes. The Municipal Commissioner had then assured the indignant member that he had issued a directive to his staff that they should refrain from taking part in the election campaign. In fact there was no need for the Municipal Commissioner's assurance. The service rules of the Central and State Governments and the local bodies clearly debar their employees from taking part in the election campaign. Surprisingly the Municipal Commissioner's assurance was enough for the councillors; they did not bother to find out what steps had been taken to ensure that the civic staff was not used for election purposes. It is the absence of any such measures that was exploited by Councillors seeking reelection. All through the elections the civic staffs participation in active campaigning was in evidence. Some of these were senior officers of the Corporation. The chairman. of a zonal committee was known to have employed almost all of his office staff on election tasks. Connected with this was the misuse of authority by councillors for election purposes. The use of DTU jeeps, particularly by members of the Delhi Transport Com mittee was glaring despite the fact that it was criticised at a meeting of the Corporation. Unauthorized Structures' Demolition The demolition of unauthorized constructions in some parts of the Capital, which has been cited by the Congress leaders as a major cause of their party's debacle in the elections, were described by a spokesman of the Delhi Administration as "carried out in the normal routine and entirely in accordance with the provision of law". Also contrary to the allegations by some there had been "no increase whatsoever" in the tempo of demolition work on election eve. he said. During the period, January 1 to February 15, less than 400 unauthorized structures had been demolished; whereas, a total of 15.658 were demolished during 1966 -"at the average rate of 13.4 structures per month. The real cause of the recent "hue and cry" by some, the spokesman said, was Tracing the background of the problem of unauthorized constructions in Delhi, "which had always a political element to it." he said that early last year there had been considerable criticism in the Press and from the public and from politicians themselves about the Corporation's inability to check such constructions. Even three Congress M P's. Mr. Brahm Perkash, Mr. Shiv Charan Gupta and Mr Naval Prabhakar, had voiced such criticism at a meeting of the Advisory Committee for Delhi. This led the then Union Home Minister to ask for a thorough enquiry into the problem, which in turn led to the unequivocal policy statement by the Chief Executive Councillor, on October 28, 1966, that "unauthorized constructions which were located in densely populatedareas and were put of prior the enforcement of the Master Plan and did not violate the land use pattern would alone be considered for regularization", and that others would be demolished. The decision was taken with the concur. rence of "all the authorities concerned," and it was also in line with "the openly declared policy of the Corporation". On November 2 last, the Corporation Standing Committee had itself demanded stern action against unauthorized constructions. American Philosophy Of The "Super-City" By Dr. John E. Owen (Head of the Department of Sociology, Arizona State University) Throughout most of American history, the growth of her cities occurred on an unplanned basis. Today's planning efforts have evolved from a series of events in the last 75 years. The "City Beautiful Movement" began with the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, which encouraged the systematic layout of buildings and grounds in classic designs that resulted in many large but dull edifices in U. S. cities. A related influence in planning was the work of an Englishman, Ebenezer Howard. His book, Tomorrow-A peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) advocated satellite garden cities as an answer to urban land-pressure. to urban land-pressure. But early in the present century the evolution of structural steel and the start of the U. S. automobile industry combind to produce congested downtown construction. The zoning movement began with the first comprehensive zoning code in, New York (1916), an early attempt at planning that set limits to height and density and placed controls on land use. Not until the 1930s arose the concept of city planning as an attack on the total problems of the physical environment, and the amealioration of the inter-related aspects of city life. The years from 1930 to 1950 saw the establishment of official city planning commissions, and today there are in America several thousands of these bodies responsible for patterns of land use and the location of primary urban facilities. New Studies Twenty-four universities offer postgraduate courses in city planning, and the current professional view is that planning is a problem of interpreting human needs and desires into an efficient, aesthetic, and economic mode of continuing urban growth. Accordingly, city planning today is a new profession in which architecture, civil and traffic engineering, geography, sociology, economics, and law all make their contribution to the unified development of both urban communities and their outlying Since the end of World War II and the po- Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. Significantly, cities in America are experiencing a change of function. They are no longer simply manufacturing and commercial centres but are now the idea, decision, communication and management headquarters of the nation. Their sickness is at heart a result of complex transformation in American life. Road Programme Basic to these changes is the role of automobiles, which are multiplying faster than the population, and this faster than taxpayers, with resulting fiscal difficulties. Part of the revenue from Federal taxes in the last ten years has been allotted to a $41 billion Inter-State Highway Programme, with a system of expressways and four-lane turnpikes that will eventually cross the country. It is already possible to drive from Boston to Chicago (900 miles) on expressways that by pass major towns and cities. They rapid increase in automobile use has of necessity led to new techniques of control. New York City last year installed an elec |