Master Plan For Greater Hyderabad By Theo. W. La. Touche. Ever since Mohammad Quli Qutub Shah, the fifth king of Golconda, founded Hyderabad city (originally known as Bhagyanagar after the king's favourite mistrees, Bhagyamati), Hyderabadis have been fond of proudly alluding to their city as Farkunda Bunyad, literally 'Auspicious Foundation', or the City of Joy. Indeed, the epithet is fully justified by old records, which show that in laying out the walled city and designing its stately palaces and pavilions the king and his planners not only displayed a sense of symmetry and aesthetics, but had in view the health and welfare of the inhabitants. To (Continued from previous page) Windsor, in fact, has one of the lowest per capita debenture debts of any Canadian city, due mainly to the remarkable reduction of debt from $31.6 million in 1959 to $18.1 million in 1962-despite large capital expenditure in the meantime. The per capita reduction has been from $307.80 to $159.36, and expressed as a percentage of assessment, the debt has dropped from 33.44% to 4.14 percent. debenture debt is $109.15 per capita-only 3.02% of the city's taxable assessment. The net quote the historian Ferishta, who visited it, "All the roads run parallel and water channels, or canals, are found on either sides throughout the streets, and have avenues of trees planted alongside them." The city was then indeed a "Garden Ctiy", as described by other distinguished writers who had visited it, besides Ferishta. tion, like our modern municipality, in those Thanks to the absence of a separate organisadays to regulate and control civic affairs, the city expanded without let or hindrance in a higgled y-piggledy manner, with the hovels of the poor sandwiched between the palaces of the rich. Today, six centuries after it was founded, the city presents a spectacle of chaos and confusion worse confounded, and reminds one of the poet Cowley's line: "God the first garden made, and Cain the first city!" Like an ancient tree with twisted and tortured limbs, it sprawls over 75 square miles of territory, and can no longer be called Farkunda Bunyad, or 'Garden City' by any stretch of the imagination. Plan Origin Although there might have been a lot of talk about remodelling the city and making it more fit for human habitation after the disastrous floods of the Musi river in 1908, no official action seems to have been taken to solve the problem of bringing order out of chaos, and lopping off the crooked limbs of the ancient tree by adopting modern town-planning techniques. Nothing was done in the matter until 1938, when Sir Wilfred Grigson, one of the British officers who were appointed cabinet ministers by the Nizam under the "advice" of the paramount power, conceived the idea of drawing up a plan for reshaping the city. He it was who instituted the Department of Town Planning, which has now evolved into the directorate of Town and Country Planning. At the same time Sir Wilfred put Mr. M. Fayazuddin, a highly qualified officer possessing diplomas, foreign and Indian, for architecture and town planning, in charge of the new department. In the capacity of Director of Town Planning as well as State architect, Mr. Fayazuddin set to work in real earnest and started a * preliminary survey of the city and suburbs. It took him three years to prepare a detailed "Master Plan for Greater Hyderabad," (which of course includes Secunderabad), at a cost of Rs. 5 lakhs. Quite recently he submitted the Master Plan for approval to the Municipal Corporation as well as the StateGovernment. Mr. Fayazuddin has been known to me for about the last thirty years, and in an interview he granted me the other day, he disclosed to me that he and his directorate were primarily responsible for charting the layout of a Greater Hyderabad, showing how the city should be remodelled, but they had nothing to do with the actual financing and implementing the project. This, he emphatically declared, was entirely the responsibility of the various departments of the Government, the Municipal Corporation and other private agencies. However, it was within the province of the Town Planning Directorate to undertake the designing of the ground-plan and architecture of new buildings to be constructed by the Government and other agencies when called upon to do so, within the orbit of the Master Plan which extends to an area of 120 square miles within which provision has been made for all conceivable civic amenities. directorate has, during the last 25 years, designed stately buildings for housing drivate as well as public institutions. Some of these have already been constructed and others are under construction or pending. Use of Sites The He laid stress on the fact that the most important function of the planners was to guide the future expansion on systematic lines, as well as to reshape the existing city with full consideration for the right use of land available, and sites for specific purposes. He said that it would seriously impede the implementation of the Master Plan if rich people were allowed to exploit the land available for development with impunity, with the sole purpose of amassing wealth, and without any consideration of the good of the general public. This, he emphatically asserted, was extremely harmful. It not only jeopardised the healthy and sound develop ment of the city, but would, if not nipped in the bud, create almost insuperable difficulties in rectifying the mistakes, imposing a heavy financial burden on the Government and the Municipal Corporation, which would have a separate unit for carrying the plan into effect. He told me that he had warned the Government that unless top priority was given to the immediate acquisition of land, the execution of the Master Plan within a measurable distance of time would be rendered almost impossible. Therefore, he had impressed it on the authorities that no time must be lost in preventing people from constructing houses helter-skelter on all available spaces, as they were now doing. He said he had recommended to the Chief Minister, not only the passing of urgently needed legislation for town planning in Andhra Pradesh, but the creation of a planning authority on the lines adopted for the Delhi Master Plan, together with a subcommittee of the cabinet, to save a very grave situation. Long Process Judging from the giant-size chart of the Master Plan for Greater Hyderabad, which figured prominently in the Exhibition of Town and Country Planning and Architecture, recently inaugurated at the Planning Dire ctorate by the Chief Minister, it appeared to me that the task of remodelling the city and bringing order out of chaos is colossal, and would require a Hercules to accomplish it. The spadework needed for the clearance of the innumerable squalid slums alone would be like the cleansing of the Augean Stables by Hercules, unless the stables or slums, are not allowed to be choked up with filth again, as lands cleared of basties have at endency of being occupied by mudgies again in spite of gods, men and columns, it would be wasted labour. Our Municipal Corporation does not evidently know of the wisdom contained in the homely saying. "First things First", as it has so far made no effort to clear the sites required for the Master Plan to materialise, of malodorous basties, and is keen on widening roads instead. Wide roads for the increased volume of traffic are certainly needed, but even the work of widening roads has been suddenly suspended, leaving heaps of rubble that render the roads narrower than before? I asked Mr. Fayazuddin how long it would take more or less to accomplish the task of bringing a Greater Hyderabad into existence, if the work were now started and not put off to the Greek Calends! He looked at me quizically and replied that he had already suggested that the expenditure should be spread out over a period of fifty years. From which I inferred that it may possibly take a century or more, depending on various imponderable factors. He facetiously added that our adolescent grand-children, if not great grandchildren, would with luck pro. bably behold the dream of Greater Hyderabad come true in all its glory! This reminded me of the New Jerusalem which the seer who wrote the Apocalypse said he held in a vision ! For Other Towns towns It is noteworthy that after the formation of Andhra Pradesh, the Directorate of Town Planning had in 1959 organised two regional units, one in charge of the preparation of the Master Plan for Greater Hoderabad, and the other in charge of drawing up Master Plans for nine selected urban towns. So far, three plans have been finalised for the important Guntur and of Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada. Charts of these plans were displayed at the exhibition, together with models of remodelled villages both in the Andhra and the Telangana regions. Plans for six more towns were also nearing completion, but the work had to be suspended owing to the disbandment of the regional units for want of funds. I understand that steps are being taken to see that town planning and housing activitics in the districts. are pursued by the Panchayat Samitis. 49 years not even a scratch The rate of industrial accidents in India has increased from about 24 per thousand workers in 1938 to about 44 in 1959. Every year, over 93,000 workers are involved in accidents and 250 lives are lost. Also wasted annually are a million man-hours-enough to produce 170 broad gauge locomotives or 700 coaches for the Indian Railways. Safety has always been Tata Steel's watchword as efficiency is hardly possible without it. 'No-accident month' as an annual feature, safety exhibitions, training in safety, safety awards, safer working conditions, a continuing campaign under the direction of joint councils to turn safety into a habit... these are some of the means adopted in Jamshedpur to prevent accidents in the Plant. Safety, however, depends largely on the worker himself because about 75 per cent of industrial accidents are found to be caused by human negligence. This is where men like Jamuna Dube, the oldest employee in Tata Steel, come in. He has worked for 49 years without ever sustaining an injury, not even a scratch. The importance of safety was one of the first things that Jamshedpur taught Dube when he arrived in the Steel City half-a-century ago... a city where industry is not merely a source of livelihood but a way of life. JAMSHEDPUR THE STEEL CITY Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited GIVE FREELY TO THE NATIONAL JWTTN 6093 DEFENCE FUND Architecture Cheaper Cavitity Walls Cavity walls are popular in the western countries because of their superior porfor mance over the conventional solid walls. They are, however, not popular in India. Cost is too high as compared to solid walls. Investigations on the cavity walls were taken up at the Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, to reduce their cost so that their use may become popular in the country. As a result of trials at the Institute, a 20 cm. thick cavity wall having two leaves of brick-on-edge and a cavity of 5 cm. has been devised and subjected to a series of tests. The tests for ultimate compressive strength, lateral strength for free and loaded panels, and impact have shown that the walls satisfy the functional requirements and can be readily adopted on load-bearing walls up to two storeyed buildings and curtain walls in multi-storeyed buildings. for use as partitions, ceilings and cheap roofings in buildings. Husks for board manufacture could be collected in the same manner as for retting and coir manufacture. The proportion of synthetic resin binder requirad for their preparation is only 0.5 per cent compared to 6 to 10 per cent required in conventional manufacturing process. The cost of production of one sq. metre of board of density 640 kg/cu. m. and 1.9 cm. thickness is estimated to be Rs. 3.1 as against the wholesale price of Rs. 8.3 to Rs. 10.5 in U. K. India is one of the largest coconut growing countries, with an annual production of about 3000 million nuts. About half the quantity of husks obtained from these nuts is utilised by the coir industry while the other half does not find any industrial use at present. Coconut husks can be processed to produce building boards of many kinds. Even if only 10 per cent of the husk which is not being industrially utilised were to be converted into particle board, the production would be about 3.7 million sq, m. Research on Low-Cost Building Materials Besides having better thermal and sound. insulation, this type of wall saves about 30 per cent of bricks and mortar, as compared to a 9 in. thick solid wall and results in saving of space, which permits better utilisation of the permissible plinth or floor area. The exposed frogs can provide an attractive finish, or serve as an cxcellent key for the plaster. Further, internal finish is less susceptible to damage because of the high jointly sponsored by Esso Research and resistance to rain penetration. Work studies carried out at the Institute indicate that a mason can construct 40 sq. ft. of this type of wall in eight hours. In spite of incorporating ties, the cost works out to be 13 per cent less than that of 9 in. solid walls. Particle Boards from Coconut Husk Investigations at the Central Building Research Institute Roorkee, have shown that particle boards possessing attractive ap-. pearance, good strength and satisfactory resistance to docay and fire could be prepared at a low cost from the unretted husks of mature coconuts. The boards are suitable A new research programme to use petroleum-based products for building low-cost houses may provide a solution to one of the most urgent and difficult international problems-housing shortage. This project is Engineering Company and the Pan-American Union. Although the immediate goal of the new research project is to help ease the critical housing shortage in Latin America, it may in the long run bring hope to millions of people in developing nations. According to UN estimates 10,000,000 new houses a year will be required during the next two decades created by rising population and inadequate throughout the free world to fill the need housing facilities. The project may involve the building of entire houses or parts of houses with materials now being formulated in the laboratories. |