Some home truths about the Lutyens Bungalow Zone

In December 1960, when a group of Rajya Sabha members questioned a proposal to construct 18-storey ‘skyscrapers’ on the central vista in New Delhi — the linear swathe of land between the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the National Stadium — the-then central minister for works, housing and supplies, KC Reddy, ended the debate matter-of-factly. “When we have got vacant space on which we can build, certainly there is no justification for us to go to faraway places, three or four miles away from Delhi,” he said. That the centre of the national capital could be developed simply because the government needed additional office space is the kind of pragmatism that has vanished altogether. In 2016, the incumbent minister of urban development had to use gentle coercion to vacate hundreds of government bungalows whose residents refused to move even though they no longer held public office. [caption id=“attachment_2045773” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Lutyens Delhi. Getty Images[/caption] In New Delhi’s elite social circles and corridors of power, considerable prestige and social capital adheres to a ‘Lutyens bungalow’, of which there are about a thousand in all, with 90 per cent owned by the government. The 29 square kilometres of the Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ) contains barely two per cent of Delhi’s area and population and commands astronomical property values — one recent estimate put the total assessment at over Rs 2.5 lakh crores! It is not surprising that the New York Times recently described every plot in the LBZ as a “real estate Rolex”. Distorted property values may seem natural for an area that hosts premier government offices and enjoys ample space and verdure, the best levels of service and high-security cordoning, but with plot sizes varying from one acre to four acres and merely six to eight per cent ground coverage, the LBZ needs to support a sparse population density, only a third of the city average. Its location in the centre of an overcrowded metropolis accentuates the contrast that the celebrated urban historian Norma Evenson described in 1989 as “a doughnut-like configuration”. It does not need a Thomas Piketty to see that the spatial void described by Evenson is a sad reminder of an unequal society. Yet these deeper questions of history, society, culture and civilisation are seldom seen in the official literature, which renders the LBZ in technocratic jargon. The morphology of Lutyens Delhi is its most compelling attribute, one that is easy to preserve along with listed heritage properties. The network of streets and plots can generate an altered future when the elites of the LBZ can generously share the city with new occupants, perhaps children studying in spacious new schools and senior citizens receiving care. Without endangering heritage, the heart of Delhi could throb with a vibrant society, economy and culture. It can accommodate more offices, specialised healthcare, schools and institutes, restaurants, boutiques, art galleries, performance spaces and cultural industries than it currently does. Such prospects need open debate. Anyone who has experienced the radiating Baroque vistas of the LBZ and admired the neoclassical grandeur of its many landmarks would find its utilitarian description in the Master Plan for Delhi rather insipid: “LBZ comprises of large-size plots and has a very pleasant green environment. The essential character of wide avenues, large plots, extensive landscape and low-rise development, has a heritage value which has to be conserved.” While a Master Plan is not a document where one seeks eloquence, it is natural to wonder if the sensation and movement generated by streets forming hexagons, pentagons and triangles has been fully appreciated or if the “pleasant green environment” really means the 80-year-old indigenous trees such as neem, jamun, Arjun and peepal, which give the LBZ coolth in summer and misty chill in winter. Tomes can be written about the nuances of the LBZ, but the complex values that it evokes are perversely interdicted by the phrase “has to be conserved”. Cultural value needs to be subject to interpretation – evaluation – if it is to remain a value. Else it deteriorates into dogma. It would seem that the LBZ has been assiduously conserved but the regulatory plan is only thirty years old, during which zone has been subjected to new delineations, high-rise constructions, changes of land use and other modifications, exemptions, concessions and extensions that are enabled by a myriad tweaks in numerous guidelines, regulations and norms. The dogma of conserving the LBZ has been upheld by multiple committees, agencies and bodies that control its destiny while the LBZ itself has been continually changing, “from time to time”. The proliferating opinions of a myriad experts have created a symbolic overload, a surfeit of significance, whereas the need is for frank engagement with a basic question: how can the value of the land determine its usage? The fait accompli about conservation disrupts the fundamental link between spatial and economic planning. The policy direction for the LBZ will surely inform the new Master Plan for Delhi being prepared for notification in 2021. Experts believe it will be the last chance for framing a sustainable development pathway for the city, therefore MPD-41 will depart from business-as-usual. It will map the prevailing ground realities as the basis for planning and regulation, integrate economic, spatial, environmental, physical and transportation planning, and replace the artificial segregation of land uses with market-responsive mixed land uses. The vision for the LBZ is unlikely to be formed by brutal opinion-makers such as the esteemed journalist who wrote in 1977 that the LBZ bungalows “have long been ripe for the hammer of the demolition squad”. A sager perspective may emerge from examining the scope for redevelopment, extending the analysis that has been conducted by the Delhi Urban Arts Commission and senior architect Sudhir Vohra for the NDMC. Cogent views are also available in the report of a committee chaired by the architect MN Ashish Ganju, appointed by the ministry of urban development in 1998 to draft a ‘Redevelopment Plan for the LBZ’. Asked to examine “optimum utilisation of the land resources and to plan for the coming century”, the committee refused to “mummify” the historic monuments and built environment and delineated five sub-zones where different levels of development control and judicious use of “conservative surgery” could be effective. The issue of what to conserve was considered “as a step in the evolution of architecture in India and the vast expanse of time in which the colonial history is but a small episode”.