Bridging the Divide

Bridging the divide
Delhi Metro is planning to stop traffic movement on Janpath for constructing a metro station on a line that would connect Central Secretariat and Mandi House station. This station would be just a kilometer away from Rajiv Gandhi or Patel Chowk stations or even Central Secretariat. Delhi is unarguably the most important city in the country because of its strategic importance. Being the national capital, hundreds and thousands of people who look for means of viable economic existence land in the city. From less than a crore of population it has grown one-and-half times in the last ten years. Perhaps the unofficial figures are much more. The city today has grown beyond its capacity and is engulfing suburbs in its fold. Noida, Ghaziabad or Gurgaon are almost Delhi, if not Delhi. The only difference being administration and development. Delhi is today the most over developed city compared with its counterparts across the country. The Commonwealth Games and Metro have completely changed the complexion of the megapolis in the last eight years. Commuting in the Capital had always been a problem. The Delhi Transport Corporation and the private buses could not provide a good system. Delhi needed a transport system. The Government then pumped in around Rs 20,000 crore for making the citizens of the city more comfortable. The metro project in Delhi was commissioned too late – perhaps 40 years or so. Nevertheless its various phases have been completed and the locals are criss-crossing the city making traveling a little bearable. Today the system is already facing problems. The trains have started becoming over crowded. The public address system still blare away instructions inside the metro trains. But these are lesser of the evils of an evolving system.
But the DMRC work is not stopping and they are continuing to pump more and more money. After connecting East-West and North-South of Delhi, Metro is now moving ahead and making a parallel line that may benefit a small section of a four-five kms. Some areas in Delhi are becoming over developed whereas other areas are just neglected. Development in the country is happening of only selected areas. There have been numerous arguments against developing Rs 20,000 crore Metro for Delhi alone. If this amount could have been utilised in connecting high speed trains from Delhi to say Chandigarh, Dehra Dun and Gwalior, it would have changed three cities and at the same time decongested Delhi. Imagine a clerk working in Central Secretariat, after finishing work, catching a train and walking in home in hills of Dehra Dun at the same his colleague would be reaching Dwarka, a distance of 22 kilometers.
Today the need of the hour is parallel development rather than highly concentrated and myopic injection shots. There is a need to bridge the development gap between the urban and rural centres. Unless that happens, future looks jumbled up and the government would be unable to stop large-scale migration thereby threatening the regional balance.