TERRIBLE CITY WITH AMAZING MARKETING DEHRADUN


Mukesh Devrari

Dehradun is a nice place. It’s the capital of Uttarakhand. People living here are known for their honesty and valour and patriotism and their looks (mostly girls) and what not. Anyone who never lived in the city really takes it seriously. Sometimes people who visit Dehradun for short trips also creates this confusion. Although locals don’t find this description mesmerizing, as it just doesn’t match with their lived experience.

Maybe a few decades ago the city was about amazing weather, greenery, honesty, but nowadays it is more like any other place in the country full of drugs, petty crimes and unruly behaviour of all kinds. Still, it is much better than most of the other places because of its people, but in all other parameters, it is a horrible place. Dirty, overcrowded, polluted, unruly traffic, over-politicized and struggling in many other ways.  

Our city does not have adequate infrastructure. It has become a city of narrow lanes. The whole city has been sold in plots to hundreds of thousands of buyers in the last two decades. In the absence of rules, most of the inner lanes are of around twenty feet wide. Encroachment made the situation worse. Thousands of people have also encroached government land mostly on both sides of the river. Politicians supported this illegal encroachment as it’s a large vote bank.

In any case, it is our national character not to wake up in time. Just look at the traffic now. In the radius of 10 kilometres from Clock Tower, roads are unable to handle the traffic. Just visit through to Rispina Bridge to ISBT to Shimla Bypass to Selaqui once or towards any of the four exits from the city – Daat Kali, Nepali Farm, Premnagar Chowki or Mussorie during the peak hours, its same story everywhere narrow incomplete highways, encroachment and heavy traffic.

Underground electricity, sewer lines, 24-hour water and electricity supply, space of public parking, public health care system, regulated industrial hubs are still a distant dream. If you are government employee who lives within FRI or IIP or within the boundary walls of some other fancy institution of national importance created in Dehradun half a century ago, then it’s alright, but you are not then Doon is fast becoming hell hole. Xerox of the national capital region, where people are gasping for clean air to breathe.  

It’s an everyday struggle for children to struck in traffic while going and coming back from school. Parents also feel suffocated because of this. However, the govt. is more interested in selling the pipe dream of smart cities rather than doing something tangible to solve the problems in Dehradun. There is no place to take a walk. It is not even part of our imagination that people of all ages would like to take a walk, play and sit quietly sometimes. Maybe they would love to use cycles and our children would need a place to play. These important civil amenities contribute to improving the quality of life, money is not everything.

Dehradun is not even a reflection of what you see on Facebook and Twitter. They are just good photographs, the reality is not as rosy as it appears.

end.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA OWNERSHIP AND ISSUES OF SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY

Image
Mukesh Devrari  Transnational media ownership means ownership of media assets by global corporate houses around the world. The word 'transnational' can easily be easily replaced with the term multinational. In other words, when a multinational company owns media companies around the globe that company can be described as a transnational media organization. There are plenty of such organizations, but most vilified among all is owned by Rupert Murdoch.  The nature of media is very different. As you all know media is a plural form of the medium. Production of films, TV serials, drama, theatre and other wings of the cultural industry are also owned by western media companies. Here, the meaning of the word transnational can be extended. Not necessarily western media companies own assets in the third world countries. They create their work in the west and sell it around the world.   It has long been a complaint against western media companies that wherever they g...
Read more

RESURGENCE OF NAZIS IN GERMAN, ITS NOT OVER YET FOR JEWS

Image
Book Review  Mukesh Devrari Eldad Beck’s new book ‘Germany, at odds’ reminds us about the resurgence of German nationalism in the 21 st century. German patriotism and racial nationalism, popularly known as Nazism, posed a threat to humanity in the 20 th century. Germans would like to forget about their troubling history. It reminds them of their barbarity and unconscious brutal tendencies. This book yet again proves that Nazi ideology did not end with the suicide of Adolf Hitler and hanging of many of his associates. Hitler was an elected leader. He came to power through democracy. When Jews were killed in concentration camps and pulled on roads from their houses like cattle, the German population remained silent. In connivance with their leaders, German population attempted extermination of Jews from the face of the earth. Now, almost 75 years after the end of the Second World War, Germans are trying to forget their past. They are attempting to embark on a pa...
Read more

Bacha Khan: One of pre-1947 India’s greatest leaders

Image
Mukesh Devrari The tallest Pashtun leader before the independence was Abdul Gaffar Khan, also known as Frontier Gandhi. He was one of the most fascinating and towering figures of Indian National Movement who preached truth and non-violence to his people who are mostly known for their tribal culture of revenge. He was the pre-eminent figure of Indian National Congress. “The British just about knew how to contend with vegetarian Hindus who raised slogans rather than guns, but Bacha Khan’s “unarmed army” of Pashtuns, which turned the martial race stereotype on its head, left them completely bewildered” (Shamsie, 2016) .   After Congress accepted the partition plan, he famously said, “You have thrown us in front of the wolves” (Tempest, 1988) . “He rejected a separate Muslim homeland and sought instead to join India to avoid Punjabi domination”  (Schofield, 2011, p. 38) . Due to his influence, many Muslims from the region migrated to India at the time of partition (Shukla...
Read more