Ugly journey to reach the beautiful

How many hours should it take to travel 250 km under Indian road conditions. @50 km/hr may be 5 hrs that too on what we call NH-2 (National Highway-2).

It ultimately took 7.5 hrs to reach Agra and a lesson in the challenges that the country is facing because of rapid Urbanization, Huge Population, Poor urban and Infrastructure planning and Lawlessness. I am back to Agra after a decade and this is my experience.

You get out of Delhi to get into a series of villages that are totally chaotic and one wonders if the villages have expanded to occupy the Highways. Rapid industrialization and real estate boom in the NCR region has brought in lot of employment seeking population to Delhi and its Suburbs.

What is visible is that agriculture is vanishing along the highways and farmers are getting out of the vocation selling lands to land mafias. All sorts of Small industries, Eateries, Engineering and Management colleges are cropping up along the highways. Delhi doesn’t end up to 100 km from its outskirts. The sea of humanity getting out on to the roads is intimidating even for an Indian.

At the heart of the matter is lack of urban planning, zoning and regulation. I would say no state in the country is good at it but in the NCR region it is acute. DDA and the other agencies must be throwing all rules to the winds in approving projects around the NCR region.

If the travel from Delhi to Agra through Faridabad, Ballabgarh, Palwal and Mathura is a nightmare in itself, travel within Agra to reach the elusive Taj is even nightmarish. Any other country having this fabulous monument would have gone to lengths to ensure the town is developed as a world class tourist city and attracted more tourists. Agra is like any other North Indian city, there is nothing like city administration it runs by default.

Since being declared a UN Heritage site in 1983 the situation is better for the Taj and its surroundings but much more needs to be done (they still allow plastic into the Taj campus and one can see plastic bottles lying around in the mausoleum itself – very bad). A beautiful Taj and an ugly Agra town stand in contrast. Shahjahan would be surprised to see the lack of town planning which he envisioned 350 years ago.

The Yamuna Expressway may ease things in terms of travel to Agra but the larger question of urban and town planning practices across the country remains. In the name of development we should not end up with ugly structures as eye sores around the country.

Town and urban planning departments are amongst the most corrupt in the country, they need to be fixed.