The recent guidelines by the Union urban development ministry, for consideration in the Delhi Master Plan 2021, have predictably set off alarm bells. While the debate continues, it is essential to question the effectiveness of master plans in shaping our urban future.

Master plans are intended to be blueprints for a more desirable future. Over the last 40 years, about 1,000 such plans had been prepared for various towns. Can we single out a solitary example where the urban quality of life had improved in terms of better civic facilities? The word town, in IndiaJakarta, Bangkok, even Ho Chi Minh City in VietnamIndia has the second largest urban population in the world. Our total urban population is 285 million, which is about 28 per cent of the total population of 1,027 million, as per the 2001 census data. During the last century, the number of towns and cities has multiplied two-and-half-fold while the urban population has increased more than 10 times. Unplanned and uncontrolled urban growth have vastly outpaced planning efforts in cities. The failure of our cities in pro-viding appropriate and safe infrastructure matching with the demand of the population is a collective failure of our urban governance. The multiplicity of agencies is a bane in almost every city. Development, planning and conservation go hand in hand, and are typically controlled by the elected municipality, whether in London, Paris or New York. However, in India, planning tasks are entrusted to the development authorities, which were supposed to look beyond political considerations, and plan in an objective and professional manner.

Under state governments, they soon became pawns in delaying or denying development funds to the urban local bodies, if controlled by a rival party. Politics, by nature is concerned about the present. A typical politician hardly thinks beyond the next election. On the other hand, urban planning is future-oriented, with a typical plan horizon of 20 years for the master plans.

The projected demands of infrastructure 20 years down the line have no chance of getting financial support in the annual budget against other pressing demands of the day. Since the inception of the master plan process, the single greatest urban challenge in India had been the issue of migration of rural population to urban centres. Migration and its attendant issues — slums and squatter settlements, informal economic activity, environmental quality and strain on infrastructure — are challenges we need to address. While the oft-repeated solution of balanced regional development is a much larger issue, the failure of the master plans lie in not considering the inevitable, and planning for absorbing the informal sector within the overall planned structure.

There are flea markets even in the heart of Manhattan. Not so in Delhi, officially that is. Today, cities are too dynamic to follow any set pattern for the next 20 years as envisaged in master plans. The forces unleashed by economic liberalisation and globalisation have exerted pressure on the urban services which were never considered in any of the master plans. Nor do we find any mention of the cyber-revolution or IT-enabled services in the National Capital Region (NCR) plan or Delhi Master Plan, which has made Gurgaon a more desirable corporate address than Connaught Place.

City planning throughout the democratic world operates within the political context. Cities like Sao Paolo or Shanghai suffer from similar challenges of migration of rural poor, increased consu-merism, rise in number of vehicles, affordable housing, and pressure on infrastructure. So how come their cities are better than our cities?

In major cities round the world, planning is a proactive process. The master plans are living documents. It includes a perspective plan or a vision statement that establishes a long-range framework for decision-making, along with short-term, clearly identifiable objectives — decisions on public services, capital facilities, growth management and environmental resources protection. Implementations are monitored. The plans are reviewed periodically and amended as necessary.

In the US and western EuropeShanghai.

Since early 1990s, Shanghai had set up a strategy for urban development, called "One Dragon's Head and Three Centres", to build up the city as an economic, financial and trade centre. In this way, the slogan "a new look for the city in one year, the astonishing changes in three years" has become the guideline for urban reconstruction and redevelopment. Do we have any takers in India?

( The author is a Delhi-based urban planner ) , public participation in plan preparation and review is institutionalised. The debates between pro-growth and pro-conservation groups are often held at the local community level, where planning officials moderate, and try to evolve a consensus. With the strength of public support behind them, the planners can face effectively political manoeuvres and lobby for budget sanction. No other city in the world has planned and built so much within a period of 20 years, as the 1,000-year-old looks and feels much better, cleaner, safer.

Today, , conjures up images of dingy, graffiti-spattered concrete jungles, teeming with people, potholed roads and choked streets. Indian cities are today among the worst in the world in terms of urban quality of life index. Contrast this with cities in other developing countries. Shanghai,