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Commons and
Nature : Keeping JNU's Compact Green
According to
one version, amongst many that are loosely told, the JNU campus was built
over a sprawling village commons. A resplendent slice of deciduous
sub-tropical forests with wild grasses and bushes that rested on one gentle
sloping shoulder of the Delhi Ridge. This commons was apparently a source for
fuel, fodder and other vegetal needs that made life possible for a number of
hardy rural communities.
Since the 1970’s, despite the many concrete buildings, roads, electric cables,
phone lines, sewage pipes and innumerable sullen red brick walls that
subsequently dissected this erstwhile village commons, it could still be held
that the JNU campus mostly retained its scholarly repose amidst relatively
bucolic and sylvan surroundings. The Parthasarhty rocks, the caves, the lake,
stretches of overflowing wilderness, scampering stately Neelgais, dancing
peacocks, innumerable birds, snakes and so on and so forth were all somehow
interwoven into a politically vibrant and intellectually stimulating academic
space. It was as if there was some sort of unwritten but resolutely
maintained compact that kept Nature and the academic world in a
relatively harmonious coexistence.
But of late, there is more than talk of altering this compact in many very
substantial ways. This vision is strongly declared in the JNU Administration’s
Masterplan 2002, which proposed 48 major buildings including 2 hockey fields, 2
football stadiums, another cricket stadium, and a number of huge residential
clusters. Put differently, a plan for metaphorically bathing this erstwhile
village commons in tons and tons of cement, and concrete. The soils, instead
of being great sponges for trickling water into aquifers and providing organic
fertility, will now be injected with monstrous iron rods to support giant beams
and great swathes will be covered in asphalt and macadamised roads.
The Commons, a JNU students’ initiative, has come into being precisely to
raise questions around words such as campus ’development’, ’expansion’,
’beautification’, and so on. Hitherto, much of this language has acted like a
one way road: unequivocally celebrating the conquest of motor and brick
over intricate ecological webs. In other words, the methodical destruction and
systematic extermination of the natural by the sheer ferocity of
’infrastructural common sense’.
Consequently, members of the Commons decided to impress upon the JNU
community the need to take a pause and allow a deep moment for reflection.
Towards which we initiated a JNU style public debate on the JNU administration’s
new ’concrete’ vision. We wanted know if this slash-burn-build policy had
to be the only path for expansion or where there other ways of keeping our
traditional compact with our environmental surroundings possible. Not
unexpectedly for us, the general tenor of the discussion that ensued in the
first Public Debate organised by the Commons on 10th of April (2006),
attended by the President and Secretary of the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA),
the Student Representative of the Campus Development Committee (CDC), and a
large number of concerned students was very encouraging. There was in fact an
almost dramatic and palpable expression of the need for somehow saving the
green and wild spaces in JNU. Harmony, coexistence, light ecological foot print
and brown field expansion rather than green field expansion reflected the
dominant sentiment.
Members of the Commons , consequently, decided to discuss and
highlight an earlier ’Green Plan’ for JNU. It could perhaps provide an
alternative vision for the future development of JNU. Finalised in year 2000,
this Plan proposed that a major part of the forest which falls outside of the
JNU ring-road would be maintained as Reserved Forest, where no future expansion
of buildings etc. will be allowed. Though approved by the executive committee of
the University, it was then forgotten or shelved. The need now, we feel, is to
revive that plan.
Further, to highlight the major concerns with regard to campus development, the
Commons exhibited an installation in the academic complex in May. It
depicted through tell-tale photographs the abominable state of water extraction,
usage and distribution, the sites of tree-felling and construction, the cruel
living condition for the construction-workers in the campus, ill-managed waste
disposal ’system’, the cancerous growth of motor vehicles in the campus and the
resultant parking mess, and related issues.
In
addition we also feel that the pursuit of any type of expansion must involve
more focussed approaches for accountability, transparency and participation of
various levels of the community: in short, a substantial notion of democratic
practice in decision-making. Members of the Commons also insist that
true expansion cannot be kept as a closely guarded secret. In particular, the
10th Plan, under which most of the present constructions have come
up, has not been made public. Thus, a collective petition (dated 2nd
May, 2006) from the student community, signed by 860 students was submitted to
the Vice Chancellor. The petition also demanded an environmentally sustainable
model for campus development, and asked for transparency in matters such as
obtaining clearances from the regulatory authorities for tree-felling and
starting of constructions.
We now learn that the JNU administration has now constituted an Environmental
Task Force to look into the ecological impact of future development projects in
the campus. Though we see it as a positive step forward towards democratisation
of the planning process, this body needs to be strengthened by support and the
actions of a vigilant JNU community. The Commons is committed to
keeping our compact with Nature green and intellectually bountiful.
(Rohan D'Souza, Centre for
Studies in Science Policy, SSS)
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