Mute witness to Smart Cities

“France will help in the development of three Smart Cities in India, including Pondicherry and Nagpur,” French President Francois Hollande declared the other day with a beaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi by his side in Paris. The announcement followed Modi’s visit to Toulouse, the French showpiece to the world, to compete with the likes of Seoul, Singapore, Yokohama and Barcelona, which enjoy the tag of Smart Cities. The urban development ministry is yet to define what constitutes a Smart City but that is neither here nor there while Prime Minister Modi is clear that his legacy for India will be Smart Cities and bullet trains

Waki and Angewada are two sleepy villages, though steeped in history. Both are about fourteen to sixteen miles from Nagpur off the four-lane highway that connects the Orange City with Bhopal in Central India. How long these two villages will retain their pristine purity is anybody’s guess. There is every possibility of land sharks from Nagpur devouring their lands in their eternal quest for building middle-class friendly homes and the ultra rich-centric farm houses. This threat becomes all the more real if we factor in ‘the news’ that France would transform Nagpur into a Smart City.

“France will help in the development of three Smart Cities in India, including Pondicherry and Nagpur,” French President Francois Hollande declared the other day with a beaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi by his side in Paris. The announcement followed Modi’s visit to Toulouse, the French showpiece to the world, to compete with the likes of Seoul, Singapore, Yokohama and Barcelona, which enjoy the tag of Smart Cities. The urban development ministry is yet to define what constitutes a Smart City but that is neither here nor there because Prime Minister Modi is clear that his legacy for India will be Smart Cities and bullet trains.

Going by what Toulouse boasts today, it is not difficult to visualise what Nagpur would boast in the days ahead. Its physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure would be the envy of every other ‘normal’ city across the country; from electricity to water and sanitation to livelihood and transportation. Everything on offer would make living a pleasant surprise to Nagpurians, who, like everyone else in the country, tend to believe that happiness comes either with migration to the Big Apple or with nirvana at home.

How long Nagpurians will have to wait for their Nirvana I don’t know. A visit to Nagpur this week made me no wiser. The city suffers from all the ills that afflict our urban life. For instance, there is no proper drainage system, particularly in areas outside the tony belt. Overflowing sewage has turned from ‘bad to worse’ in localities like Mominpura in an area that constitutes Gandhi Bag Zone officially. Eight years ago, the Congress–led UPA promised to make Nagpur a slum-free city. It is yet to make any headway, and an estimated 8.5 lakh people are living in 446 slums that are considered as an eyesore.

Nagpur sports several flyovers in and around the city, though. These flyovers have earned for Nitin Gadkari, the sobriquet of “Flyover Minister” when he was heading the PWD Ministry in the first Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government in Maharashtra. Today, he is the Union Minister for Surface Transport in Modi government, and is pushing the case for a metro for Nagpur. Tenders are expected to be floated next week, my enquiries showed. By the time Nagpur metros start running, Hyderabad metro will be at least a decade old, and this should be cause enough for the Hyderabadis to sport a smile.

Now cut to Waki and Angewada, and their possibility of becoming dots in our urban history. I was in Nagpur this week on a mission unconnected with the smart city talk. I visited the two villages in the company of a large group of followers of Meher Baba. The group included a busload from Kamareddy. The road that leads to Waki has seen better days. A double track railway line greets you a short distance from the dusty village; so it sports a “halt” station that has no platforms. The village has entered history books because a Sufi Saint Tajuddin Baba made it his abode for long years. The host to this fakir was a Hindu, Patel Kashinath Rao, who welcomed him and served him. Today fifth generation of the Patel family is devoted to the “Darga” as its caretakers.

Interestingly, Waki is not the final resting place of Tajuddin Baba but is home to his school, and his hospital besides ‘court of justice’ – a spot “where people craving for justice in litigation used to be directed to assemble, and get instant relief.” According to Prabhakar Patil, the chairman of the Taj Waki Darga Sansthan, Tajuddin Baba is the ‘Spirit’ of all religions, a man-of-god, and had transcended the narrow man-made communalism. Upasini Maharaj, hailed as Sadguru, visited him. So did Avatar Meher Baba on April 10, 1915, ten years before he started his silence and “yet Tajuddin addressed him as Hazarat Mauni (silent) Baba,” says Patel.

Like with all saints, many miracles are attributed to Tajuddin Baba. In 1944, Meher Baba visited Angewada, which is on the banks of River Colar. An account of the visit in “Lord Meher” – (Bhau Kalchuri’s biography of Meher Baba reads: “Angewada is twenty one miles away and the final stretch of two miles is unpaved, over which neither the car nor the bus could travel. The entire village turned out to receive Baba at the river.

They requested that Baba cross the river in a bullock cart and Baba acquiesced…” The main draw at Angewada is Meher Spiritual Center, and a mela takes place every year to commemorate Meher Baba’s visit.Things have not improved since that visit seven decades ago. The Angewada trail remains a narrow strip of an excuse for road, off- the Nagpur-Bhopal express way. No car and motor cycle can cross, forget about buses. Heavy downpour makes the River Colar and other local streams swell and shut doors on Angewada.

Believe me, the visit convinced me that Angewada will not disappear at least in the near future. Ditto will be with Waki. What prompted my conviction? If no Purti Group (belonging to Nitin Gadkari) was interested thus far, and no leading cultural lights of Nagpur paid attention, there is no reason to think that someone else will evince some interest someday soon. Some places are destined to live in obscurity, and darkness, like, Madangiri, a ‘re-developed’ slum that is bang opposite a colony of officials in the upmarket Saket in South Delhi.

(The writer, a Delhi-based senior journalist and South Asia analyst, can be reached at m ramarao2008@gmail.com)