Is the Central Vista Project that essential amidst the deadly pandemic?

It has been weeks since India has been suffering from the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Starting April 2021, over 11 million new coronavirus cases have been detected and over 94 thousand people were reported to have lost their lives amongst all this.

With hospitals running out of beds, medicines, kits, something so important and basic as oxygen and other medical supplies that are in high demand, Graveyards, and crematoriums being filled with dead bodies and rivers washing off the dead bodies to the shore, it is evident that India is one country that has been hit and hit hard by the pandemic all across the globe. What becomes concerning is the fact that the experts are saying that the worst has not even come yet and is still yet to come.

In the middle of this, when much importance needs to be given to the construction of hospitals, oxygen plants, and strengthening the Indian healthcare system, we are talking about the continuation of what is being considered as an “essential service” currently. We are talking about the attention that is being paid to the work at the Central Vista Project. The attention should have been redirected towards taking care of the situation effectively and tackling the pandemic which is destroying the lives of a major chunk of the population of the country.

The whole of the capital of the country is in a state of lockdown to break the chain of transmission of the virus, the work at the Central Vista Project remains unaffected as if nothing has happened, hundreds and hundreds of workers are being called every day to make sure that this particular essential work is completed on the given time.

Now before we go on about this, we need to know and thoroughly understand what is this Central Vista Project and what schedule are we talking about here?
Central Vista Project aims at rebuilding or redeveloping a 3.2 KM stretch known as the Central Vista which stands in Lutyens’ Delhi and was built by the Britishers in the 1930s. The Central Vista is a stretch spread between Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate. It is a project led by the NDA government at the center.

This redevelopment project has essentially four parts. The first part being the construction of a new parliamentary building. Secondly, the destruction of many buildings around it, some of them being the landmark constructions such as the National Museum.

Thirdly, the building of government offices in the 3 KM stretch, and lastly, construction of a new office block and a new residence for the Prime Minister and the Vice President. As per the construction design, it is believed that the north and south block, which houses home, finance, and defense ministries, is going to be demolished to make way for the museums. These ministries will however be shifted to the new blocks in Central Vista.

According to the development plan, the current parliament will be turned into what is called a museum of democracy, which as mentioned in a tweet by Ramachandra Guha ironically pointed out that museums are usually for things that are dead or extinct. Central Vista today is a part that lives in the hearts of citizens of Delhi, it belongs to the people of Delhi. For more than 70 years people have lived there, seen that area as their own, however when the project is completed, the government will get a hold on that area, and eventually, boundaries will be set for the citizens and the area will become a zone of high security.

The main agenda of the Modi government is to build a city center that will be regarded as ‘world class’ but we can not forget the fact that the Central Vista that we have today is already being regarded as one of the most outstanding city centers in the world.

The architect of the Central Vista has compared it to the National Mall, Washington DC, however, it is reported that from time and again the National Mall is being modified time and again to have a greater extent of publicness, which is exactly the opposite in the case of Modi government’s plan for redeveloping Central Vista.

Now with the redevelopment, comes a huge amount of environmental risks. Central Delhi is known to be functioning as the lungs of Delhi considering the amount of greenery it has compared to the rest of Delhi which is majorly usually covered with dust and pollution. However, with the Central Vista project, more way is paved for huge governmental buildings, as a consequence of which more and more trees will be cut and destroyed, harming the Delhi environment.

Although we have been promised that there will be transplantation, we can not say much since we have been promised a lot of things in the past and were disappointed.

Many petitions and cases have been filed against the project in the middle of a pandemic, however, no actions have been taken place and the Rs 20,000 crore redevelopment project continues to work in full swing with asking workers to complete the project on the scheduled time. Now if we look at it, this huge amount of money could have been very well used for the betterment of the healthcare system.

According to the estimates, almost 15 more AIMS hospitals could have been built with the kind of money that was invested in the Central Vista project and would have helped thousands of people who were and are being left to suffer because of the pandemic and the unavailability of hospitals and medicines.