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“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” … Abraham Lincoln
“The future is already here – it's just not
evenly distributed… William Gibson
While most of my readers knows about the
author of the first quote yet there are few for them, Abraham Lincoln is a name
for USA which on scale of comparison can be described as what Gandhiji is for
our country & a lot more than that as a human being & as a leader, for
world’s greatest country, is what USA considers themselves! William Ford Gibson
is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited
with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as Cyberpunk, which a story
driven online game too, open world RPG of the dark future from CD PROJEKT RED,
creators of The Witcher series of games. Though Lincoln’s quote uses
destruction of the trees but take it as just an analogy as what he meant is
importance of preparing for the task which we call as planning & that’s why
I used this quote as the subject is about planning & felt that the wise
words of Lincoln will be the best start! I have been invited (read as honoured)
to address Post Grad Students of CoEP i.e., Govt College of Eng Pune, one of
the most respected Eng education institutes in the country & to my delight
Dr Pratap Raval who is dean of planning dept was generous enough to allow me to
choose the subject by myself for the lecture! It’s a boon as well as a
challenge too, as I chose “Environment Eng., Town Planning & Tigers of
Tadoba” as my subject, which he agreed along with his colleague Dr Isha Panse,
that’s real courage I must say!
By now I can call myself a veteran speaker
(self-proclaimed) as stage-daring is no more an issue of concern for me yet
this time I was having goose-bumps before lecture as this was not some
general audience & the place of lecture was where I myself couldn’t get
admission to this Master’s course in this very institute some thirty years back
so the invite was like life coming to full circle & I needed to be at my
best, for my own pride(or ego)! And that’s why I thought of choosing something
which won’t be part of their syllabus as well a turf to which these students
are not much exposed to, which will be to my advantage (lol) but more than that
to share something which no school or college or books has taught them till now
& that is, using wildlife to understand their responsibilities about
planning aspect of life ahead! And, I started with the announcement that many
of you must have been intrigued with the title of my sharing which looks like
some film by Anurag Kashyap (please google about him) but that’s how I have
understood planning by being in the wildlife! First aspect of planning is,
to understand the purpose for what you are planning & that why it’s
important to visit places like tadoba which is exceptionally successful on the
planning front as while in the entire world’s tiger population is decreasing in
tadoba its increasing & that wasn’t possible without planning, this is why
I chose tadoba as case study for planning lecture! I explained to these students about tigers, things like core area &
buffer & people in & around tadoba & why it’s a success & how
its done & what are the challenges ahead now & this “journey ahead,” is
the cause of my sharing with them!
I showed them many wonderful wildlife images
from tadoba but later I showed them hardships of that life & what help
people over there need too. I then showed many images about disturbance caused
in the lives of wild species due to human intervention (read as encroachment)
as Urban Planning or Town Planning unfortunately has been made by the humans
for the humans only thing & may be some decades back that was needed as the
humans were a developing species but now when we have developed (supposedly)
then it's high-time, we should accommodate other species also in our planning. Because,
“what we plan for we usually end up creating,” is a popular psychological
phrase; for e.g. you plan for cars & you end up making more flyovers, you
plan for criminals & you end up making more jails & right in our home
also if we plan for more storage spaces then we end up collecting more unwanted
stuff (all sort of it). On the similar lines, till we are planning for town
(read as humans) we will keep destroying other species or just won’t think
about their needs, is the real challenge in-front of them when they will be
starting their career as town planners! And this is why we must consider or
keep focus of our planning with a vision inclusive of all the species as then
only we will be able to create spaces for them. Why this aspect is important is
because on one side if numbers of tigers has increased in Tadoba (read as
Chandrapur) then number of deaths of the tigers also has reached an all time
high & outcome is, the country has lost nearly 200 tigers in the year
2023. Ways of these tiger’s deaths may be many yet the basic reason behind all
these deaths is the same i.e. space reduction for the tigers which indirectly
means reduction of forest cover or loss of habitat & this is not failure of
the forest dept but of our planning ability as a system! And if you think what’s big deal in the death
of 200 tigers, then take a look on this analogy; we are 150 crore humans in our
country where as there are 3750 tigers in our country so one tiger represents
nearly 3,75,000 humans & death of 200 tigers in a year means death of nearly
seven & half crore humans in a year, now you can imagine the seriousness of
these figures! You may say I am mad or this is absurd but naming
me anything won’t change the fact that we have failed to plan a world which will make
every species have its own space to survive & prosper but as we have
focused only the humans as our object of planning, we are killing other species
because we plan only for the needs of the humans. Actually, here also we are a failure
because if you look at the growth as per region (of-course of the humans only)
then barring Mumbai-Nashik-Pune triangle rest most of the Maharashtra has been
prospered only in some pockets & the migration is rampant toward this
triangle, making infrastructure fronts like water & traffic collapse in
these cities as well housing has become a major concern here. But in all other
parts of the State real estate is not doing that well as people have to migrate
for their career or comfort, this is a direct outcome of failure of planning
which we call policies & this also is a challenge in-front of them, is what
I shared.
This migration of humans towards only one
particular region creates problems for the humans in that particular region at
the same time it makes damage to the sustainability of the life in the regions
from where migration is happening so it’s a two-way damage when we fail to plan
the cities of the regions or say fail to understand basic purpose of the
planning. And on the front as Gibson’s quote says, the failure is already here
the way we have created a mess on the front of infrastructure planning, isn’t
it? In the very first place no living specie has to be required to
migrate for survival on permanent basis but this is very noble thought or say
ambitious planning but at least what we can do is minimize the migration &
see that we plan a world where every specie may it be a tiger or a human will
be able to love & prosper wherever they are & in-case they are required
to migrate (which is law of nature) then there must be safe corridors for them
as well proper habitats which we the humans call as towns while the
tigers call them as the forests! And for that there it’s a high time we squash
the term Urban Planning or Town Planning but we must call it as Habitat
Planning, because Shakespeare might have said, what’s in the name but when its
planning then the name indicates the purpose & the purpose will only decide
our fate; I concluded with this note, wishing them all luck to make this world
a better place as a Planner!
You can watch the sharing on
YouTube link below…
https://youtu.be/jX8kJKhkWZc?si=x62CW_FsvtKrWQx4
-
Sanjay Deshpande
Sanjeevani Dev.
Please view my sharing about finding a Right Home/ Office in Pune, at
YouTube link below & share if liked...
https://youtu.be/27j3I3rwGPQ?si=-ODYBxVI2Dl_C345
Please do visit my blog links below to read
about real estate & home buying!
https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2024/01/choosing-your-home-along-with-future-of.html
http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2023/02/blog-post.html
Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345
For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below
www.punecorporation.org
Take your issues to Hon PM at link below...
Think Green, Think Life
www.sanjeevanideve.com
/ https://junglebelles.in/
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