from Outlook,
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060821&fname=PGurcharan+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1
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Arise From The Clay Earth
Let our cities reflect the new age. Let there be a Taj for today.
GURCHARAN DAS
When I heard two weeks ago that one Sanjay Singal, chairman of Bhushan
Power and Steel, had bought a one-acre plot on 4, Amrita Shergill Marg
in New Delhi for Rs 137 crore, I wanted to rush up to him and say, "Now
that you have one of India's most prized properties, do select a great
architect to build your home. For god's sake, let's not have another
cut-and-paste job. Your building ought to symbolise the rise of a new
age in India after the reforms, and millions will remember you for
having captured a great moment in our history." For good architecture
has the amazing ability to represent the life of the times in our
imagination.
This issue of Outlook is about the way "the world looks at India", and
one of the most potent ways is through visual memory. A great nation or
city is defined by its buildings. We remember Paris not only by the
Eiffel Tower, but by the wonderful boulevard buildings of Baron
Haussmann. We think of New York by the Empire State and Chrysler
buildings (although my favourite is Mies' Seagrams building). Sydney has
its exciting Opera House. Although Seattle's signature is the Space
Needle, etched in my memory is Rem Koolhaas' public library. There is
even a city which was 'created' by a building—Frank Gehry's Guggenheim
Museum is rightly called the 'miracle of Bilbao', which put this unknown
city in northeast Spain on the world map. These visual symbols are not
just symbols of man's quest for beauty, they also reflect the spirit of
an age.
It is 15 years since the golden summer of 1991 when we lost our
innocence and with it our fear of the global economy, and began our
affair with the free market. It has been a remarkable period which has
spawned world-class companies and made us one of the world's fastest
growing economies. Time, the Economist, and Foreign Affairs recently did
cover issues on this 'rise of India'. Yet if you think about it, we
don't have a single visual image which celebrates this new age with its
spirit of economic freedom and the unshackling of the energies of the
Indian people, and in parenthesis, the slow decline of the old
bureaucratic state.
Certainly, we do have some powerful visual reminders of our great
cities. When you think of Mumbai, you think of the Gateway of India
(although VT station is what I think of). Delhi has Qutub Minar,
Humayun's Tomb, India Gate, and a host of visual symbols. But these are
images of our colonial and pre-colonial past. The first and last visual
moment of post-Independence India was in the mid-1950s when Jawaharlal
Nehru, with plenty of vision and courage, commissioned Le Corbusier to
design Chandigarh. Swadeshi voices were raised even then—'why can't an
Indian architect do it?' But Nehru had little patience for petty minds
with their petty complexes, and he stood firm. He may have been the
victim of bad economic ideas like 'import substitution' but his mind was
as open as Rabindranath Tagore's when it came to the world.
The civilised merchant prince, Vikram Sarabhai, supported Nehru's bold
approach and he invited Corbusier to design a house for his family in
Ahmedabad. During this fertile period in Ahmedabad, the great Louis Kahn
built the campus of the Indian Institute of Management, and Ray and
Charles Eames were associated with the National School of Design. Thus,
two geographies of contemporary India entered the history of world
architecture, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. Corbusier went on to inspire a
generation of great architects—B.V. Doshi, Charles Correa and many others.
Chandigarh is by now the memory of an age gone by. The city captured our
utopian, post-Independence dreams of socialism, secularism and
democracy, and more importantly our faith in the state's ability to do good.
By the seventies, however, Indira Gandhi had perverted these ideals and
socialism had turned into a statist licence raj and democracy was almost
extinguished by the Emergency. Our mood of despair finally lifted with
the announcement of sweeping liberalisation in July 1991. It was as
though our second independence had arrived: we were going to be free
from a rapacious and domineering state. A new stage in our history had
begun with a decisive shift in the country's energy to the private sector.
So now, when Infosys, Wipro or TCS puts up a new building, it should ask
itself, if what goes on inside is world class, shouldn't the outside
reflect this achievement? The same responsibility devolves upon our
other globally competitive companies like Bharti, Bharat Forge, Jet
Airways, ICICI Bank. Come to think of it, if Sir Norman Foster could
design the Hong Kong airport and Renzo Piano the Kansia airport in
Osaka, why don't we have great architects design our new airports in
Delhi and Mumbai? The responsibility for 'dreaming Chandigarhs' has now
fallen on the business class, particularly on builders like DLF, Mittals
and Rahejas.
Just before Sanjay Singal bought his acre in Lutyens' Delhi, Navin
Jindal had paid Rs 165 crore to buy 3.8 acres on Mansingh Road. At these
prices one can now afford to bring in a Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry,
Richard Meier or even I.M. Pei. A good place to start looking for a
great architect is among the 27 recipients of the annual Pritzker Prize,
architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, but there are many more to
choose from.
It is time we took our cities seriously. They have unbelievable energy;
they are crowded; but they can be beautiful. The word 'city' is related
to 'civic' and 'civilisation', and the city is a place of civilisation.
Some Indians have a prejudice against urban towers, which is
understandable, for a typical glass and steel tower is aggressive,
arrogant and black, and it is trying to say, 'I am more powerful than
you'. But when someone like Renzo Piano thinks of urban towers, he
thinks of San Gemignano, and a 'desire to go up, to breathe fresh air,
to disappear into the sky...it is not a bad idea to go up in dense cities.'
A hundred years from now, the world will remember the first quarter of
the 21st century not for 9/11 as many Americans believe, but for the
rise of China and India. It is as important a moment in world history as
the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. Kenneth Clarke reminds
us: "A great historical episode can exist in our imagination almost
entirely in the form of architecture. Very few of us have read the texts
of early Egyptian literature. Yet we feel we know those infinitely
remote people almost as well as our immediate ancestors, chiefly because
of their sculpture and architecture.' So, let's return the compliment to
liberalisation by putting up some great buildings and make something out
of our cities that will live after us.
(Gurcharan Das is the author of India Unbound and other books. He was
formerly CEO of Procter and Gamble India.)