The Hindu : Jagmohan calls for new vision

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 17, 2003

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Jagmohan calls for new vision

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI FEB. 16. Concerned over the rot that has set in the country in almost all spheres of public life, the Union Minister for Tourism and Culture, Jagmohan, today gave a call to formulate a "new vision'' for India.

Addressing a gathering of architects at a function here, Mr. Jagmohan said the country today required a great planner and architect who can reshape the "Indian consciousness'', create a new mindscape and build an altogether new edifice on the foundational plank of justice, equity and other life-nurturing concepts.

Reminding the audience of the great tradition and culture which he said lay hidden underneath the dust and dross of the period of nation's decay and degeneration, Mr. Jagmohan said it was time we paid attention to removing this and locate the healthy foundation slabs of our tradition and build a new edifice of the State with recaptured-creativity and reawakened power of mind. "It is a great design for life and a great life-style for the nation which needs to be evolved first,'' he said.

However, given the degeneration of the country during the last five decades, Mr. Jagmohan said: "This undoubtedly is a tall order. But someone has to take up the challenge. After all, even the longest journey starts with a small step.''

On India's progress after Independence, he said: "The barrenness is too stark to be missed even by a casual observer. It does not have many creative and constructive works to its credit. The period of 53 years India has seen infrastructural shortages, lopsided development, dithering administration, environmental degradation, deterioration in quality of life and further erosion of ethical values, he rued, adding "quite a few more rotten eggs have been added to India's baggage and the country has been pushed more towards superficiality and shallowness.''

This downslide, he said, cannot be arrested unless there is "re-fertilisation'' of the Indian mind and "re- greening'' its inner meadows. "It is only from such recharged minds and meadows that new visions and vistas would crop up and India would rediscover its long lost creativity and its destiny,'' he said.

"Social and economic differentiation in-built in our system due to decay and decadence of once great civilisation is responding to and is in unison with consumerism and the technology of the West,'' he said.

As the political, social and economic elites of the country are adopting the same value-systems that form part of the Western exploitative system, India's cities and villages are caught between two societies, two economies and two cultures. ''At a higher level, cities suffer from the extravagance of European urbanisation and our villages from the hangover of the feudal era. At the lower level, both suffer from poverty and deprivation,'' he observed.

Urging architects not to be part and parcel of this lawlessness, he said: "An oasis of few imposing buildings in a vast and ever-increasing wasteland of slums without even basic human needs of water, sanitation and clean air, would be monuments not of great planning and architectural vision but of an inexcusable artificiality.''

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