AMONG Delhi’s social circles, there are few topics that propel a cocktail group into more furious debate than that of sealing. Ironically, the discussion is most virulent among people who are least affected by the issue. And yet, as the Supreme Court hears a fresh plea by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) seeking to defer the sealing drive today, we need to step outside the drawing room and survey the reality of urban India.

In levels of squalor, inefficiency, noise, disorder, visual pollution, decay and waste, few places in the world — including strife-torn Baghdad — are less hospitable than the Indian City. Just look at the statistics: 400 families move into Mumbai every week. Workers in Mumbai commute from as far off as Baroda, spending 6-8 hours a day between home and office. In Delhi, average commuting time has increased from one to two hours within the last decade. Compare this to 15 minutes in Singapore and 10 in Budapest. In cosmopolitan cities like Manhattan, you can walk/cycle through parks to pick up groceries; take your office break in a tree-lined plaza. The integration of work, home, play is so spontaneous that an active workday still leaves time for a variety of social activities on offer in the city.

Is that the intent behind the mixed-use debate in Delhi? In the race to make Delhi a world city, the bureaucrats seem to be missing some of these less quantifiable values of urban life. A city with global aspirations continually forgets to remind itself of the needs of its long time residents — the millions facing chronic shortages of clean water, air, and power supply. People, who want to send their children to neighbourhood schools, walk in parks without fear of molestation, and occasionally eat at a Chinese restaurant. Is that too much to ask?

Some day, in the not-so-distant future, the master plan will supposedly redress the imbalance. But will it? Master plans are well-meaning documents. Planners work out respectable scenarios; but they are often blissfully unaware that Indian demographic considerations can make the most assiduous of planning ideals go haywire.

That rules are meant to be broken and master plans changed, is but expected in a city whose demographic character is itself under siege. The Delhi Master Plan, however, has so far produced little to justify its existence. Its larger pretence at controlling civic values in a changing city are being constantly exposed. Moreover its stated willingness to change with trends defeats its very purpose — that of promoting a particular lifestyle for all the city’s residents. Certainly accommodation of new amenities, people and civic infrastructure is a crucial consideration in a growing metropolis, but then so is their restriction — restriction on the number of cars entering town, curbs on their movement, controls over new construction, building densities, and so on. In cities around the world, the growth of inner commercial cores has led administrations to impose stringent controls. In Singapore, car access into the centre of town comes at a price few can afford; likewise, London charges an exorbitant decongestion tax. New York’s parking fees are so prohibitive, few drive into Manhattan.

In India, the reverse happens. In the absence of civic regulations, the only way to survive is to impose your will on the city. Wherever you are, burgeoning metro or industrial township, the city environment is in perpetual flux. A house is being demolished, another is rising, a third is acquiring a barsati floor, telephone lines are being dug, concrete sewers lying on a pile of earth. In every public act is an acceptance of growing numbers: the sidewalk is accepted as a bedroom for the poor, the railway line, a bathroom. Bungalows are broken to make flats, the servant quarter is rented to a college student, the garage to a doctor; apartments enclose their verandahs, rooms extend out, illegally projecting into unclaimed air space — the urban Indian will grab all there is to possess, altering his environment in a steady reclamation.

In such a situation, the idea of a planned city becomes an aberration. The wide avenues of Lutyens’ Delhi, seems out of place when weighed against demographic forces that outnumber them in the hundreds of Kunjs, Enclaves, Vihars and Nagars that surround New Delhi. Similarly, Corbusier’s Chandigarh is neatly divided into sectors; but just look at the boundary of the artificial fortress: real India, seethes and convulses, awaiting admission. Indian urban conditions are on a perennial collision course with planning ideals.

Given the current situation in Delhi, in-fighting between the administrators, the courts and the planners is destroying the very place they wish to save. Everyone knows that running illegal shops, commercial establishments, basement offices, and so on, can hardly have been possible without official sanction. And yet the pretence continues. In the growing confrontation between the courts and the Delhi administration, city residents, including traders, play out their role as hapless victims caught in bureaucratic crossfire. Everyone survives moment to moment, between postponement and civic indecision, and in the perennial hope of a regularisation of their illegal status. In a place where administrative indifference rules, this is hardly an unusual expectation.

Certainly, when only a third of its residents live in legal constructions, the noisy majority will be at its most destructive if its livelihood is threatened. However, against the background of trader unrest, and the contentious exchange between court and administration, few will bet on an easy resolution. Only a complete year-long moratorium on sealing can diffuse the volatile situation. It would give enough time for agitating traders and other violators to bring their properties in tune with the new master plan. After which the government can legitimately take stronger and more effective action. Till that time, the administration will smile the I-told-you-so smile; the court will issue new rulings; the planners will raise their hackles to protest the violation of their sacred plan. And, with the cricket season approaching, everything will be forgotten.

The writer, a Delhi-based architect, is the author of ‘A Moment in Architecture’ (Tulika Books)