‘Last Person’ in Kathmandu
Gandhi had a simple test for politicians. Lofty and obscure talk was anathema to him. He would simply ask: how does your action relate to the lives of the “last person” in society? His methods are ever more relevant to those who plan cities, and children are Gandhi’s proverbial “last-person”.
“We can do nothing about Kathmandu. Therefore, we have to give medicine,” an ear-nose-throat (ENT) specialist told me in Kathmandu in May last year when we took our seven-year old son to him. He had been having regular bouts of respiratory problems in Kathmandu. In Toronto, we took him to a doctor recently. She looked through his nostrils and took a short pause. Things looked serious.
“He must be feeling a lot of pain up there,” she told us. His nostrils were swollen. “How much had he been exposed to smoke and dust?” She asked. “Do you have anyone with asthma in your family?” “I thought everybody feels this way,” our son told her, innocently. That’s how he had been feeling ever since he remembered.
In Kathmandu, a stuffed nose, sore throat, lung infections, including pneumonia, have become so common that they have acquired a sense of normalcy. Then add to that the growing number of people who are falling prey to increased blood pressure, hypertension and hearing impairment. And of late, it has become common to see over-weight beer-bellied youth in Kathmandu and other cities in Nepal. Most of the cases of these bodily impairments are easily traceable to the domination of motorised and increasingly privatised mobility in the city. I am sure doctors who have been practicing in Kathmandu know there has been dangerous surge in these diseases over the last two decades. Except that their ‘we-cannot-do-anything-about-this’ refrain does not help.
The choice of means for mobility have wide-ranging consequences for the quality of life for urban dwellers. The issue at hand is one of justice, too. Those who walk, often poor and excluded in society, are also the ones who are bearing the burden of pollution. Kathmandu city planners need to make a conceptual leap from currently dominant road-for-motor transportation system to prioritising non-motorised mobility. This is the only way the city’s air-mess and messed up mobility of the majority can be rectified.
Given Kathmandu’s size and landscape, bicycle and walking can potentially serve the need of the majority of the citizens most of the time. Its relatively flat topography and multi-use and compact built spaces means residents can get a lot of their things done within short distances.
There is no other means of mobility that can simultaneously address so many of the problems that Kathmandu faces. The availability, or lack thereof, of petroleum will be increasingly difficult for most Nepalis in the coming days. Therefore, whether we like it or not, most Nepalis will have to navigate urban space either on foot or bicycle.
Let’s face it: the growing dominance of white-coated medical doctors and nurses in our lives is not an indication of progress. If at all, their growth in numbers is indicative of our worsening life conditions.
Let’s also be blunt: the Kathmandu’s private vehicle sellers and owners, the transportation ministry officials, the urban infrastructure designers, and the politicians have blood on their hands. We can easily guess that many are themselves victim of this lack of serious thought in urban planning.
Those who are wealthy also must have realised by now that their privatised mobility and walled life is not a guarantee to a good urban life. I am sure they must have started thinking about their children, although some of them might fool themselves in deluding that they can barricade themselves behind tall walls, iron gates and air-conditioned homes. Some of them might have been thinking about leaving the city altogether. But for most, the only option is to seriously fight for a liveable city.
Without citizens’ thoughtful actions as well as visionary leadership in urban planning, Kathmandu is sure to get a lot messier in future. Tens of thousands of children will carry chronically impaired lungs for their lives.
BP Koirala once asked his assistants to put a picture of a peasant on his wall while he was the country’s Prime Minister in the late 1950s. He wanted to make sure that every plan that the government made addressed the needs of the primary producers of this country. But we know the sad story of 30 of Panchayat rule that followed.
The test for planners is not how good the roads they build are. The test is how safely children can navigate in the city. It is not whether they got their degrees from some prestigious universities or not. If they have their own kids, they have to put their photos on the walls in their offices or on their tables. And every time they plan in the city, they have to ask if what they propose to do will any good to the children. Children are the ‘last-person’ in our cities and the test is very simple.
anilbhattarai@gmail.com
Posted on: 2012-02-05 10:02
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