3

Just how sensible is “radical” commercialization?

The Collector claims that commercial development of school properties is needed for generating resources for education. But the facts are that in Indore:

• Existing allocations for school education are not being fully utilized; and
• Past experiences with commercial development of school properties (which the Zila Sarkar did not bother to discuss while approving this new identical proposal) have not benefited schools in any way
• Strictly speaking at least 2 crores should be available for schools from these earlier exercises. This is way in excess of what the collector has mobilised from private trusts etc, by claiming there are no resources and should be sufficient for setting up a corpus for starting needed improvements in school education in Indore.

The Collector claims that commercial development of school properties is needed because they are anyway being encroached upon unauthorisedly and the state is forced to grant patta to these encroachments under the patta Act. But the facts are:

• If the state were to – instead of shirking its responsibility – exercise its police powers with the same enthusiasm as this “radical” proposal of the collector, it could put paid to unauthorised encroachments
• The patta Act does not apply to commercial encroachments and has sufficient provisions for evicting even residential encroachments. If the collector were to show the same enthusiasm that he demonstrated in his illegal evictions earlier this year to carry out legal evictions from school premises, the Act would be implemented in spirit rather than become a ploy for shirking responsibility.

On the other hand, willful commercial development of school properties throws up:

• serious implications for the city since commercial development is not just about constructing shops, but requires planning for services and for traffic and parking, without which new commercial development stresses existing infrastructure.
• a very real danger of this absurd “radical” thought of the Collector becoming legitimized now that District Planning Committees have been given the right to open new schools without the benefit of state funds. One can readily imagine the Collector (and other collectors) pleading for commercialization of school premises and merger of schools in prime locations on grounds of inadequate resources for new “gumti” schools.

The fact that the Indore Zila Sarkar sees pro-active commercial development as the only way of stopping illegal encroachments is a very poor reflection not only on its policing capabilities but also on its warped perceptions of the importance of landuse planning. Going by the Collector’s convoluted logic, Indore Zila Sarkar should construct commercial complexes in all vacant lands in the city so that no jhuggis or gumtis can come up! This will not only divest them of their policing responsibilities, it will also enable them to wholeheartedly serve vested commercial interests. Hopefully for them, the disastrous consequences of haphazard commercial development will surface only in a subsequent political regime.

Obviously, such commercial development of school properties will not return any “radical” benefits for education!