‘Nightwalkers glide through Tier III towns’: How can India heal its coronavirus-ravaged cities?

By Vivek Menezes

The Z-Axis Conference brings together ‘starchitects’ from around the world to share their experiences about solving urban challenges.
‘Nightwalkers glide through Tier III towns’: How can India heal its coronavirus-ravaged cities?
A family of migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh walk out of Navi Mumbai. | PTI

A few days ago, the outstanding poet and translator Mustansir Dalvi (he has also been on the faculty of Mumbai’s Sir JJ School of Architecture for 17 years) released a new collection of verse. Walk, he said, was written from his “sense of helplessness, frustration and anger” earlier this year, when “we were seeing vast number of people, walking back home, sometimes covering over 1,000 km from state to state, without support, money or transportation”.

By now, it’s clear India launched heedlessly into “the world’s strictest lockdown” without the measures necessary to safeguard the vast majority of its citizens. At that time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi misguidedly promised that the “Mahabharata war was won in 18 days, this war the whole country is fighting against corona will take 21 days”.

Continue reading “‘Nightwalkers glide through Tier III towns’: How can India heal its coronavirus-ravaged cities?”

You and Your Neighbourhood: the film

‘You & Your Neighbourhood’ is the title of Charles Correa’s Masters Thesis at MIT, 1955, for which he made an animated film. He was the scriptwriter, animator, photographer and director.

 

Continue reading “You and Your Neighbourhood: the film”