2005

BCIL turns a decade old in January were we not to reckon the six months prior to January 1995 that we spent in fierce consultation on the birth of an idea.
And as we look ahead at the next decade of tumult for the planet, we can see we need greater resolve to stick to those mission values that we set out for ourselves then.

I have no pictures to share with you. The camera had run out of its battery. We drove some two hours out of Bhopal, to the east. A state highway dwindled into a district road, and then petered out into an ‘other road’, and eventually into a mud track. And as that ended at a sharp drop in a valley, there were these rolling hills of the Satpuras rising up ahead in the distance.

As this edition goes to press, newspapers every day are showing greater shock and disbelief. There’s bewilderment at the sheer scale of the catastrophe that the series of quakes between Bali and the Andamans caused, and the tsunami that staggered us all.

The most deeply disturbing thing one heard came at the fag end of the year. It was not the Tsunami, though. Deluged by the columns of news on the tragedy of thousands lost, was a report on grass in the Antarctic that field researchers had discovered late this summer. Grass in the Antarctic? Is that how warm the globe has got?

Jean-Philippe Lestang of SCE Creocean, a French urban planning organization in the private sector, has been in India for the past four years working on public projects. His team first helped set up a Geographic Information System for Bangalore’s water supply and sewerage system. He is now helping to put together a new Comprehensive Development Plan for the city. Lestang shares with Sujit John of The Times of India his vision for urban renewal in India.