Join the people of Dehradun in their fight to save the city’s tea estates from being converted into a large ‘Greenfield’ real estate project in the name of ‘Smart Cities’. Petition the Chief Minister to protect Dehradun’s tea estates and the precious eco-system of the Doon valley.

School children, college students, NGOs, civic-minded individuals, professional networks of architects and engineers, government officials and politicians from across the spectrum in Dehradun have all opposed the destruction of the tea estates. The tea estates are one of Dehradun’s last remaining green spaces with over 30,000 trees and numerous rare birds, and they provide ecological and water security to the Doon valley. Instead of this realtor-driven development, the tea estates could be developed as a common resource for Dehradun, for its school children, biodiversity scholars and nature lovers. The Smart Cities project could focus  on bringing investments, improved infrastructure and new opportunities in the existing city to benefit present-day residents by taking up sites within the city for improvement.

The Smart Cities Mission gives participating cities a choice between in-city (“retrofitting” or “redevelopment”) upgrading and new (“greenfield”) developments, but expects that even new developments should be closely integrated with existing cities. For this reason, the majority of projects selected by the Mission’s selection committee in the first round of competition in 2015 are for in-city upgrading, while Dehradun’s greenfield tea estate project came last (97th out of 97 shortlisted cities)! This alone should have been good reason for the MDDA (Mussourie-Dehradun Development Authority, the agency responsible for making Dehradun’s plan) to think of other alternatives for the plan it would propose this year.

MDDA is leading a seriously flawed planning process for its Smart Cities plan. Ostensibly, residents have been asked to participate in an online poll to decide city priorities, but without adequate information about the costs or benefits of the different options they could vote for, even as MDDA representatives have been openly canvassing votes for the tea estates project. (Several instances reported of MDDA representatives blatantly asking people to vote only for the greenfield option, they even say this is the only option they have been informed of.)

MDDA has proposed 4 retrofitting projects as options in the online poll, but there is no information at all of what this retrofitting will entail and how it will be financed. The city has been rather mindlessly made into 4 zones (ranging between 3200 to 4900 acres each) that are listed as retrofitting options. This disregards the Smart Cities Mission guidelines, which state that for a Himalayan city such as Dehradun, a retrofitting plan needs to cover only 250 acres. Land, investments and implementation capacity in our cities are all in short supply, and a too-large project is more likely to fail than one that is sized appropriately. In fact, the idea of the Smart Cities Mission is to use public investments and resources to leverage investments into compact developments, which will act as a nucleus for citywide improvements. But we believe these principles have been disregarded because MDDA is not seriously interested in pursuing anything other than the tea estate project.

You may wonder why the MDDA needs the Smart Cities Mission for the tea estate project? After all, 350 acres of prime real estate in the Doon valley would be attractive to realtors even without financial assistance from the central government. This is because including the project under the Smart Cities Mission would help MDDA short-circuit legal and environmental obstacles that would otherwise hold back such a project.

If you consider supporting our petition, your reasons could be:

• The tea estates have immense ecological and cultural value to the city. With over 30,000 trees and green cover, the tea estates protect Dehradun’s uniquely pleasant microclimate, and provide valuable groundwater recharge zone and catchment area for the Yamuna river network. In climate change terms this is ‘water security’ for the city and the region, and protection from ‘climate shock’, floods and related natural disasters.
• By focussing on the tea estates project, Dehradun will miss the opportunity to bring in innovations and investment that improve roads, water, electricity, waste management and public transport in the present city, and to enrich the city with new economic opportunities and additions to its cultural and civic life. The tea estate project may bring about a short-term boom in construction and real estate activity, but will ultimately result in high-end gated “ghost towns”, out of the reach of most present or future residents of the city.
• The tea estate project will add to traffic load and congestion, and more demands for road widening in Chakrata Road and Shimla Bypass areas – think of construction materials to build up 350 acres of land being supplied by trucks that enter the Doon valley through one of 2-3 access points, and then have to drive through congested city roads to reach the Greenfield site.
• The Smart Cities Mission recognises the importance of civic participation in the planning process, and states that the selectors will also consider “how well contrary voices have been accommodated in strategy and planning”. On the other hand, MDDA’s flawed and non-participatory way of preparing the project gives us reason to believe it is driven by vested interests rather than for the benefit of the city. We would like MDDA to build trust, and to start the planning process afresh, with better technical expertise, and by working with (rather than against) Dehradun’s residents, its student communities, NGOs, civic-minded individuals and professional communities.

Get involved, and make your voice heard! Keep up with the news and various announcements about Smart Cities, talk to your friends and neighbours, and participate in city and neighbourhood events.