Jaipur: The French connection

Sanket Upadhyay

Former mayor Sheel Dabhai and newly elected mayor Ashok Parnami want to see Jaipur as Lyon and Paris respectively. Wanting is very different from reality, as the city has been showing its sorry face of bad municipal management for years now.

“The Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) would show everyone that Jaipur is Paris of India,” Mayor Parnami, speaking at a function of the Nagrik Parishad Jawahar Nagar, Jaipur ward 30, said. He said that the present JMC workforce would put its eye and tooth together to achieve the goals of a clean city by better garbage disposal techniques, production of power through garbage and making the city pig and dog free.

“Forget Paris, let Pink city remain pink city. At least stop it from becoming a stink city,” President Jawahar Nagar Nagrik Parishad, Satnarayan Singh told the Hindustan Times. Singh, who was apparently present at function where these announcements were being made, lambasted the mayor’s proposals terming them as mere “assurances” and “promises”.

“People use any stone for construction in the walled city. This defaces the heritage look. There are no properly implemented guidelines, which prevent people from tampering the architectural structure. There is no guideline identifying the genuine pink colour of the city. High-tension wires dangling, heavy vehicular pollution and no type design are areas which need to be looked into,” he said.

He pressed upon the need of building up a model market place or a model colony in Jaipur. “To start with, they can at least improve conditions in one area of the city,” he said.

The foreign dream isn’t new to the city. In September 2004, Mayor Park Youn Koke of the South Korean city Pocheon-si declared Jaipur to be its sister city. “Jaipur is the land of heritage and is known for its tourism which our city would like to associate with,” Koke offered explanation on his choice. Before this, the city had already received international connections with the cities of Lyon in France and Calgary in Canada. In October the same year, the then Mayor Sheel Dabhai talked about her “dream” to see Jaipur grow on the lines of Lyon city. Referring to a basement-parking project at Badi Choupar, she said: “I wish the project had taken off under my wings.” With her ouster, her basement-parking dream still remains her dream.

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