The Mint Cities Wrap is a curation of the most compelling stories emerging from our cities today. While the focus is on urban centres, the Mint Cities Wrap engages with wider geographies in the effort to connect stories with each other across places and borders.
The daily dispatch
Odd-even scheme begins in New Delhi
The road rationing scheme begins its second iteration in the capital today. A quick review of Twitter reactions to the scheme on its first day reveals a somewhat balanced mix of the peeved and the pleased. Among the peeved are owners of luxury cars, who are demanding that they be exempted from the odd-even scheme since their imported cars are compliant with the highest emission standards. Well, the prophet Sri Sri George Orwell did say some are more equal than others.
A quick critique of the odd-even exercise
Depending on pollution levels over the next two weeks, the Delhi government will decide if the scheme is going to be repeated next month. This means detailed real-time tracking of air quality. But let’s step back a bit. First, what if the data from the six monitoring stations operated by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) is itself inadequate to derive reliable conclusions about trends in air quality? According to Sarath Guttikunda , director of the independent research group urbanemissions.info, a city the size of Delhi requires at least 50 monitoring stations, with at least 10 stations in each of the satellite cities of Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Rohini and Faridabad. Second, the odd-even scheme is an intervention focused on vehicular pollution. But Delhi’s air is polluted by a variety of sources that include brick kilns and industries that lie outside Delhi’s borders, diesel generators that provide power back-up, burning of garbage and power plants. So we need to take the ensuing odd-even results with a pinch of salt. For more information, do go through this very interesting website on Delhi’s air quality .
So then why odd-even at all
Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, writing for Scroll.in, points out the tendency of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to prioritise “the evidently visible” over brass tacks. What the AAP government has done through the odd-even scheme is to initiate “a very public conversation about what Delhi needs to do to reduce pollution”. Quite true.
Smart city projects to be launched by 25 June
Rajeev Gauba, secretary, ministry of urban development, interacted with municipal commissioners, mission directors and state officials of the cities that were chosen as smart cities in January. He directed them to launch their respective projects by 25 June. The secretary also urged the states to look beyond the IAS cadre when choosing the CEOs who will head the special purpose vehicles and instead opt for professionals. It is advisable to narrow one’s eyes at this word—professional—for we live in the times of the foreign consultant raj.
A new vision for urbanization
At a meeting with Ecuador president Rafael Correa Delgado, the United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon stated that “we live in an urban century” and that what is necessary is “a new vision for urbanization, a new urban agenda”. Ecuador will be hosting the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development in October 2016.
Doing the rounds
The death of a rhino
This isn’t funny or absurd at all. This is damnable. Poachers killed a male rhino for its horn at the Kaziranga National Park, making it the seventh rhino killed this year. It is merely incidental that the rhino was killed hours after British royalty paid a visit to the park, but perhaps it is the only reason this death made it to news. We need more people like Joel Sartore, a photographer with the National Geographic, who is on a quest to photo-document endangered species across the world. Perhaps, our new vision for urbanization should include the awareness that we humans aren’t the only ones inhabiting the Earth.
It’s going to get hotter, and hotter
Odisha has reported 30 deaths due to the heatwave. Scientists have noticed an increasing trend in the frequency and severity of heatwaves. But do you know what some ants do to deal with the heat? Saharan silver ants grow flashy body hair that cause light to be reflected off their bodies instead of being absorbed. Of course, this is evolution at play here, not a seasonal reaction, and certainly not a matter of personal choice. But hey, now you have a fun fact.
Hands that see
Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is a war-ravaged place. But in Juba is a small, one-room massage parlour named Seeing Hands, which offers respite from the trauma of war. What sets this massage parlour apart is that all the masseurs are blind. The story of this massage parlour is also the story of reclaiming dignity in places that are not designed to include those who have disabilities. In one of the masseur’s own words, “We don’t have fear, that is why we are doing massage here.” Also read what the Zika virus reveals about our prejudice about disabilities.
Parting shots
An apology on behalf of Muslims
This piece of exceptional satire cannot be missed because it tells you a lot about why we just can’t get along. “I think you realise how sorry I am about everything. I hope you would be able to accept me as one of your own in a way that would make you feel that you are celebrating diversity but in reality you are promoting uniformity. Thank you for letting me retain my token identity while robbing me of my historical traditions. I hope all the future Muslim generations never get to learn about those traditions so that they find it much easier than me to simply associate all things Islam with merely terrorism. It would make it easier to apologise for them.”
Making contact
So Stephen Hawking is sceptical about making contact with extra-terrestrial life any time soon. When asked about what he thought alien life would look like, he replied, “Judging by the election campaign, definitely not like us.” But scepticism never stopped the Victorians from attempting to make contact. Their plans included giant mirrors, electric lamps and giant trenches in geometric shapes. None of them were ever implemented, sadly.
