Portfolio Eclectica - Keshav Suryanarayanan

portfolio ECLECTICA� KESHAV

SURYANARAYANAN

architecture

tra

avel

URBAN WRITING

architecture academic projects archi tectural thesis volunteer work

lakeside pavilion

view towards the sea

childrens play tunnel

- Framing the view towards the sea

- Intersecting Rectilinearity to contrast and Emphasise Fluid Curvilinearity of the water

deck access

- Create two levels of viewing decks - Floor becomes wall becomes roof - Final structure creating multiple levels - Steps and seating cut into the slope

minimalist kitchen

One Fluid space

Hidden space

Freestanding monolith to Create a movement loop create a directional movement to engage with the space

Split clean and dirty areas

Fitting necessary functions

Outer shutter covers up when not in use

Final layout with functions

shopping mall

Introduction of a filter of ARCADE SHOPPING. changing axes of movement to generate paths and Creation of focus points using serial PUBLIC GREEN SPACES

MOVEMENT PATTERNS

Open site with vegetation.

VOIDS - green spaces

MULTIPLE ENTRY POINTS to create variety of experiences.

to create public event spaces

Creating the initial random movement

Taking the RANDOMNESS to the next two levels.

Introducing ROOF GARDENS on next two levels.

TOWER linking all levels to create an element of identity.

ROOFTOP WALKING TRACK

GATHERING/ EVENT SPACE TOWER OFFICE SPACE GAMING AREA CINEMA GREEN SPACE FOOD SHOPPING ARCADE SHOPPING PARKING

plugin campus

INTRODUCTION Systems of education through history have largely remained as standardised and similar as the structures they inhabit. The industrial model of standardised learning is still all pervading.There is no doubt that the system works for some, but it cannot be accepted as one-size-fit-all. What we need instead is a system of education that facilitates learning through doing and enabling free choice and mutual sharing in the development of individual and varied passions.

We need to rethink the way we structure education as an alternative lifestyle integrating science and art, music and dance, literature and philosophy, work and play; to find a way to make learning satisfying and meaningful.

PROJECT FRAMEWORK The project is a campus for a new university with an interest in reshaping the learning experience. The idea is that such universities bring together a variety of disciplines and courses under one umbrella institution. Bringing together the varied streams of technology, medicine, humanities and management makes it possible to incorporate an interdisciplinary system wherein these varied streams could start to connect and overlap.

The aim is to create an architectural framework for an interdisciplinary system that allows people to freely plug in and create possibilities and share them beyond boundaries of rigid segregation of disciplines. An attempt to create an environment for free and easy sharing of ideas, passions, and work. A redefinition of how an institution is conceived. The formation of networks and linkages that may transcend one specific area of scope and application. The creation of possibilities for the system to plug into existing fabrics and for different systems to plug into one another.

A system based on -Cross-disciplinary access -Interdisciplinary interaction -Learning - Practice collaboration -Cross-professional interaction -Program overlaps -Learning community formation

IDEA interaction

SYSTEM

collaboration

community

learn work

SITE

PROGRAM play

users

context

PLUGIN At different levels Campus Plugin to city

Divisions Plugin to each other

C

E

H

M

A

Major circulation Overall open structure

Cluster Organization Anchor programs Node creation

Disciplines Plugin to each other

Professions Plugin to learning

Location

P

Co-working spaces Access to research labs

Studies - strategies JNIDB, Hyderabad - Charles Correa | Informal Paths and node connects residential

seminar and classrooms

faculty housing

Gammel Hellerup gymnasium, Denmark - BIG Architects | play as connect

Faroe Islands education center, Denmark - big architects | central connect

gymnasium business college administration technical school athletics cafetaria multipurpose hall media centre library

Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore - UNstudio and DP architects | learning spine and anchor programs primary loop secondary loop campus center academic

student center information systems auditorium design

engineering systems design design center learning spine

architecture and sustainable design admin

Rolex Learning center, Switzerland, SANAA Architects | open space flow

eduplant, school in seoul, korea - mit thesis | programmatic overlaps

library engineering product development

Zoning process Approach 1 - Cluster | pockets and paths - Derived rules of proximity based on programmatic links - The common programs occupy pockets Observations- Different departments still divided - No unifying program. Too fragmented.

- Distances determine level of connections.

TECHNOLOGY arch

conceptual massing

HUMANITIES

biotech bioinfo biomed genetics chem

comp.sc. languages law journ. vis.comm. film mass comm.

mech aero auto eie ece eee comp.sc. software

comm. bio sc.

it

hotel mgmt.

civil nano programmatic links

basic sc.

MEDICINE

MANAGEMENT shared resources shared subjects shared spaces

Zoning process Approach 2 - Spine | movement and visibility - linear spine broken into fractals - one main anchor program at the end - additional movement spines are created across the main spine Observations- long distances - not enough varied programs

conceptual massing

classroom zone

Fractal pattern for organization research lab zone

admin and activity zone

shared zone pause point

start

shared zone

end focus point research lab zone

admin and activity zone

classroom zone

Major circulation paths and grouping

primary spine secondary

it eee comp sc

eie civil

viscom

ece

library

arch bioinfo

biotech genetics biomed

mech auto aero

math

biosc

chem basic sc

film law

journ lang

admin comm

eco

mgmt

Zoning process Approach 3 - Megastructure | circulation and nodes - major anchor programs form nodes and creating paths - The common programs occupy pockets Observations- complex results - unclear connections between elements

conceptual massing

zoning with primary circulation

Zoning process Final Approach - Combination of strategies | cluster + spine + megastructure - departments grouped into clusters - main central anchor programs - shared resources - radial streets as spines

primary focal programs create gathering in

Anchor Programs

movement around the centre creates main street Inner and outer streets

8 department clusters

admin and classes face the main street and create the secondary street

secondary anchor programs create the movement through the inner street

library block

auditorium

workshop

corridors

street

travel photography writing

trip 1 - S tockholm -copenhagen-am sterdam -d e l f t - de n h a a g - a m s t e r d a m - r o m e - b a r ce l o n a - st o ck h o l m t r i p 2 - Stockholm -b u d a p e s t - v i e n n a - p r a g u e - p a r i s - t o u r s - p a r i s - s t o ck h o l m

eurotrip 2015

stockholm, sweden

copenhagen, denmark amsterdam, netherlands delft, netherlands

den haag, netherlands

Paris, france

prague, czech republic

vienna, austria

tours, france

rome, italy barcelona, spain

budapest, hungary

URBAN WRITING dissertation college magazine agam sei -URBAN nEWSPAPER

Questions Unasked A Dissertation

Exploring the connections, consequences and implications of what we do

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My best teachers were not those who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.

– Brian Greene.

Looking at the ever-growing number of buildings surrounding us, it becomes increasingly relevant and important for us to continually evaluate for ourselves the implications and consequences of the structures we design and inhabit. To be able to do this, it is extremely necessary examine the connections that exist between architecture and the other changes we see around us.

We got where we are by daring to question the given; Challenging the accepted and established; Exploring other ways of looking at the world. There is no reason why the results of those approaches should be exempt from being analysed using the same approaches.

We need to raise some important questions that need to look at architecture and the world closely. More importantly, we need to look at how we look at these.

The aim of this research is to raise some questions that are relevant in today’s context and see why they may be relevant in understanding the view of the world we hold which shapes our desires, choices and actions.

In order to ask these questions we need to look at connections with other disciplines and probably find reasons and trace the path we followed to arrive here in history.

“

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The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself.

Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. ― Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

Humans are probably the only species that are aware of and able to think about their own possible extinction. But it seems to end right there.

Most of us go through a phase in life where we question everything we are told, we talk about every possibility, we hope for change and believe we can bring it.

We talk about shifts we see around us. We dare to stand up and question.

But beyond a point, we seem to surround ourselves with a bubble of reassurance, complacency and indifference.

Maybe it helps us deal with life. Maybe it helps us stay peaceful and sane.

Maybe there’s some time left as yet, maybe there’s a chance to be heard.

This dissertation is an attempt to raise a few questions and try to start raising more.

Maybe looking at architecture and the world through these approaches can help us comprehend and possibly contemplate the changes and trends we see around us, that we influence and which in turn shape us.

01

What are the broader implications of monumental architecture?

India is a country with a varied and rich cultural and architectural history. A history filled with a spread of architectural marvels and must-see sites of human excellence at building.

Dating various time periods, different kings, queens and rulers, we see a multitude of grand monuments, huge structures; reminders of love, war, glorious eras and people; forts, palaces, temples, mosques, tombs, churches, administrative buildings, stupas, the pyramids to name a few.

Artist’s impression of the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza

Awe, wonder, insignificance, spirituality, humility, pride, peace. Our reactions and feelings at the sight of huge, monumental man-made structures are many. We respond to the first thing we see, the scale. We are in awe of the huge scale of these structures and the minds that conceived them. We wonder at the infinite minute details that give it its beauty be it the quality of construction, exquisite carving, sculpting and craftsmanship. We feel the insignificance of our own existence in the scale of the setting, surrender to a higher power and feel a spiritual re-connection with our own selves. We feel humbled by and proud of the timelessness of such creations of human effort.

Most of the common labor force that worked on the pyramids was Egyptian citizens. Most of the brute pyramid workforce was comprised of laborers of people who could not pay their taxes in livestock, produce, or manufactured goods and had to work off their obligation to the king. They were divided into teams and divisions and were provided with the basic necessities of life during their term of duty. Skilled builders and craftsmen were in the permanent employ of pharaoh and lived together in villages near the pyramid site. They were involved in the dragging of the huge rocks from where they were quarried to the base of the pyramid.

Even today the statistics are mind-boggling: two and a half million blocks of rock, weighing on average three tons each; a project duration spanning two decades; a labour force of as many as 100,000 workers.

Looking at history, we see the name of one ruler, or group of people who got it built in their lifetime or reign. We see its beauty and their glory. We at most notice the craftsmanship of the work.

What we do not see or sometimes ignore are the untold stories of massive displacement of people who worked on such projects. We hear the story of the Taj Mahal being built by twenty thousand workers over a period of twenty years who were mutilated at the end of its construction so that they could not replicate the craftsmanship elsewhere.

The Taj Mahal in Agra

We do not know the name of the master builders who planned the huge temples throughout India. We do not know where the many thousand people who built it learnt how to build with such precision in the absence of today's advanced technology.

We do not know the flow of materials with which these were constructed, be it the huge stones of the temples, mosques and tombs, or the marble for the Taj, or the red sandstone of the forts, or even the iron for the iron pillar in the Qutb complex.

We do not realize the impact these had on the people of the time; whether they were taxes levied on the many to make these dreams of a few come true, displacement from the land when it was probably taken from them. And we do not see the ultimate power one or few individuals hold over a much larger group of people.

Why is this relevant today?

We still continue to build huge structures today and with increasing frequency. We see huge towers of 50-100 floors and more, built to capitalize on a supposedly growing real estate sector.

Many of which lie vacant to remain unused, just one investment of many. We see buildings which dwarf the largest temples we've seen. We see thousands of people being displaced every day from distant villages to major cities, tricked by promises of money only to feed the need for cheap migrant construction workers, ending up in ever growing slums.

We still don't see the sources of the materials that we so lavishly use up in building. This is made easier because most of us today have access to the same materials, no matter where they are.

We can tell ourselves that these buildings fulfil a real need today for large amounts of office and residential space, with the limited land we have left to occupy in our cities.

But the fact remains that we still build structures built to commemorate events or people and to establish the power these people wield. We have a memorial supposed to commemorate a freedom fighter which ends up glorifying the petty local politician who ordered it built. We have a building made to house a government that is shunned then converted into a hospital when the government changes. We have a 27 floor 'home' that ends up unoccupied for most of the year and just stands an status symbol surrounded by slums that it helped create.

Dr. Ambedkar Memorial, Lucknow

New Secretariat, Chennai

Antilla, Ambani Residence, Mumbai

When some of these projects are put on hold, the migrant workers who work on these are often stranded. Like when work on around hundred skyscrapers stopped in the U.A.E in 2009, about 1.1 million indentured labourers mainly Indian, Pakistani, Nepali, and Sri Lankan were stranded in labour camps without water with their passports taken away. 99% of these people have been engaged by private projects.

It is, therefore, extremely relevant and increasingly important that we ask ourselves why we build big and what it means for us, and others we have an impact on.

02

What are the reasons and driving forces of religious architecture?

Architecture's usual criteria of purpose, access, capacity, construction, and financial viability are simply not enough -- in religious buildings the question of meaning, image and symbol are also integral to the task. What I find particularly curious and inspiring about this topic is its inherent contradictions. Religious buildings always have to bridge the gap of being literally a 'concrete' implementation of a highly abstract idea.

-Lukas Feireiss When we think of religious architecture, we think of our respective symbols; Hindu temples, mosques, churches, Buddhist monasteries and we see them as representative of their religion, its sanctity and permanence; a holder of sanctity, mystery, traditions and culture.

This is largely due to the fact that buildings are the most public and visible expressions of religion.

Across religions, we see many features that are different; some very specific, some very broad; traditions and practices that are unique to each religion. But we also see some commonality between all these. These practices probably originated as a way of bringing meaning to life, a way of relating to the world, a way of imbibing certain values intrinsically, ensuring certain valuable practices were passed on from generation to generation whether or not the meaning was immediately apparent.

Over the years, we see accumulation of the dust of the centuries, distortions of original principles and values as with anything passing down generations.

The once efficient way of education based on faith is now defunct as we have started questioning everything we once believed when told. This is also good in a way and necessary to identify the fallacies that have added. We thus need to evaluate based on validity what we once accepted with faith. This is also reflected in the architecture that we see representing these religions.

A growing trend in religious architecture seems to be to shy away from ostentatious iconography, and to instead allow the visitor to immerse themselves in light-filled serenity, free to fill it with their own thoughts, wishes, and prayers.

Oneiric Hut, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada

Proposed interior of Meditation House, Jebaa, Lebanon

Interior of Matri Mandir, Auroville, Pondicherry

Crystal Cathedral, by Philip Johnson

Church of Light, by Tadao Ando

Sacred, religious and holy structures evolved over centuries and were often some of the largest buildings in the world, prior to the modern skyscraper. While the various styles employed in sacred architecture sometimes reected trends in other structures, these styles also remained unique from the contemporary architecture used in other structures. With the rise of Christianity and Islam, religious buildings increasingly became centres of worship, prayer and meditation.

Religious and sacred spaces are amongst the most impressive and permanent monolithic buildings created by humanity. Conversely, sacred architecture as a setting for intimacy may also be conceived of as transient, small and intensely private and personal.

Sacred geometry, iconography and the use of sophisticated semiotics such as signs, symbols and religious motifs are endemic to sacred architecture.

Since temples are the only buildings from ancient Greece which survive in numbers, most of our concept of classical architecture is based on religious structures. The Parthenon which served as a treasury building as well as a place for veneration of deity is widely regarded as the greatest example of classical architecture.

The origins of the ďŹ rst church was in a simple building comprising a single meeting space, built of locally available material and using the same skills of construction as the local domestic buildings. However, church congregations, from the 4th century onwards, have sought to construct church buildings that were both permanent and aesthetically pleasing. This had led to a tradition in which congregations and local leaders have invested time, money and personal prestige into the building and decoration of churches.

Ruins of the Dura Europos house church, built ca. 232 AD

When Early Christian communities began to build churches they drew on one particular feature of the houses that preceded them, the atrium, or courtyard with a colonnade surrounding it.

Most of these atriums have disappeared. The descendants of these atria may be seen in the large square cloisters that can be found beside many cathedrals, and in the huge colonnaded squares or piazza at the Basilica of St. Peter's in Rome.

Early church architecture drew its form not from Roman temples, as they did not have large internal spaces where worshipping congregations could meet. It was the Roman basilica, used for meetings, markets and courts of law that provided a model for the large Christian church and that gave its name to the Christian basilica.

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City

In India, the idea of religious architecture is linked to the variety of religions of different periods as well as to different parts of the country. India was crisscrossed by many varied trading routes of merchants from as far as China. It was also the target of many invasions from outside, resulting in influences of foreign elements on native styles.

Big Temple, Thanjavur

The Hindu temple is a representation of the macrocosm (the universe) as well as the microcosm (the inner space). Temple building started when idol worship started at the end of the Vedic period. Temples made of timber and clay were the earliest followed by cave temples, temples carved out of stone or built with bricks. Heavy stone structures with ornate sculpture came later.

With many different types of ornate temples, there are some common features. The sanctum sanctorum or inner space is the place where the main deity is installed. The temple is built on a raised platform. Another common feature is the presence of towers on top of the temples, some of which were extremely tall. Also meant to be the main gathering spaces of the society, they often had large pillared halls surrounding them used for gatherings and community meals after prayers.

Throughout our history, the temple as in institution has exercised an enormous influence on our social life. The construction and maintenance of the building have provided employment to the architects, artisans, sculptors and labourers. Music, dance and other fine arts have received great encouragement and provided entertainment to the devotees. Being a centre of learning, the temple helped in the acquisition and propagation of knowledge. With its enormous wealth, it also acted as a bank to the needy, giving easy credits. The granaries of the temple helped to feed the hungry, and those unable to earn their livelihood due to disease and deformity.

There are several instances of even hospitals and dispensaries being run by the temple. The temple often played the role of a court of law for settling disputes. The temple also gave shelter to the people during wars.

Thus the temple has been a major portion in the social life of a majority of our country for centuries.

The earliest mosques were square or rectangular in plan with an enclosed courtyard and a covered prayer hall. Historically, because of the warm Mediterranean and Middle Eastern climates, the courtyard served to accommodate the large number of worshippers during Friday prayers.

Quba Mosque, Medina

The mosque serves as a place where Muslims can come together for prayer as well as a centre for information, education, and dispute settlement. Mosques in some places evolved to include schools (known as madrasas), hospitals, and tombs.

One of the common features, quite obviously is the presence of community spaces for large gatherings of people, where the whole community around these buildings comes together. It acted as a place of medicine, education and of common cultural growth when these.

With the development of separate and highly specific typologies for these different varied programs, we seem to have lost the need for them in certain ways. They therefore seem to have lost the multiple ways people connected with them and with each other and our buildings for those purposes seem to have lost the sense of spirituality that they imbibed all our activities.

We have seen a change from the community to the individual in terms of importance in many aspects of society. Our spiritual centres seem to reflect the same shift in focus from the sense of community and togetherness to a sense of individual reflection.

What does that mean for us?

03

Is the ‘City’ as it is defined widely, sustainable as an idea itself?

A city is a relatively large and permanent human settlement which generally has complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing and transportation. A big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are usually associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas, creating numerous business commuters traveling to urban centers for employment. Once a city expands far enough to reach another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis.

A city formed as central places of trade for the benefit of the members living in close proximity to others facilitates interaction of all kinds. These interactions generate both positive and negative externalities between others' actions.

Some benefits include reduced transport costs, exchange of ideas, sharing of natural resources, large local markets, and later in their development, amenities such as running water and sewage disposal.

There are also disadvantages such as a higher rate of crime, higher mortality rates, higher cost of living, worse pollution, traffic and high commuting times.

New York at Dusk

Modern cities are known for creating their own microclimates. This is due to the large clustering of heat absorbent surfaces that heat up in sunlight and that channel rainwater into underground ducts.

Now, Indian government-backed research shows that both Delhi and India’s biggest city, Mumbai, are becoming "urban heat islands", with significantly different climates to their surrounding rural areas.

Preliminary findings from the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) show that temperatures in both cities have risen 2C-3C in only 15 years. The on-going study, based on NASA satellite readings, also shows the cities to be 5C-7C warmer than in the surrounding rural areas on summer nights.

The phenomenon of urban heat islands is recognised as a direct consequence of urbanisation.

Like many other cities in developing countries, Delhi and Mumbai have more than doubled in size and population in the past 25 years as rural migrants have flooded in.

But artificial urban surfaces such as concrete and asphalt act as a giant reservoir of heat, absorbing it in the day and releasing it at night. Pollutants from nose-to-tail traffic add to the heat and, in a vicious cycle, people turn to air conditioning, which pumps out yet more heat and pollutants, so increasing climate-changing emissions, which lead to warmer global conditions.

Waste and sewage and pollution are some of the major problems for cities.

Cities may generate positive external effects. The close physical proximity facilitates knowledge spill overs, helping people and firms exchange information and generate new ideas. A thicker labour market allows for better skill matching between firms and individuals.

A sustainable city or eco-city is a city designed with consideration of environmental impact, inhabited by people dedicated to minimization of required inputs of energy, water and food, and waste output of heat, air pollution – CO2, methane, and water pollution. Richard Register first coined the term "ecocity" in his 1987 book, Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future.

There is no completely agreed upon definition for what a sustainable city should be. Generally, developmental experts agree that a sustainable city should meet the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The ambiguity within this idea leads to a great deal of variation in terms of how cities carry out their attempts to become sustainable.

Furthermore, close proximity of residents and major landmarks allows for the creation of efficient public transportation by eliminating long sprawled out routes and reducing commute time. This in turn decreases the social cost to residents who choose to live in these cities by allowing them more time with families and friends instead by eliminating a part of their commute time.

Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl is a multifaceted concept centred on the expansion of auto-oriented, low-density development. Topics range from the outward spreading of a city and its suburbs, to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, examination of impact of high segregation between residential and commercial uses, and analysis of various design features to determine which may encourage car dependency.

Automobile dependency is one of the major factors which shape the growth of cities.

Increased Vehicle Ownership

Generous Parking supply

Automobile Oriented Land Use Planning

Automobile Oriented Transport Planning

Cycle of Automobile Dependency

Sprawl & Degraded Cities

Reduced Travel Options

Alternative Travel Modes Stigmatised

When it comes to automobile use, there is a spiralling effect where traffic congestion produces the 'demand' for more and bigger roads and removal of 'impediments' to traffic flow, such as pedestrians, signalised crossings, traffic lights, cyclists, and various forms of street-based public transit such as streetcars (trams).

These measures make automobile use more pleasurable and advantageous at the expense of other modes of transport, so greater traffic volumes are induced. Additionally, the urban design of cities adjusts to the needs of automobiles in terms of movement and space. Buildings are replaced by parking lots. Open air shopping streets are replaced by enclosed shopping mall.

Walk-in banks and fast-food stores are replaced by drive-in versions of themselves that are inconveniently located for pedestrians. Town centres with a mixture of commercial, retail and entertainment functions are replaced by single-function business parks, retail boxes and multiplex entertainment complexes, each surrounded by large tracts of parking.

These kinds of environments require automobiles to access them, thus inducing even more traffic onto the increased road space. This results in congestion, and the cycle above continues.

Roads get ever bigger, consuming ever greater tracts of land. Public transit becomes less and less viable and socially stigmatised, eventually becoming a minority form of transportation. People's choices and freedoms to live functional lives without the use of the car are greatly reduced. Such cities are automobile dependent.

Automobile dependency is seen primarily as an issue of environmental sustainability due to the consumption of non-renewable resources and production of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. But it is also an issue of social and cultural sustainability. Like gated communities, the private automobile produces physical separation between people and reduces the opportunities for unstructured social encounters.

Urban sprawl has been a feature of cities for as long as they have existed. The dynamic of rich inner city residents moving out to the lower density suburbs of the town can be traced back to antiquity. The term "urban sprawl" was first used in an article in the London Times in 1955 as a negative comment on the state of London’s outskirts. However, London had been sprawling out of its medieval confines within the city since the 18th century.

Urban sprawl is associated with a number of negative environmental and public health outcomes, with the primary result being increased dependence on automobiles.

Government subsidies for infrastructure often disguise the true cost of sprawl. Examples include subsidies for highway building, fossil fuels, and electricity.

Los Angeles at Dawn

A paradox of intensification was proposed; urban intensification which increases population density will reduce per capita car use, with benefits to the global environment, but will also increase concentrations of motor traffic, worsening the local environment in those locations where it occurs.

At the level of the neighbourhood or individual development, positive measures (like improvements to public transport) are usually insufficient to counteract the traffic effect of increasing population density.

This leaves policy-makers with four choices: intensify and accept the local consequences sprawl and accept the wider consequences a compromise with some element of both Intensify accompanied by more radical measures such as parking restrictions, closing roads to traffic and car-free zones.

Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centres to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighbourhood schools, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term 'smart growth' is particularly used in North America. In Europe and particularly the UK, the terms 'Compact city' or 'urban intensification' have often been used to describe similar concepts.

Complete Streets is a transportation policy and design approach in the US that requires streets to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained to enable safe, convenient and comfortable travel and access for users of all ages and abilities regardless of their mode of transportation.

Complete Streets allow for safe travel by those walking, bicycling, driving automobiles, riding public transportation, or delivering goods. Complete Streets emphasize the importance of safe access for all users, not just automobiles. There are similar concepts of living streets, Woonerf in the Netherlands, and home zones in the UK.

Shared space, Giles Circus, Ipswich

Smart growth values long-range, regional considerations of sustainability over a short-term focus. Its goals are to achieve a unique sense of community and place; expand the range of transportation, employment, and housing choices; equitably distribute the costs and benefits of development; preserve and enhance natural and cultural resources; and promote public health.

Smart growth is seen an alternative to urban sprawl, traffic congestion, disconnected neighbourhoods, and urban decay. Its principles challenge old assumptions in urban planning, such as the value of detached houses and automobile use.

But there is a counterpoint that raising densities result in more expensive real estate, greater road congestion and more localized air pollution. Others counter that traffic congestion is a result not of population density but of parking capacity. At a broader level, there is evidence to indicate a strong negative correlation between the total energy consumption of a city and its overall urban density, i.e. the lower the density, the more energy consumed.

Cities also extend far beyond their physical boundaries in their reach for resources making it almost impossible to make a city a self-sufficient entity.

For example, the booming construction industry in Chennai is fed largely by sand from the river Palar that runs around 50-60km south of the city. The sand is being sucked from the river at a much faster rate than is allowed leading to almost 10 times the allowed amount being mined from the river bed.

Depth of illegal sand mining at Pazhayaseevaram village, Palar River, Kanchipuram district

Extraction and transportation of illegal sand at Palar River

The river bed itself has gone down more than 30 feet in some places where repeated and excessive mining has happened.

The river which was once filled with water and that provided water for irrigation and other purposes to all the villages along its course now remains dry for most of the year with no water available for the people in the villages. This is especially ironic because there is a water packaging unit along the river that packages water extracted from this river and supplies the entire southern railway network as ‘Rail Neer’ and also a unit that pumps water for supply to Chennai city again while villagers right along the river have to get excessive permissions to draw water.

Even though this activity is not exclusively for Chennai, Chennai is one of the major sources of pressure, and one of the major beneficiaries.

There is so much in a city that is problematic and troublesome. Maybe because of its sheer scale and our inability to create systems that large without significantly altering our surroundings or even to predict their continued working, we might be unsuccessful in creating an entity this large that actually sustains itself.

Is it not time to ask ourselves what we are doing?

sap chronicle college magazine

01

Humans and data, horses and bots, and everything in between

My phone beeped one day, suddenly telling me to leave home now in order to reach the theatre in time, in five minutes. It told me about the traffic and the best route to take. I had forgotten I had anything planned and had set no reminder on my smartphone, but it somehow knew what, when and where I’d made a plan.

It scared me quite a bit and I started thinking. A few days earlier, when I had booked the ticket, the confirmation mail I received had the timings for the show and the name of the theatre. Google had gone through my mail, found the theatre and gave me a route, all this without me telling it to. My smartphone had become extra smart.

Looking up what Google was doing I found that all kinds of tickets and reservations including air bookings had been integrated into this system to aid people in a simpler, faster way.

As Google keeps collecting your data to provide you with better results, it also uses the data of other people to provide you with better solutions for everyday life. The Google maps traffic analysis is a simple example of that. Google tracks locations of other android devices, the speeds at which they are moving on roads to provide you with a perfect analysis of the traffic conditions for your daily commute presented in a neat colour coded graphic and you know which roads to avoid and which signals to bypass.

Google Traffic map of New York City region

There is more to this than just convenience. Google learns from your search history and acts accordingly. Now, the results on the Google search page are sorted according to each person’s search history. Everyday search patterns, history of websites and where we stop searching are all useful data studied to provide me with more “relevant” responses for searches tomorrow. This method of search learning makes life easier for all of us. Your internet is finally a personalised tool to provide you with information you didn’t even know you need.

We too find it amazing, and worship Google more than we already do.

The best part about all this is that it is completely free of cost. There is far less useful software costing large amounts of money whereas we get all of this for absolutely no money.

But how does all of this come to you for free? How does Google make money from all this?

A surprisingly wise person on the internet (Metafilter user blue_beetle) once said, “If you’re not paying for it, you are the product”.

What does that mean here? How are you the product? What is produced?

Data.

We’re producing gigabytes of data every day. Not just the content we’re intentionally uploading, but data about personal preferences, choices, likes and dislikes, fields of interest, places we go, things we buy and people we interact with, which seem to us to be trivial and useless information.

This information that we produce willingly for free is used by Google to target us more specifically with ads and tailor its own responses to enhance our experience.

Google also sells this information to other third parties who are willing to pay to buy personal user information which is of high value to them to target highly specific user groups.

For example, there is a website that accesses your Google location data history and uses it to map out exact paths of where you’ve been and also shows you when you went there when you hover your mouse over the points on the maps.

Google location history mapped

When advertising began, it was general in its audience. With the advent of television ads, ad placement started targeting particular audiences based on the content it was made part of. In the digital age, advertising has become a highly specific and personalised agenda. Personalisation is an extremely important factor and this is possible only because of the availability of personal data.

Personalisation can be useful for us. To be able to find the things we’re looking for, sooner and more relevant is extremely convenient. It is also convenient for the sellers who advertise because they can now target extremely specific user groups, much more specific than possible ever before.

But personalisation is a two-edged sword. It also makes information we rarely or never before searched for, inaccessible to us. Google now controls and regulates what we see.

In the digital world, users for your content and the information that they generate are the most valued resources. To put this in perspective, Whatsapp was bought by Facebook at a whopping cost of $19 billion, just for its 450 million users, which is now up to 700 million from its 450 million in the four years since its start. This considering the fact that almost all of these are non-paying users.

Users and the information they produce are of extreme value, so much so that the infrastructure to handle more information than even available today has already been built. This is why Facebook and other agencies are trying to bring internet access to underdeveloped countries to expand their current user base.

Andrew Pole was hired by Target to use the same kinds of insights into consumers’ habits to expand Target’s sales. His assignment was to analyse all the cue-routine-reward loops among shoppers and help the company figure out how to exploit them. Target assigns every customer a Guest ID number, tied to their credit card, name, or email address that becomes a container to store a history of everything they buy and any demographic information Target has collected from them or bought from other sources. Pole’s most important assignment was to identify those unique moments in consumers’ lives when their shopping habits become particularly flexible and the right advertisement or coupon would cause them to begin spending in new ways.

And among life events, none are more important than the arrival of a baby. At that moment, new parents’ habits are more flexible than at almost any other time in their adult lives. If companies can identify pregnant shoppers, they can earn millions.

Pole applied his program to every regular female shopper in Target’s national database and soon had a list of tens of thousands of women who were most likely pregnant.

About a year after Pole created his pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target outside Minneapolis and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter who was still in high school, and he was angry, because they were coupons for baby clothes and cribs. The manager apologized for the mistake, and called again a week later to apologize. When he called, the man, somewhat abashed, apologized to the manager as he’d just spoken to his daughter and found out she was actually pregnant. Target knew she was pregnant much before she told anyone.

Science fiction has extremely interesting references to this sort of scenario. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ talks about a dystopian world where everyone is constantly under surveillance and there are posters everywhere with the picture of the leader of the state and the words,” Big Brother is watching.”

Isaac Asimov, one of the most visionary and prolific science fiction writers in the world, in a series of short stories, talks about a future with an extremely powerful artificial intelligence called Multivac which is essentially a supercomputer with access to all data and knowledge which can answer all questions and runs all the economic and administrative systems of the world.

The real world is not far behind.

The infrastructure Google has built consists of highly advanced systems that are capable of assimilating and analyzing all the data it collects at very high speeds to the level of artificial intelligence. We have always thought of artificial intelligence to be a system that thinks on its own when actually it is enough if the system is fast enough to look up enough data and understand question patterns to give specific and relevant answers immediately.

And Google now does that. The first result to most questions today in a Google search is the most relevant answer Google can recognise based on the source where other users looking for the same information stopped looking after finding a satisfactory answer.

There is a test for artificial intelligence called the Turing Test. “The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.”

The thing is that Google told me that when I searched for Turing Test. It just gave me this answer before giving me a link to any article about the Turing test.

In a seemingly unrelated topic, there has a been a huge drop in the population of horses since the horses working for humans were completely replaced by machines with higher efficiency costing a lot lesser to maintain, in almost everything they did: farming, warfare, racing and mainly transportation. They were replaced by technology that grows at speeds unmatchable by evolution. And there are already self-driving cars which have replaced human drivers, and are unmatched in safety and drive quality since they lack any of the limitations of human drivers.

There is a video on Youtube called ‘Humans Need Not Apply’ that talks about the slow but steady shift where humans will inevitably be replaced by technology.

First, the low skilled workers were replaced by physically mechanised bots.

White collar workers can and will be replaced by software bots that can do the work faster and more accurately. There are automation engineers whose entire job is to program bots that can replace these workers. And these bots are not limited by what the engineers can program because most of these programmers are programming bots that teach themselves through “Machine Learning” algorithms what even their programmer cannot.

There are bots hat know how to write. There are bots like Quill that can write almost anything, analyse information, prioritise importance, organise and structure writing.

Then the professionals. Watson is a bot by IBM that is programmed to be the best doctor in the world. It easily beats the limitations of human beings in dealing with complicated medical histories, in remembering every drug and every drug’s interaction with other drugs.

Then the creative professions that think they can’t be replaced. Emily is a bot that writes music. There are bots that can paint and play chess.

The drive to develop things to make human existence more and more comfortable is a slippery slope that has reached such an extreme distortion of reality that the things that give existence meaning are being replaced by automation.

These things are not science fiction any more. They’re not a story set in the distant dystopic duture you can escape from just by closing the book. They’re already here. We need to see where we’re headed before innumerable bright and enterprising humans will find themselves the new horse, unemployable, uneconomic and essentially useless through no fault of their own.

AGAM SEI Urban NEWspaper

01

Drops of water and grains of sand

The river Palar is one of the major river basins in Tamil Nadu, accounting for the water needs 10% of the total area of the state. The river originates in Karnataka(17.1%), flows through Andhra Pradesh(23.3%) and then through Tamil Nadu(60%) before flowing into the Bay of Bengal. The 21 kilometre stretch of the river flowing in Andhra Pradesh has 12 dams built on it today. That, along with unchecked and relentless sand mining in the 222 kilometres flowing through Tamil Nadu has turned the river into a dry bed where flowing water has not been seen in years.

There existed an elaborate system of 7 check dams, 616 spring channels and 700 tanks on this river system irrigating an area of 61000 hectares. All these spring channels are defunct today. Wells have become the major source of irrigation, even right along the river and the average depths of these wells and bore-wells have also increased rapidly.

The deeper the bores, the worse the quality of water obtained due to high concentrations minerals.

Pazhayaseevaram is a village on the northern bank of the river, near Thirumukoodal, the point where it meets its two tributaries, Cheyyar and Vegawati. This older inhabitants of this village have seen the river change within their lifetimes from a life-giving gushing water source to a dry sand bed. Thirty years ago, 60% of their wells were less than 30 feet deep, and no wells were greater than 100 feet deep. The average depths of wells dug before 1960 was 30 feet, 36 feet for wells dug between 1961 and 1970, 41 feet for wells dug between 1971 and 1985, and has averaged 70 feet for all wells dug subsequently. Besides, now any farmer digging new wells has to dig deeper in the beginning itself, when compared to 30 years ago.

The crop patterns have changed and productivity of the farms around Pazhayaseevaram has declined. The local drinking water supply is meagre and contaminated, while the Government pumps water out from a couple of kilometres away at a bottling plant at Palur to bottle and sell as "Rail Neer". Local agricultural employment is non-existent, livestock rearing has declined and local ecology destroyed.

Incidentally, Pazhayaseevaram is the nucleus around which the major illegal sand mining activity on the Palar and its tributaries is concentrated. Permits for sand mining on the Palar have only been issued for 44 hectares in Pazhaveri and 4.85 hectares in Pinayur. The area being mined in the Palar alone is close to 160 hectares and another 150 hectares on the Cheyyar.

Tractors throughout the river bed

Manual labourers shovelling as many lorry loads as possible

The river bed adjoining the village is a hotbed for mining activity with thousands of men and women with shovels, working at a frenzied pace to fill as many lorry loads as possible between sunrise and sunset. The sand is loaded into hundreds of tractor-trailers scurrying to and fro on the river beds transporting the river sand to the government stock yard at Pazhaveri. In all the riverbed sites, the labourers are digging and loading sand at depths of 25-30 feet (7.6-9.2 metres) below the river bed, while only 3 feet of sand is allowed to be quarried. The river bed is filled with craters, almost at the clay bed.

Sand removed till clay bed

Islands around TWAD wells

The river bed is now deeper than any age-old spring channel, effectively making all systems obsolete. It is therefore ironic that the TWAD Board (Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage) wells that supply Chennai with water are the only islands left of the original river bed.

From the government stockyard at Pazhaveri, all the sand is transported to a secondary yard at Sankarapuram on the Palar, effectively being sold to one single buyer at the government prescribed rate of Rs 315/unit. In the Kavanthandalam yard on the Cheyyar, the sand is piled up in mountains as high as hundred feet and sold from there at the market price of Rs 2500/unit.

Sand mountains in private sand yard at Kavanthandalam

In Tamil Nadu, the quarrying of sand from river beds had been brought under the control of the Public Works Department following a court order. The department is supposed to submit proposals for areas to be quarried. The department of Geology and Mines is supposed to study the proposal, the area and the feasibility of the proposal and recommend it to the District Collector. None of these have been followed for Pazhayaseevaram and there are no oďŹƒcials overseeing any of the mining activity on any of the riverbed sites.

In the Palar quarries, stretching for about 5km, an estimated 108 lakh units of sand (1 unit = 100 cubic feet) have been mined in the course of the last 4.5 years, with the mining concentrated now in the eastern third of this stretch and threatening to move further eastwards.

In the Cheyyar, there is a much longer but narrower course of some 15km ending at the conuence with the Palar at Thirumukkoodal in the east, stripped to the clay of the river bed almost 30 to 40 feet below its banks and involving about 127 lakh units of sand.

Taken together, the market value of the estimated 235 lakh units of sand quarried from these two sections of the rivers concerned alone, estimated at the Sankarapuram river-bank stockyard rate of Rs. 2500 per unit is Rs. 5875 crores, And this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

In contrast, the Executive Engineer, WRD(Water Resources Department), Lower Palar Basin Division, Kanchipuram, in a reply dated 4-09-2013 to a question submitted under the RTI Act by a resident of Pazhayaseevaram village, gave the total quantity of river sand mined in the entire Division over the 5 year period from August 2008 to July 2013 as 24.21 lakh units with the total revenue to Government for the same being Rs. 72.63 crores at the Government rate of Rs. 315 per unit inclusive of loading charges and taxes.

S.No

2

Applicable Norms/Conditions 1Palar at Pazhayaseevaram, Pinayur and Pazhaveri: The permits issued by District Collector (DC)s were for 44.22 hectares in Pazhaveri and 4.85 hectares in Pinayur 0.9 2 meter is the maximum depth permitted for sand mining in a river bed

Violations Illegal mining across huge tracts of the Palar in the villages of Pazhayaseevaram, Pinayur and Pazhaveri on the north and south banks of Palar – estimated at approximately 200 hectares.

Mined upto 7.7 and 9.2m in the Palar.

Mined upto depths of 9-12 meters in Cheyyar

3

50 meter minimum distance to be maintained from the banks

Quarrying of the near-entire width of the river

4

500 meter minimum distance to be maintained from water-bearing and other infrastructure

Within 3-6 meters distance and for depths of 9 meters, around 6 river intake wells of the TWAD Board Heavy machinery such as JCPs and 20-30 tonne trucks are being used to quarry sand at Kavanthandalam in Cheyyar.

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Use 5 of heavy machinery is banned and only manual means to be employed in the mining activity on the river bed as set out by a High Court ruling and subsequent GO by GoTN The quarrying should not disturb the natural gradients or otherwise impede the water flows in the river or through surplus water flow channels Cutting or damaging of any trees is not allowed Mining 8 should be carried out under the supervision of PWD (WRD) officials Detailed transport passes to be issued by PWD-WRD for every 2 units of sand load transported, mentioning vehicle registration number, name of the driver, where it is headed to, when it is expected to reach, etc Records 1 of mining should be maintained by PWD-WRD Mining should start only after demarcation/benchmarking of the permitted area by erecting boundary stones on all sides

12

Mining should be carried out in an ecofriendly and environmentally sustainable manner

13

Mining 1 should be carried out carefully without affecting the local people, farm lands and livestock in the area

Several raised semi-pucca tracks criss-crossing the river and emerges at Pazhaveri on the opposite bank – all these tracks on river beds are dedicated to tractor traffic to and from the river bed.

In Puliyambakkam village, almost all the trees in a social forestry tract on the south Palar bank were felled for mining the sand beneath.

Total absence of any official of Government at the quarry sites or stockyards.

No such passes seen.

No field office maintaining records of the quantities of sand quarried loaded or inter-carted to any of the stockyards on the river banks.

Total lack of any sign of boundaries demarcated or benchmarks established to monitor the extent and depth of mining - Irreversible loss of aquifer - Drastic fall in water table levels in all the villages along the stretches of the rivers - Increased levels of dust and noise pollution.

- Decreased water availability.

- Contamination of drinking water sources in Vayalakkavur.

- Negative impacts on livelihood security – including agriculture and animal husbandry and health.

Notwithstanding the huge sums of money obviously implicated in this robbery of an invaluable natural and common resource, it is the attack on our collective future that is impossible to estimate in monetary terms. It is an attack that imperils the water security of a large and densely populated region, including the city of Chennai – whose uncontrollable growth and insatiable appetite for natural resources is ironically, the major source of the problem especially in a region with a rich and centuries old history of successful water management and agricultural practices. It is an attack on the very basis of our sustenance with the distinctly imminent risk of runaway disruptive ecological and socio-cultural outcomes.

While the government's role in regulating and protecting these resources is important, at the end of the day we all have to own responsibility for the destruction of common resources and therefore bear a responsibility to protect and rejuvenate them and also start questioning the current consumption-centred, aggrandising and destructive development paradigm.

03

Have we learnt anything?

On Chennai’s continuing neglect of disaster preparedness

The devastating floods of December 2015 brought the whole city together in a way nothing else had. The relief work following the floods saw people from all walks of life come together in an attempt to help those who had their houses washed away or inundated, trying to bring food and supplies to the affected areas and even open up their homes to people who had lost theirs. While the relief work was a testament to human effort, our collective memory is very short and we seem to give no more thought to disaster preparedness than before the floods. The role and effectiveness of the State response is doubtful. This ineptitude is not a one-time issue, but the result of years of ignoring disaster management principles.

The floods that hit Chennai are estimated to cost India’s economy 20,034 crore according to the Aon Benfield report, not to mention the immeasurable loss to life and property. In the interim budget for the year 2016-2017 presented by the Tamil Nadu Government on 16th February, there has been a total fund release of 3039.24 crore by the State Government for flood relief and restoration. This includes compensation given to farmers and families affected by the floods and infrastructure reconstruction work started. Immediate relief is only a small part of the whole picture. The budget makes no mention of any additional spending on emergency preparedness.

“The priorities of the Government have changed and everybody has moved on as well.

Nobody knows how the funds given from the Centre were spent, or the amount of taxpayer money spent in dealing with the disaster”, says Gopinath Parthasarathy, an Emergency Management planning expert, trained by FEMA, who was part of the relief effort.

The Disaster Management Act enacted in 2005 and under it the National Disaster Management Agency was set up along with state and district disaster management agencies. The role of the NDMA includes laying down of policies on disaster management, guidelines to be followed while formulating action plans and approval of these action plans and coordination for their implementation. And, as per the Act, the armed forces are supposed to be called upon to intervene only when a situation is beyond the capability of the civil administration.

Miscellaneous - 433.07

Infrastructure repair - 595.82

Huts and houses damaged - 282.91

Houses inundated - 1276.28

Farmers - 451.16 Distribution of total expenditure of 3039.24 crores on calamity relief (source: Tamil Nadu Interim Budget 2016-2017)

“The existing mechanism is political and actions are done as per the whims and fancies of ministers, councillors etc. It leads to a lot of ad-hoc decisions in the panic of the emergency” Gopinath said about the current scenario of planning.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in reports released in 2013 and 2014, had spoken about the dismal state of emergency preparedness measures in the city. The report stated in its findings that the State Disaster Management plan was not approved from the SDMA, le ading to the absence of any benchmark for planning and evaluation.

It also stated that vulnerability profiles were not prepared, the SDMA and DDMAs had not met even once since their constitution and the Emergency Operation Centres (EOC), nerve centres of early warning system were non-functional and not in a state of operational readiness.

“The Government must come forward and organize a meeting with special experts and field experienced staff. Then they must come up with a complete strategic plan and try to follow them. A separate independent agency must be formed that can coordinate with NDRF and other agencies. Cross Communication between different agencies is lacking – Highways, Health, Power – all these departments must be aligned and points of contact assigned” he added.

PREVENTION

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Disaster management cycle

There is a pressing need for a detailed, transparent and accessible emergency preparedness plan to be made and executed in the city. We cannot continue a posthumous approach to dealing with disasters, waiting for people to die before responding.

It is a sad reality that even after a calamity of such magnitude, preparedness measures and capacity building has not been carried out at all. We need to recognise the risk of a disaster before it happens at least remembering the impact of the disaster we just endured and decide to prepare our cities.

04

NOTA- Chance Breaking the myths surrounding this option

Recently news has been doing the rounds on social media asking people to vote for the NOTA(None of the Above) option, saying that if NOTA accounts for 35 percent of the total votes polled, the present contesting parties cannot participate in the upcoming general election. People rushed to start sharing this information with hope energy from the thought that their vote could actually count in changing the faces in the current political scenario. If only it were that simple.

Sadly, this information is untrue and the system of NOTA remains unclear to people even today. It is necessary for all of us to know exactly what NOTA means and the context in which the option was provided in our ballot.

In our country, it often happens that a voter does not support any of the candidates in the election, but they have no choice other than to select a candidate from the given ones, usually picking the person they’ve heard about in the news.

The Election Commission of India told the Supreme Court in 2009 that it wished to offer the voter a ‘None of the Above’ option on ballots as it would give the voters the freedom of not selecting any undeserving candidate, which the government had generally opposed. The People’s Union for CIvil Liberties, a human rights organisation, filed a public interest litigation statement in support of this.

The very purpose of introducing this option is to empower the voter to reject all candidates if they do not like any of the candidates listed. Finally on 27th September 2013, the right to register a ‘None of the Above’ vote in elections was applied by the Supreme Court of India, which then ordered the Election Commission that all voting machines should be provided with a NOTA button so as to give voters the option to choose NOTA.

NOTA symbol option on the Electronic Voting Machines(EVMs) Designed by NID, Ahmedabad

According to the judges of the Supreme Court of India, the introduction of the NOTA option to voters would lead to systemic change in polls to force political parties to project clean candidates. Candidates with criminal or immoral backgrunds would have no option but to abstain from contesting elections.

But the NOTA is not a new feature of our voting process. We have had the option for a long time, except that until two years ago, to reject candidates a voter had to enter his electoral serial number in form 17A and cast a negative vote, under section 49-O of the conduct of Election Rules, 1961.

Table showing percentage of NOTA votes in the different states of India

This was done to prevent fraud or misuse of votes. This provision was, however, deemed unconstitutional by the SC as it did not protect the identity of the voter.

Since the 2013 ruling, the Election Commission has provided an extra button in the electronic voting machines(EVMs) instead of signing in registers.

There are two main reasons behind the provision of the NOTA option.

First, there is a need to ensure 100 percent voting by giving a valid alternative to voters dissatisfied with all available candidates who would otherwise refrain from voting at all, giving rise to a number of instances of voter fraud. Second, the need to maintain the secrecy of the ballot; the addition of the NOTA button maintains the anonymity of the voter where the earlier provision under Rule 49-O did not.

Many countries have introduced NOTA or similar provisions in their ballot systems.

France, Belgium, Brazil, Greece, Ukraine, Chile, Bangladesh, State of Nevada(USA), Finlanf, Sweden, Colombia and Spain.

In India, though NOTA is a provision to register voters’ disapproval of all available options, the ELection Commission has clarified that votes cast as NOTA are counted, but are considered ‘invalid votes’. Therefore, votes made to NOTA will not change the outcome of the election and the next highest total votes will be declared the winner.

As former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi pointed out: “Even if there are 99 NOTA votes out of a total of 100 , and candidate X gets just one vote, Xis the winner, having obtained the only valid vote. The rest will be treated as invalid or no votes.”

But the percentage of NOTA votes in India has constantly been very low, between 0 and 3 percent signalling that an attitude dismissing all candidates and parties is not really prevalent in our country and voter turnouts continue to be very high in Indian elections.

Though NOTA does not affect the final result, it is a tool to help measure the frustration wiht current politicians. NOTA is powerful when the number of NOTA votes is greater than the difference between the votes for the winning and losing parties. That says a lot as a measure of distrust.

Many of us today do not even know the candidates running in our own constituencies even if we’re voting, often voting for the party we’re most familiar with or choosing to vote NOTA as an easier option. NOTA is not an alternative to engaging with the political process, not a lazy escape from our responsibility as voters.

There are websites today with information on the candidates running in all the constituencies in all districts, compiling large amounts of information about their party, criminal record, assets etc. There are also portals where you can access the election manifestos of the major parties running.

It is our responsibility as voters to be informed and make choices that shape how the decision making process happens. We must do our part, otherwise we have no right to just complain and criticize what comes next.

+91-9551219957 keshavsuryanarayanan@gmail.com