NEW NEEMRANA ASHOK BHALOTRA
Ashok Bhalotra (1943) studied Architecture in Delhi and received practical training from members of Team X, the group of architects who, from the mid 1950s on, had challenged the doctrinaire approach of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne. He worked in India and Kuwait, and later in Paris at Woods & Candalis, as well as for Anatole Kopp. From 1971 onwards he was attached to KuiperCompagnons, a firm based in Rotterdam, specialized in urban planning, architecture, and landscape. For Bhalotra, city plans and building types present a rich pattern of diversity and contradictions: pleasure and functionality, symbols and rituals, tradition and modernity, the sublime and the banal, order and chaos, reality and dream–all couched in the dialectic of dwelling and travel. In late 2009 Bhalotra became the founder and director of FEWS for More. Sustainability is the key word related to FEWS for More: not only sustainability in the field of energy and use of materials, but also in the social, natural, cultural, and economic fields. FEWS for More advocates food, energy, water, and shelter for everyone across the globe. The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) is at present likely to be India’s most ambitious infrastructure programme. The project entails the development of industrial zones spanning six states in India, as well as creating new industrial ‘smart cities’ where next-generation technologies are converged across infrastructure sectors. In addition to new cities, the programme envisages the development of infrastructure linkages, such as power plants, assured water supply, high capacity transportation, and logistics facilities, as well as softer interventions, including a skill development programme to aid employment of the local populace. Conceived as a global manufacturing and trading hub, the corridor is expected to spur economic development in these regions and to help develop industries. Its promotors claim that the planned USD 100 billion investments in the corridor will double employment potential, triple industrial output, and quadruple exports from the region in five years. In the first phase seven new industrial cities are being developed. The programme was conceptualized by the governments of India and Japan, with funding shared equally by the two countries.
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