Presently town
planning in India is improving. However there is a great scope for its
improvement. Floor Space Index (FSI) control is considered as a magic stick for
every problem/difficulties faced by citizens. More stress is given on acceptability
by certain group of people. This group is considered as vote bank by
politicians. What is needed is town planning should be for entire population
and address every need however small it may be. Many examples could be given. These
are washrooms for ladies and men, space for hawkers, bus stops for public
transport buses, reliable and speedy public transport, and accommodation for
people living in shacks, accommodation and care of senior citizens. To save
space the list is trimmed here. In order
to ensure that each and every need of people is addressed a town planner must
be given opportunity to contact people in every field to understand needs. This
may be better performed by a team of people expert in conducting population
surveys. They could be given a pre-prepared list of needs and asked gather
details and additional needs if any. The additional needs found should be
included and survey continued. This survey should continue till no more
additional needs are found. This data should be used for town planning.
So far it is
considered that irrigation of land using dams and canals is the best.
Agriculture scientists advise Sprinkler
or Drip Irrigation to save water instead of surface irrigation. This is
useful where floating solids in water are negligible. Present availability of
water for irrigation is much less than rainfall as most of the water flows to
sea. In Maharashtra State Konkan region is the best example to understand this.
Total rainfall (almost entire rainfall is during June to August) is over 3
metres per annum. However during summer even drinking water is not available to
villagers. Reason specified by government departments is, reasonably levelled
area is not available for storage of rain water. In most of other parts in
India tall dams are constructed for storage of water. However, none of the dams
is big enough to store entire rainfall in catchment area. Such dams do force
people to immigrate. Almost in every case, the government doesn’t take efforts
to rehabilitate these people properly and speedily. Thus there is a reason to undertake
research in modifying our irrigation system.