Hell and heaven

Tuesday 4th October, 2022

Piteous appeals of the victims of last week’s fire that destroyed more than 80 shanties at Thotalanga are still heard. The government has promised relief and alternative accommodation for the poor families in distress. One can only hope that it will not renege on its pledge. Politicians’ promises are said to be like the piecrust; they are made to be broken.

The media is losing interest in the Thotalanga fire and its victims. The same is true for the ordinary people, who take refuge in escapism, unable to face the harsh politico-economic reality. No wonder the Lotus Tower (LT) continues to draw large crowds. Some poor people are said to be pinching and scraping to pay for elevator rides to the tower top and enjoy the panoramic view of the city and the hinterland, therefrom. One of them, a woman from Kurunegala, has said she dipped into her child’s piggybank savings to visit the LT, and got her money’s worth! Another person who visited the tower was so thrilled that he said it was like a trip to heaven! Many others are also in seventh heaven, having seen Sri Pada from the LT. Everybody seems to have missed hell (read urban squalor) for the holy mountain peak, high-rises and other such attractions visible from the LT’s observation deck.

Ironically, it is while people are queuing up to visit the Lotus heaven, as it were, that the Thotalanga fire has shed light on the seamy side of urban life in Colombo, where opulence and abject poverty exist cheek by jowl. But it does not seem to have aroused the public conscience at least briefly.

The gutted houses at Thotalanga were unauthorised structures, according to government officials. Successive governments have been blamed for the glaring urban bias in resources allocation for development. The JVP even coined a pithy slogan to highlight this fact and mobilise the rural youth, in the late 1980s—kolombata kiri, gamata kekiri (‘milk for Colombo and melon for the village’). But the majority of city dwellers are in the same predicament as their rural counterparts; slum and shanty dwellers are said to account for about one half of Colombo’s population. This shows that the majority of urban people have not benefited from the much-publicised development programmes.

There have been only half-hearted attempts by governments to arrest the rapid spread of urban poverty. We have seen some densification schemes, which however have not been effective enough to help arrest the expansion of slums and shanty areas. The yuppification of some parts of the city, frequented by the rich, has taken precedence over plans to solve the urban housing problem.

Politicians do not seem keen to tackle urban poverty and the attendant problems, for it is easy for them to manipulate the poor and muster votes. Instead of making a serious effort to alleviate poverty, they have learnt to benefit therefrom electorally.

The problem of urban poverty, which manifests itself in the expansion of slum and shanty areas cannot be solved, once and for all, without structural transformations and a high economy growth, which will not be possible here in the foreseeable future.

The provision of liveable space for the populace is possible only when a city expands outward, inward and upward in a sustainable manner, according to urban planners. This means horizontal spread, infill development (building on spaces among existing structures), and vertical layering or densification. These are occurring in the wrong way, where Colombo and other urban centres in this country are concerned.

The horizontal spread has been haphazard, and the sprawl has been mainly due to an increase in unauthorised structures on river and canal banks, wetlands, railway lands, etc. The expansion of shanties within the city has apparently passed for infill development. As for vertical layering, there has been little progress.

It is high time a proper urban development plan was worked out for Colombo with the help of real experts in the field. Otherwise, far worse fires than the recent one are bound to happen.