Architecture of India    
Post Colonial India
and its Architecture - III 
An Architecture for a Socialist State
by Ashish Nangia

The Architecture of Socialism
 
With a few brief exceptions, post-independence Indian politics till the 1990s was dominated largely by the Congress party, each time with a representative of the Nehru-Gandhi family at the helm, who alone seemed to be able to guarantee a certain unity.

Principally backed by Nehru and his coterie of advisers, India with its five-year plans embarked on a socialist model of development that featured a top-heavy State with minimal delegation of power to the regions or to district-level representative bodies.  This socialist-industrial model called for massive State-controlled investment in heavy industry and associated activities. 

While this model of governance may possibly have been the only viable solution in a time when India was struggling to become a cohesive political unit, it was also subsequently criticised for encouraging and entrenching endemic corruption and propagating a multi-layered bureaucracy that continues to this day.  The State, as the biggest actor in the country, controlled almost everything – including information flow, social development, and most importantly for our purposes, became also the biggest client for architectural and urban development projects.  It is not surprising then that most significant large-scale construction from this era has been either directly sponsored by the government or by public corporations.
 
The Search for an Aesthetic
 
The Asian Games in 1982 provided a massive fillip to construction, especially in Delhi.  The Pragati Maidan complex, built on the eve of the Games, provided a space for many innovative architectural experiments and cemented the careers of a whole generation of professionals.  Built as an exhibition and entertainment space, Pragati Maidan continues to be one of the stellar attractions in Delhi.  Within it, the Hall of Nations by Raj Rewal is a large column-free space that is characterised by its use of reinforced concrete in a structure that would normally be constructed of steel trusses, a decision influenced by the lack of expertise in steel construction as well as the prohibitive cost of steel at the time.   While the use of concrete results in a massive structure that does have some brutal appeal, the quality of construction leaves something to be desired.  For all that the building is one of the most imposing in Pragati Maidan and continues to host many high-quality exhibitions, both domestic and international. 

Also constructed for the Games are a series of stadia, the most prominent being the Indraprastha Indoor Stadium by Sharat Das and the Talkatora stadium by Satish Grover.  The Indraprastha Stadium is an imposing structure with bearing walls of concrete and roofing of steel trusses, marked by its rapid construction with movable shuttering on the bearing columns ensuring continuous activity on the site.  It unfortunately suffers from a lack of maintenance, and the use of plastic covering on its roof on rainy days is sometimes visible. 
 
For athletes visiting the capital, large-scale temporary housing was required.  Raj Rewal designed for this purpose the Asiad Games Village, a cluster of interlocking housing units that takes its formal inspiration from the streetscape and scale of towns in Rajasthan, particularly Jaisalmer.  Rewal claims to have used these spatial references to create a series of courts and ‘streets’ through the complex and even to use finishes and material that correspond to their original inspiration. 

Asiad Village, New Delhi, Cluster Plan 

Today the Games Village, or Khelgaon as it also called, houses commercial and office space, exhibition areas, as well as nightspots that are known as much for their fine cuisine as for their easygoing urban setting. 

– Continued 

Top | Architecture of India      

The Week of April 9, 2006      
United States Congress at Critical Crossroads with India Dr. Subhash Kapila
Nuclear Deal Hurdles : It's The Politics, Stupid! by Rajinder Puri
Bangladesh's Foreign Policy Approaches to India by Dr. Subhash Kapila
US Market Horizon and Gathering Storm Clouds by Gaurang Bhatt, MD 
Indian Federalism in Troubled Waters by Prasenjit Maiti
Jail Di Galli Vich No Entry by Usha Kakkar
Caste Wars II by Usha Kakkar
Democracy Dying by J. Ajithkumar 
The Zero That Was India by Kamesh Ramakrishna Aiyer  
      Answer to Puzzlement About Zero by Gaurang Bhatt, MD  
Of Spices and Magical Realism by Rajgopal Nidamboor
Post Colonial India and its Architecture - III  by Ashish Nangia
Ancient Mangroves in the Womb of the Present by V.K. Joshi 
Celebrating Culture by Neha Girotra  
Sharing and Young Children by Garima Gupta 
The Poetry in the Moors by Dr. Amitabh Mitra 
Ain't No Cure For Love by Vinay Chandran
The 'Feminization' of Menswear by MH Ahsan
Liberating the Nuns by Mehru Jaffer   
Smart Streets, Shattered Lives by Nitin Jugran Bahuguna
Keeping India's Hands Clean by Kaushiki Rao 
Power Trip : Bollywood Masala by MH Ahsan 
New Generation Sisterhood by Neena Bhandari 
Apa's Survival Mantra : A Profile of Angela Gomes   
Router : An Introduction by Ruchi Gupta 
Lakhnawi Itar by Rajsaran Varma
  

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