[Reader-list] Nizamuddin Basti

[Ratish Nanda]

Dear Dr Sudeshna Chatterjee

I write in response to your e mail - which I have been forwarded on another
chat group so I suppose it has been forwarded to thousands by the time this
gets back to you. I write as one of the consultants to the Aga Khan Trust
for Culture on a potential project.

I read your e mail with great alarm until I realised you might be writing in
response to rumours about what we are hoping to achieve in Nizamuddin
together with the MCD. I cannot imagine how you got the impression that
anyone was going to be moved? The proposal does not envisage even a single
house to be demolished. I wish you had re-confirmed your facts with someone
before shooting off an alarmist e mail.

In the Nizamuddin Bastri - all components of the project are aimed at
focussing on make the monuments - Chaunasth Khambha, Baoli, Atgah Khan's
Tomb more integral to the Basti. The programme there envisages upgrading the
health, education failities of the MCD; provide micro-finance and training
for jobs etc etc.

I am presently away from the country but am to return to Delhi in mid May
when I shall happily be able to brief you in more detail on the proposal -
which it is - only a proposal as we are hopoing to work in the larger area -
encompassing Humayun's Tomb etc - with various government agencies and are
yet to reach an agreement.

We have earlier worked on the Humayun's Tomb garden restoration, which I was
responsibl;e for on behaldf of the Trust and I have been here in Kabul for
four years to do something very similar to what we propose in Nizamuddin. If
you had looked at our website - www.akdn.org or visited our offices on
Bhagwan Das Road prior to shooting off the e mail - you would have realised
for yourself that vested interests are spreading rumours that will probably
ensure nothing ever happens in Nizamuddin and people continue to live in
deplorable conditions without access to basic services.

May I now request you to kindly help quelling rumours and I assure you that
you will not have to mount a 'resistance' ; maybe you could use resistance
to save the 800 year old, yet unprotected, Lal Mahal in Nizamuddin to be
demolished by developers - if it has not already been!

Thanks for your concern.

Warm regards

Ratish


-- 
Ratish Nanda
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