Writing the revolutin

Lahore , once known as the city of the gardens, has lost its beauty because of unplanned expansion of population and developments in the past but time is still in hand as its beauty could be restored if the city would be divided into 400 permanent sectors with all basic necessities and modern facilities.
“There is a need of silent revolution and this is only possible when the social and economic difference of the classes is reduced and for this purpose the Punjab government should remap Lahore,” says Iftikhar Khan, an ex-Director General (DG) Lahore Development Authority (LDA) in the launching ceremony of his newly published book “Silent, Peaceful Revolution” held at a local hotel on Wednesday. Talking to Pakistan Today, Khan said he had engineered an ideal city on paper and by materialising his plan the government could bring revolutionary changes in the country. He said revolution meant positive change and if this could be brought about peacefully then what was the need of a bloody revolt.
“The population of Lahore is 9 million and sectors, with 15,000 people each, can be formed permanently,” he said, adding that there should be 3,000 houses in every sector and the area should include vacant and agrarian lands and in case of congestion, more circles could also be drawn in big cities.
Elaborating his plan, he said the ownership of land should lie with the government, who should provide the owners with an alternative agrarian land close to the city. He said the vacant land that government obtained from the peoples would be used for constructions of schools, colleges, hospitals and parks. He said in order to provide state of the art medical facilities to people, the government should build a standard hospital in each five sectors. He said this standard hospital would be constructed on 30 kanal lands and about 75000 to 1, 00,000 inhabitants could get medical facilities from one hospital.
Talking about housing facilities, he said the government should provide five marla free of cost land to poor family to build its house and every house should consist of three bedrooms. He said the government should force the banks to provide soft loans to poor families for construction of their houses and make sure that the lifetime of each house should be at least one hundred years. He said education was the basic right of every citizen and a uniformed educational policy should be adopted to end discrimination of different standards of education. He said the government should build two primary schools for boys and girls separately consisted of 150 kanal lands in every sector. He said private schools could also be allowed but the system should be the same. Another aspect that mars the beauty of the city is piles of wastages littering along the roads and streets and causing diseases among the inhabitants. He said he served in different executive posts of the city government and found that despite availability of staff and modern machinery wastage could not be managed properly.
He further said wastage could be used for different purposes, adding that he had given a feasible plan for waste management in his book. “Unfortunately, our cities were not planned beforehand and that is why they are getting hard to manage,” he said, adding that if his plan were to be implemented, it would solve many problems.

The book is available for free at www.humjeetaingay.com in both English and Urdu.