To
The Chief Editor
Outlook

12^th Dec 2005

Dear Sir,

Ref: Rancid article on Bhopal Requiem (current issue)

I am part of the team that worked on the design for the Bhopal Memorial which was subjected to the ill- informed critique in your magazine. Your article put forth a lot of views on the design; I would have presumed the architects’ views were relevant enough to be sought. As a reader, I expect that much background research going into an article, especially on such an opinionated one, from a publication of you stature. I now stand wiser.

While sarcasm, slick editing and double codes are effective tools for putting a certain viewpoint across, I do draw the line at misrepresentation of facts. To clear up the air a bit:

• A subterranean structure does not qualify itself as an ‘underground tunnel’.

• ‘Encasing’ the ‘Union Carbide Plant’ in ‘Glass’ with ‘ human dummies operating it’ is a gross interpretation of the proposed ‘ installation art of life size Bastar figurines by Bastar artisans at the base of the factories in a two storey transparent envelope’. We are appalled that you could derive some notion of human dummy operations from what we proposed.

• The bit about community facilities chooses to omit a proposal close to our hearts. While the we outlined some facilities, the main proposal was to develop the entire frontage of the site as a participatory planning exercise where ‘the gas victims have a say in what it should be’ [which is verbatim one of the grouses of your article]

• The tone of your article makes Phytoremediation sound like sci-fi horror rather that an environmentally sustainable means of cleaning toxic waste sites. The entire landscaping is to have an educative and contextually informative thrust and signage that displayed Phytoremediation properties of common plants is part of this exercise.

• The 96 crores has to be spent not only on the memorial ‘building’ but for providing social and economic infrastructure for the surrounding area within the memorial complex which is in total a 66 acre site. Moreover this amount is to be spent in a phased manner on an economically sustainable model.

The clean up of the site has to happen before any of this takes place. This is not a fact we are contesting. However, what we do want to establish is the need for a memorial, for what is largely a forgotten tragedy. It took the memorial design exercise for your esteemed publication to give the Bhopal tragedy token media coverage on its 21^st anniversary. Years of neglect and suffering does not seem to prompt any sustained media activism. Interestingly, a design competition makes you take up the cudgels.

We are glad that the design competition did bring a few issues to the forefront. We do welcome discussion and debate on the design. As part of ‘our background research’ we spoke to survivors and activists and went through Greenpeace documents. After all an open national level competition is only the beginning of a process. Why, would you chose a tenor that potrays your empathy with the tragedy and victims while the making it seem that the organizers, architects and the jury who were part of the competition went about the exercise in the clumsiest, most insensitive way? Is it because Good vs Bad makes predictable good press??

An ‘activist’ was quoted as having ‘sardonically mentioned” the magnificence [of the memorial] will provide an excellent contrast to the misery of the people around it”. We consciously worked towards not reducing the memorial to a ‘photographers delight’ and our design avoided making grandiose, magnificent gestures. (Please refer to http://portal.architexturez.org/site/groups/bhopal for further information on the design). But if you do insist, we would presume that the issue here is with misery and not with the magnificence, we should be fighting towards ending the former and not the latter. You cannot automatically relegate magnificent structures as evidence of frivolous, insensitive architects and populace.

I am sure there is a common ground zero for this issue. Please feel free to contact us and reprint a more researched and well rounded article on the same. If, the best you can do is publish this letter, please see to it that the editing process is not at the expense of facts and intention.

Yours truly
Suditya Sinha
Architect

M/s Space Matters
#44 Aurobindo Apts
Aurobindo Marg, Adhchini
New Delhi

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