India Post New Service

NEW YORK: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was in New York last week to attend the C-40 Large Cities Climate Summit to address the issue of global warming. The event was hosted by former President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Summit saw more than 30 mayors and local leaders from the world’s largest cities and Chief Executive Officers of leading international corporations discussing over two days, the need to combat global warming without compromising the economic benefits to people.

The summit felt the issue needed to be tackled by local leaders On the sidelines of the Summit, Dikshit, who addressing an exclusive gathering organized by the US-India Business Council at the Harvard Club in New York City, gave an overview of the Herculean efforts undertaken by her government to "clean up" Delhi of the high levels of pollution, by going green. Consul General for India in New York, Neelam Deo who introduced the Chief Minister described Dikshit as the person who changed the face of Delhi and making it livable.

Stating that Dikshit’s government transformed the city’s infrastructure by building the Delhi Metro, and cleaned up the air by changing the fuel usage of public transport, Deo said, "The difference in Delhi is palpable." Humbly accepting accolades for the success of her efforts, Dikshit said her government "did manage to change Delhi from going to the dumps" by undertaking its greening on a war footing. "Today, Delhi is one of the greenest cities in the world and definitely, the greenest in India," she added. Delhi today has over 326 sq km of green cover, Dikshit informed. "I’m proud to say that Delhiites today have a green finger," she said.

"And we achieved this through school children. We created 14 forest areas and soon 14 more such areas will be created in the next 2-3 years. These are the breathing lungs for us." Dikshit said it was now mandatory in Delhi that for every tree that is cut by anyone, 10 new trees must be planted. "Now when seen from an aerial view, Delhi does not look like a metro, but rather like a green forest," she said. "We do not present flowers anymore to each other, but present plants." Talking about how the Delhi government brought about the usage of CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) in all public transport such as city buses, autos and even government vehicles, Dikshit said, "Several years ago, we came to New York to study what the United States was doing to cut down on the use of gas.

The US at that time thought it was too expensive to bring CNG through pipelines and therefore had no plans to switch from gas. But, I am proud to say that although we are a poor country, we managed to do it in India." Later, in response to questions on the infrastructure problems still plaguing Delhi, Dikshit conceded that government organizations were lax in their pace in dealing with the problems. "We are very short in power; water is another problem area. The government organizations are lax in their pace, but we are confident of improving the situation." Responding to a question on the traffic congestion in Delhi, Dikshit said, "Delhi has more vehicles than Chennai, Calcutta, Mumbai put together. There are five million cars for a population of 15 million, and many more are being added every day. We are taking various measures to decongest, one of them being the introduction of high capacity bus systems."

Further on the various eco-friendly initiatives of her government, Dikshit informed that in view of the global climate changes, usage of CFL bulbs have been made compulsory in order to conserve electricity . "Also, we have no coal-based power stations anywhere in Delhi. If there’s an odd plant left somewhere, we will soon shut that down too and completely switch over to gas," she said. Dekshit also talked about the proliferation of slums and unauthorized structures all over the city, explaining that it was an issue that needed to be dealt with in a human way.

"We are taking up housing projects in a big way and provide all the poor slum dwellers with alternative housing before cleaning up the slums," she said. Touching upon the plans for drawing up a multi-billion dollar Masterplan for the Development of Delhi, Dikshit said, "A lot needs to be done, but as long as there is a woman holding the reins, she manages the funds well."