Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s go-to man for all his grandiose architectural dreams, Ahmedabad’s Bimal Patel has been strongly instrumental in strengthening his leader’s political soft power that hinges much on spectacles.
Be it Ahmedabad’s iconic Sabarmati Riverfront or New Delhi’s new Central Vista for parliamentarians or the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in Varanasi, the 63-year-old architect and urban planner has been a ubiquitous choice for Modi through all his active political career.
Both as the Gujarat CM and now as the PM of the country, Modi has successfully used Patel’s exploits to further his political interests by flaunting them as centerpieces of art and activity helmed under his patronage.
A doctorate in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, Patel first came into prominence after designed Swarnim Sankul in 2011, a new complex of office blocks flanking the north and south side of the Central Vista of the legislative assembly building in Gandhinagar for Modi, then-Chief Minister of Gujarat.
It was no surprise when, his firm, HCP Design, Planning and Management, bagged the contract for Modi’s ambitious Rs 25,000 crore-plus plan to reinvent the heart of Delhi – Parliament building, common Central Secretariat and Central Vista, a three-km-plus expanse from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate. Incidentally, the Gujarat legislative assembly’s central vista is similar to the Delhi project.
Patel has also been entrusted with the development of the Mumbai Port Trust, aimed at revamping the eastern seafront of the coastal city, and the restoration of Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati Ashram spread over 32 acres, which include repairing 62 heritage structures and the removal of constructions that have no relevance to Gandhi.
His peers say Patel, though unassuming and highly affable, and highly skilled in his work, has compromised his independent thinking to fulfil the whims of Modi. His ‘independent’ mind is no longer that independent as patronage of the supreme leader has become an important yardstick as well as recipe of his success and future.
Bimal Patel started his career in the mid-1980s with his father Hasmukh Patel who built the Gujarat High Court in 1992. The same year, he became the youngest recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for designing the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India in Bhat, on the northwestern edge of Ahmedabad. The campus, conceived as an ensemble of buildings with simple yet strong geometrical forms in exposed brick and concrete set in a lush landscape, attempted to create an indigenous Indian vocabulary referencing vernacular, Islamic and colonial buildings. Patel also went on to design and build the new IIM, Ahmedabad campus in 2001, an extension of the old premises designed by American architect Louis Kahn in 1974.
Patel’s practice received a big boost from his proximity to Surendra Patel, a former Rajya Sabha BJP MP who was twice the chairman of the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA), and a close associate of Narendra Modi. But while community ties, since both are Patels, could have played a small role in giving the prized Sabarmati Riverfront and Kankaria Lake Waterfront projects to Bimal, there is no denying that he is one of the very few architects in the country who has the infrastructure, organisational skills and the ability to deliver on time.
If Bimal Patel’s work is infused with the minimalist grammar of modernism, it’s because his early education and sensibilities were shaped by Ahmedabad. Supported by the city’s business community, the city welcomed modernism in the 1950s beginning with Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier whose projects included the Ahmedabad Textile Mill Owners’ Association (ATMA) and the Sanskar Kendra that houses the City Museum.
Ironically, the remodelling of the CEPT campus, which is illustrative of Ahmedabad’s experimental spirit, led to serious differences between Patel and architect BV Doshi who had designed CEPT in 1962 and was its founder-director. Doshi accused Patel of high-handedness in altering the original concept of the building without consulting him and resigned from the board in 2015.
Bimal’s is a highly negotiated practice, not necessarily collaborative, in that he executes his own design but finalises it only after considering the client’s inputs. And it is this work-attitude that has allowed him to engage so successfully with government agencies.
Bimal Patel’s most successful collaboration has been with Narendra Modi, beginning in 2005 with the controversial Sabarmati Riverfront project.
The aim was to create a public space for more than seven million people along the river, clean the water and rehabilitate those affected by the project. Modi inaugurated the Sabarmati Riverfront in 2012; it soon became his preferred backdrop for photo-ops – from hosting a dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping to boarding a sea-plane during the 2017 Gujarat assembly election and celebrating Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. It also featured in his election campaign resume in 2014.
His CG Road Project in Ahmedabad two decades ago became a benchmark in India for urban design and led to the Sabarmati Riverfront Development project, gifting the people of the city with pedestrian open space on both sides of the river.
But the riverfront, with its sprawling greens and picnicking families, touted as the symbol of a new and shining Ahmedabad has its share of critics.
They were able to clean the riverbed by displacing nearly 12,000 slum-dwellers who lived in settlements along the Sabarmati and depriving them of their livelihoods to create facilities that typically benefit only middle and upper-class citizens. But a river is defined by freshwater, not by its beautification, an activist said.
The Sabarmati is monsoon-fed and remains dry for most of the year, the water level in the 11.25 km-riverfront stretch has been maintained by pumping in the excess flow from the Narmada canal. A report titled, ‘Disastrous condition of Sabarmati River’, based on a joint investigation by PSS and the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), says this water is stagnant and receives nearly 15 per cent of the untreated sewage Ahmedabad produces each day.
But Modi’s endorsement to this project has eclipsed criticism.
In 2014, after his blockbuster victory in the Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi moved to Delhi via Varanasi with more grand ideas for Bimal Patel to design and implement there.
Just two months before the LS poll this year, Modi laid the foundation stone for the Kashi Vishwanath corridor in his parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, which will link one of the pre-eminent Hindu temples to three main ghats on the Ganga, a distance of about 320 metres by 2021. Modi claimed the new pathway would liberate Shiva’s shrine from the maze of narrow, densely packed alleys and the crush of buildings.
And to accomplish this holy task, Patel was enlisted again. Almost 300 structures — mainly homes and shops in the vicinity of the temple — were razed to develop the nearly 12-acre site. A section of the city’s residents believe that Varanasi is a timeless city with timeless memories and that the flattened buildings were part of the living heritage of Varanasi. They say, it would have been better to conserve the tangible and intangible heritage of the place, rather than demolish it,” said Menon.
But A. Srivathsan, a Chennai-based academic who has worked with Patel at CEPT, says, “It is not an architectural but a political project to bestow singular privilege on the Kashi Vishwanath temple by giving it unrestricted visual prominence while deliberately overlooking the multicultural ethos of the city. That’s why the demolition was necessary. And that is my biggest problem with the Vishwanath Dham, the government’s shrill political views that undergird the whole exercise.”
Bimal Patel is, however, unfazed by the criticism. The design for Vishwanath Dham “gives tangible shape to Prime Minister Modi’s transformative vision,” he says.
And now it’s the same ‘dream team’ of Modi and Patel that has reinvented the national capital — the Central Vista, a heritage precinct with its iconic buildings, pools of water, sculpted fountains and carefully chosen green trees.
Architect K.T. Ravindran, former chairman of the Delhi Urban Art Commission, argues: “The given life of cement concrete is 60-80 years, after which it deteriorates. The idea of creating a new legacy for the next 150-200 years using the same materials is unreal”. Ravindran goes on to ask: How will the enormous construction waste, dust and other toxins be managed? Where will the water for building activities come from?”
“There are so many unanswered questions,” he asserts. No one denies that radical upgrading of the Central Vista designed in 1911 is needed; the present Parliament building constructed in 1927 is, as Bimal Patel had pointed out, too small to accommodate all the members and their staff, the security arrangements are inadequate, infrastructure is technologically outdated, and the structure is not earthquake-proof. That’s why Patel insisted that despite its historical importance, a brand-new building was the only solution.
But now, in the latest dampener, the new Parliament building has started leaking, unable to bear the downpour of a few hours that battered Delhi on Wednesday night. The Opposition has latched on to this opportunity with leaders losing no time in sharing video clips of the pouring roof of the Central Vista, slamming the government in the process. Though this may not change the broader equation of the Modi-Patel partnership in landscaping new India with swanky concreting, it should certainly come as a major embarrassment for Modi and his blue-eyed boy.
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