संवाद # 8: Sanjeev Sanyal on Central Vista, Smart Cities & real Indian history missing from syllabus

Sanjeev Sanyal is the Principal Economic Advisor to the Government of India. He is not only an internationally acclaimed economist, best-selling author but also a well-known environmentalist and urban theorist. Sanyal’s best-selling books include Land of the Seven Rivers, The Indian Renaissance and The Ocean of Churn, all published by Penguin. In addition, he had published around 200 articles, columns and reports in leading national/international publications. In this conversation, we talked mainly about architecture of Union government’s Central Vista Project including the new Parliament of India, what the Smart Cities project really intends to achieve and the true history of India from ancient times to struggle for Independence from the British, especially those aspects which are not taught to children in school history textbooks. 0:00 Intro 0:58 Rationale behind Central Vista Project 9:51 Central Vista’s architecture 13:42 What Smart Cities Project is really about 22:22 India’s urban planning approach since 1947 24:48 How should we think of developing cities 28:47 All that’s wrong with history that’s taught in syllabus 34:18 Hinduism in Bali 36:44 How Hinduism spread in South-east Asia 39:32 British didn’t create India, It has existed for 1000s of years 42:40 Saraswati, Battle of 10 Kings & making of Bharat 53:28 Gujarat’s maritime history 57:06 Ashoka was not great 1:01:06 Hinduism/Buddhism/Sikhism - streams of one Civilisation 1:05:07 Role of revolutionaries in struggle for Independence