public opinions but at least they are heard of. At least there is participation. It is important that those are documented and become public documents. Newspapers should write a lot more about it. That voice needs to be heard. We as architects, are not active in that part of the equa- tion. We are all in a cocoon.
VS: In Scandanavian countries, it is very well implemented, because of the high tax structure. The Goverment is accountable to its people to a greater extent.

TN: In India, you have the right to information. This is a very powerful tool. For example, we do not have this tool in France.

AS: It has a hundred clauses.

SN: It is not as difficult as it appears to be. I know a couple of people who fill in the forms and got the information that they wanted. It is a powerful tool. This issue of time is quite important, Histori- cally everything here takes a little longer than it takes anywhere else in the world. Our democracy goes through an extremely long gestation period but it does happen eventually.

NG: I don’t think it has been that long. Europe is now very proud of its beautiful cities but 200 hun- dred years ago at industrialisation they suffered the same troubles of slums, sanitation…. In time factors we are leap frogging like we
should.

TN: My concern is, do you think that the Indian cities will have the same amount of time like the European cities will. The economic factor, which is the first factor in terms of Governance, all the politicians now work to maintain a good business climate. They do not work for medium and long term benefits. My hypothesis, maybe I am wrong, and I hope that I am wrong, is if in India we are not smart enough to improve the quality of the city faster than in Europe, I think that we will be screwed in a couple of years because after a point we can generate a counter productive situa- tion especially for “the economic attractiveness of the city”. Unfortunately I don’t think that we can compare the time available to improve the city. I agree we took 200 hundred years. We learned from our mistakes and we cannot make the same mistakes in India.

NG: We obviously are not suggesting to follow the same path as Europe in developing our cities but we have to give Indian cities time to form.

TN: In terms of mobility we are making the same mistake as in the West.

NG: Mobility is a completely different issue because it has a different equation when it comes to National development and there is a disconnect between National Development and urban planning of the cities. Automotive industry is the paradigm that was used since the 20th Century to develop countries infra-structurally, industrially and increase export and it creates indirect ben- efit in development. Until we change this paradigm itself and prove to a country that some other forms of industry can create and generate the same benefit in development this one will be a loop. We can question the paradigm.

TN: The mistake is not to try to spread some new seeds for other economic sectors.

RK: I agree with him (Thibault). We are at a threshold with both these disasters hitting us at the same time. One is that