Fwd: COEP heading towards Extinction

[Sujit Patwardhan]

22 February 2012

The concerns expressed by Shri Parag Abhyankar, an alumni of COEP should have been the concerns of Pune Municipal Corporation which is the premier organisation with  the capacity and mandate to shape the physical form of this growing city. 

Unfortunately unlike other great cities with visionary leaders, we seem to excel in damaging rather than enhancing the city's form, function, heritage and even its efficient performance to deliver facilities and services to majority of citizens. 

We have allowed our rivers to be turned into gutters of filth and sewage, neglected (and actively contributed to) failure of pubic transport system which in turn has unleashed the explosion in numbers of personal auto vehicles that are now strangulating our city and polluting it with health threatening emissions. 

Instead of taking remedial action we are spending massive amounts each year in a futile attempt to meet the insatiable appetite of the auto vehicle which needs more and more and more roads, flyovers, underpasses, parking spaces.

 

The COEP Octopus of Road/Flyover is part and physical expression of this larger problem that needs to be strongly opposed and stopped by citizens who want to save Pune from complete decimation. If we don't act NOW the next decade will see a systematic dismantling of all that we like about our city - the rivers, the hills, the greenery, the human scale settlements and unique remnants of the past that have survived for all these years, and given Pune its personality as a cultural city.

What are we going to do? Just make the usual protest and let the destruction continue? Or say "Enough !!!" We are not going to stand by and just watch our city lose one more heritage structure for yet one more ugly mammoth dinosaur that will not even solve the traffic problem (but make it worse).

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Sujit

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <pa...@coepalumni.net.in>
Date: Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:39 PM
Subject: COEP heading towards Extinction
To: Sudhir Jatar <scn...@gmail.com>, patwardh...@gmail.com, prashan...@vsnl.net

Dear All,

 

Thanks for sharing the concern and a Threat to COEP.

 

I would like to share here......................

 

COEP heading towards Extinction

 

I was in COEP on Saturday, 18th February 2012, afternoon.

 

Surprised to see the cordoning off the piece of land near new cafeteria.

 

It is understood that the road will be widened on both sides touching Mechanical Dept porch on one side while Sir Visvesvarayya's statue on the other side.

 

Asked few students and they replied that the piece of COEP land having width nearly 50 feets starting from Railway Bridge to Metallurgy Department will be acquired by PMC for road widening and hence the cordoning off the area.

 

Similarly land from ENTC department to Mechanical department will be acquired putting ENTC, COMPUTER depts opening on the main road.

 

Also the vehicles will move just a feet away from Mechanical Dept Porch.

 

Metallurgy dept will be on the road and the main entrance of Meta dept will be closed forever.

 

Mechanical Dept Building is 100 years old while Main Building is 145 years old. Metallurgy dept Building is 54 years old.

 

The Traffic will move very close to library, auditorium, ENTC, Computer and Mechancial Buildings.

 

It will not be possible to use the SBI Bank side entrance of Auditorium at the same time due to noise of vehicles plying on the road it will not be possible to study in library, metallurgy dept, even in electrical and Mechanical dept.

 

As the heavy vehicular traffic will start plying very close to the Heritage Site nearly 100 - 150 years old, naturally these structures may not sustain the vibrations and noise and may eventually give up.

 

Some digging has already started.

 

It is an unfortunate event in the History of COEP.

 

Those who are passing out this year when they will have to tell their children that there was a very old heritage engineering college at this place when he/she was in that college called COEP, it will be the best of The Town Planning by Pune Municipal Corporation.

 

Worldwide, efforts are made to save such structures and Institutions from extinction, here in Pune the authorities work towards destruction of a legacy.

 

A history of modern India cannot be complete without the mention of Sir M.Visvesvarayya, B.G.Shirke (Padmashree), Leela Poonawalla(Padmashree), Dr.Vijay Kelkar(Padmavibhushan), Dr.Haresh Shah, Prof.Thomas Kailath (Padmavibhushan), P.S.Deodhar (Padmashree), and a huge list of illustrious alumni who have contributed immensely to the society, to the nation they lived or living, but .....

 

The institute from where they took the big leap in their career will only be available in memories, photos, videos.

 

As a Autonomus Institute COEP has some restrictions.

 

We as the citizens of Pune as well as COEP Alumni should make all efforts that no further land of COEP is grabbed/ acquired.

 

If anybody is having courage to fight against this destruction of COEP, the destruction of affordable and quality Technical Education in Pune, in Maharashtra, in India, come forward and join hands for appropriate solution.

 

Otherwise be the mute spectator of the Great Fall of Legacy Technical Education in Pune, the inheritance of Vision of the then British Rulers.

 

Thank you for reading patiently.

 

May God bless them! They do not know what they are doing!

 

Parag Abhyankar

Hon. Treasurer,
Alumni Association of COEP,
COEP Campus, Shivaji Nagar,
Pune 411005.
Phone: 020-25541156
Mobile: 9028324755
Email: pa...@coepalumni.net.in
Website: www.coepalumni.net, www.coepalumni.net.in
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/Alumni.COEP/
Group: alumni-associ...@googlegroups.com
Blog: http://alumniassociationofcoep.blogspot.com/
Follow on twitter:  http://twitter.com/coepalumni
Write on the wall of Facebook: http://facebook.com/coepalumniPune
Join Alumni association of COEP on Orkut Now........
Mumbai Chapter: www.mumbaichapter.coepalumni.net.in
Success is a great thing, but don't get too smug about it. Failures, while painful, should be looked upon as learning experiences.  Study both successes and failures with an eye to the future.

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It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

- J. Krishnamurti

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Sujit Patwardhan
patwardh...@gmail.com
su...@parisar.org
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Yamuna, ICS Colony, Ganeshkhind Road, Pune 411 007, India
Tel: +91 20 25537955
Cell: +91 98220 26627
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Blog: http://motif.posterous.com/

Parisar: www.parisar.org
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[SVK]

Its really bad to see all this happening to COEP.

PMC and State Govt are very ignorant about the heritage which we have in Pune in form of COEP. They are rather interested in commercial interests, hence continuously encroaching the area of COEP. 

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