Planning of cities must be people-centric, says Manohar Lal as Brics forum adopts urban pact

When a CM Pledges Cities for People, But People Still Drink Poison Water

Manohar Lal Khattar signed India onto a BRICS urban development pact this week, promising "people-centric" city planning across borders. The communique is pristine. The reality in Haryana is a slow-motion ecological collapse that nobody in his administration seems equipped to stop.

What Actually Happened

On October 11, the BRICS Urban Development Forum adopted what they're calling a landmark "urban pact" — essentially a diplomatic commitment to sustainable, inclusive city planning across Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Haryana's Chief Minister signed on, pledging that Indian cities would prioritize people over profit, water over concrete, equity over extraction.

The words sound revolutionary. In practice, they're theater. Faridabad's water table has dropped 30 feet in the last decade. Gurugram's stormwater drains still discharge raw sewage into the Yamuna River, poisoning water for millions downstream. Chandigarh's industrial estates dump untreated effluent into water bodies. And Haryana's own municipal corporations cannot even collect property tax arrears or maintain the underground sewers they built fifteen years ago. This is the state now pledging "people-centric urban development" to the world.

What This Means for India

This pattern repeats across every major Indian city. We sign global agreements. We print glossy action plans. We hold press conferences. Then the municipal commissioner changes, budgets get redirected, and the actual work — the unglamorous, daily grind of maintaining water systems, fixing sewers, monitoring groundwater extraction — simply does not happen.

The deeper problem is structural. BRICS commitments carry zero enforcement mechanism. There's no audit, no penalty, no accountability if Haryana's groundwater keeps dropping, if the Yamuna keeps getting poisoned, if farmland keeps flooding because storm drains are choked. The pact is non-binding theater. It looks exceptional in the diplomatic communique. It dies in the municipal office.

What kills every single urban plan in India is the same three things: (1) Chronic shortage of municipal revenue because property tax collection is a joke. (2) Contractor corruption during execution, where underground sewers are built with substandard materials and collapse within five years. (3) Zero political will for long-term infrastructure maintenance because it's invisible and carries no electoral benefit. Fix these three problems and Indian cities transform. Ignore them — as we always do — and we keep signing international pacts that mean nothing.

The Deeper Story Nobody is Telling

Here's what will happen in Haryana over the next five years: The BRICS commitment will gather dust in some ministry file. Faridabad's water table will drop another 20 feet. Gurugram will add 500,000 more people to its population while the water supply remains static. The Yamuna will get dirtier. And in 2030, someone else will sign onto some other international pact, using the exact same language about "sustainability" and "people-centric development."

This is not unique to Khattar. Every Chief Minister does this. Every Prime Minister does this. We have signed more environmental treaties and urban development pacts than any nation on Earth. And yet our cities are choking. Why? Because we treat city planning as a political statement rather than a systems problem.

What This Means for Your Health

If you're managing diabetes, thyroid disorder, or any chronic disease in urban Haryana, this BRICS pact changes nothing for you. Here's what actually impacts your health:

First: Your drinking water. Groundwater depletion and contamination forces reliance on tanker water, which is either chemically treated or sewage-adjacent. Neither option is compatible with healing a thyroid disorder or controlling diabetes. You're drinking poison and wondering why your TSH remains elevated.

Second: Air quality. Unplanned urban sprawl without proper sewage systems creates stagnant water pools, breeding grounds for disease vectors. Respiratory infections become chronic. Your immune system spends all its energy fighting infections instead of healing deeper systemic issues like autoimmune thyroid disease.

Third: Stress and inflammation. A city that doesn't work — where water runs out, where flooding happens every monsoon, where traffic jams steal three hours of your day — creates chronic stress. Elevated cortisol blocks healing. It worsens diabetes management, accelerates thyroid decline, and suppresses your body's ability to fight cancer naturally.

The BRICS pact will not fix any of this. What will fix this: demand accountability from your municipal corporation. Stop electing leaders who sign international pacts and ignore local water tables. Your healing begins with your city's healing. Not the other way around.

Follow BHARAT DECODED on Telegram: t.me/DecodedByRDS — Rajnish Sharma (RDS)