The Vanishing Wadas of Pune

My first introduction to the wadas (courtyard-style housing) was as a child in Baroda (now known as Vadodara), while visiting my great-grandmother. She stayed at what was then called the Tambe Wada. At that point I was blissfully unaware that the wadas were not just predominantly native to Baroda, but present all over India under different nomenclatures.

Indeed, wadas are basically a form of courtyard housing that were designed to suit the Indian climate as well as the family set-up, which at that point used to be a joint-family system. On visiting Pune a few years later, I first saw the remnants of the glory of the Maratha Empire in the form of the mighty Shaniwar Wada. I did not actually start thinking of the wadas as an architectural or indeed an urban element, till I began architecture school and eventually graduate school. 

Wadas are found in parts of what would have then been deemed as the Bombay Presidency (modern day Gujarat and Maharashtra) during the British Raj (although they predate the British Raj). Like the Rajasthani Havelis, these wadas were designed to suit the climate of the area they were situated in using locally sourced materials and in an architectural style that was dominant. 

During the early days of the British Raj, Pune became a popular British outpost, with a cantonment area created for British officers. At the same time these wadas remained intact and were active residences for the native population. It was around this time that the first specks of urban cultural and leisure festivals were organized in the form of music and religious festivals, as a way of uniting the native community. My initial study was to find alternative adaptive reuse solutions for these once beautiful houses.

While writing my first paper on the wadas in graduate school, I very naively proposed that a potential adaptive reuse solution for the wadas would be to convert them into Heritage Homestays – a successful endeavor for such similar properties all over India. It was only in the summer after my first year, when I actually visited Pune to test my hypothesis, that I realized the ground reality surrounding the wadas. The wadas, mostly located within the historic core of Pune and along the old street network called peths, were designed keeping in mind the transit modes of the 16th and 17th century – namely either pedestrian or palanquins, or horses and horse-drawn carriages. They were also designed for a population density that was a fraction of what it is today. Given the current urban scenario in Pune, (Pune being an educational and IT hub), and adding to the fact that most property owners have on-going property disputes (in case of properties with multiple owners), lack of funding and rent control, it is no wonder that the wadas are in a state of complete disrepair and negligence.

Since most wadas are within a 300-metre radius of the Shaniwar Wada, which is a designated ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) monument, redevelopment of these wadas becomes that much more difficult, since all sorts of heritage-related rules apply. While some of the wadas have been acquired or managed by the city/state, such as the Vishrambaug Wada, the majority are still owner occupied and many have been subdivided to accommodate individual nuclear families. In this process of subdivision, the grandeur of the architecture of the wadas is either lost or all but forgotten. Many owners have moved out of the wadas and purchased alternate accommodation in a different part of the city or country and have left their wada in a state of disrepair and neglect since they know that in order for them to redevelop what can be deemed as prime real estate today, they need to let the wada deteriorate beyond repair. Once demolition by neglect takes place, they (the property owners) are no longer bound by heritage rules and regulations, and are thus free to redevelop the land as they wish.

While a steady decline or neglect of the private wadas continues, Pune as a city is undergoing many transformations. The identity of the city is slowly evolving from an educational hub to an Information Technology stronghold. 

What was once a city dominated by native Maharashtrians, is now evolving into a cosmopolitan population that is younger, more globally aware and demanding. They want the latest technology, greener and cleaner spaces and follow the latest trends that other cities have adopted. The government (both at the center and at the state and local level) too is aware that a need for an upgrade is long overdue. In lieu of this upgrade, several schemes that will change the identity of modern-day India and, more specifically, modern-day Pune, are in the process of being adopted. Primary among these is the SMART Cities programmed, which aims to utilize technology in order to make the city function better. Indeed, Pune has been elected as the number two contender in the 100 SMART Cities pilot programmed adopted by the Government of India.

To implement the pilot study, several areas were shortlisted, including the historic core of the city. Unfortunately, in the final list, the historic core failed to make the cut. To get a better understanding of why this happened and to know how the historic core could have benefited from being a part of the pilot programmed of the SMART cities initiative, I spoke to Kiran Kalamdani, one of Pune’s premier conservation architects and a former member of the deciding committee for the SMART Cities Project in Pune. From my discussion with him, I gathered that a primary reason for not selecting the historic core as part of the pilot study was the target audience that the SMART Cities proposal catered to. The areas that are currently selected are fairly newer and more affluent than the historic core. In comparison, the historic core has a mixed-income residential quota leaning more towards the lower end. As such, the architect further mentioned that unlike the usual ‘not in my backyard (NIMBY)’ phenomenon that is usually witnessed, in this case, it was the complete opposite, with people demanding that the pilot study be adopted in their neighborhood. Since the demand was more from certain neighborhoods versus others, the historic core, in his opinion, was a missed opportunity.

On questioning him further, he explained that most of the privately-owned wadas are indeed embroiled in legal and ownership hassles due to the presence of both a rent control act, as well as multiple ownership of a single property. The historic core is congested and its value in the community is slowly diminishing. As more people become aware and educated, they too want to enjoy basic comforts like 24-hour water supply, electricity and a house that will not fall apart. At the same time, they do not have the required funding that would go into actually fixing the wadas. Therefore, uneven, ad-hoc changes that may not even be permitted have been and are being made. The Indian word for such ad-hoc changes would be jugaad (innovative thinking). But because these changes are sporadic as well, a lot of times, if not always, it puts pressure on the existing infrastructure.

As such, the city has grown sporadically, first relatively planned under the British Empire (who occupied Pune from the late 1700s to 1947), and then organically and need-based, post-Independence. But this growth has been largely non-cohesive and as such makes town planning a failure. The progressive upgradation of city resources and infrastructure has been uneven, with some areas getting more love than others, whether it is roads and parking allowances, or water supply and even open spaces. The internal street grids between wadas that should be for pedestrian and bicycle use are currently being used as full-fledged vehicular streets, with two-wheelers, auto-rickshaws, four-wheelers and pedestrians all using the same streets thus adding to the chaos and causing more traffic jams and flared tempers. The chalta hai (it’s ok, we’ll adjust, no matter what the consequences) attitude doesn’t help either.

In fact, the only times that these streets are cordoned off as ‘pedestrian only’ (quite successfully), are during festivals: the Ganesh festival, Navratri and Diwali. But, says Kalamdani, these festivals do more harm than good. They congest the already quite choked peths and bylanes further with human foot-traffic as lakhs come to pay obeisance (especially during the Ganesh festival) at the various community pandals that are set up along the streets and peths. It doesn’t help that one of the key Ganesh temples in the city, the Dagdu Sheth Halwai Ganpati Mandir, is located within the historic core. During such events there’s a music festival, which is also held along with one of the oldest Ganesh pujas, at the Mujumdar Wada – a historic 18th century wada. This Mujumdar Wada is one of the few examples of the family still occupying a wada. It is closed to outsiders, except during the festival. The owners are, however, well aware that the wada needs conservation and restoration, since it is becoming more difficult to host so many people.

Thus, we can rightly conclude that with careful planning and community engagement, these internal streets can be pedestrianized to help improve traffic flow and decongest the street grid of the historic core of Pune city. The challenge isn’t the actual implementation of the restrictive pedestrianization of the street grid or the adoption of better infrastructure management principles, but rather the engagement of the community, (just as it did during the pre-Independence era with the commercial establishment of the Ganesh festival by Lokmanya Tilak). It is necessary to re-engage the community and develop a sense of pride towards their shared heritage so as to enable the wadas to have a fighting chance. And unless this pride is instilled, the wadas may become a lost cause. No amount of popularization through films and television shows (like Bajirao Mastaani and Ramaa Madhav) will be able to rescue these pieces of Pune’s historic urban fabric from demolition and neglect. And no amount of adoption of SMART Cities principles and Urban Rejuvenation schemes can improve the situation unless and until every aspect of town planning, from transportation to community engagement to urban design are implemented as one single cohesive unit. It now remains to be seen how Pune as a city adopts and adapts to the various proposed urban rejuvenation schemes and programmes and how Pune’s citizens accept the same.

Today, Pune seems to have developed a dual identity and dual definitions for urban leisure, one with an older crowd, for which the historic core and its festivals have more to do with their spiritual and indeed religious nature and a younger, hipper crowd, for whom Pune is home to education, job opportunities and a great modern music scene. While the two identities and their festivals rarely intersect, since each has its own designated areas in Pune, they do sometimes end up crossing paths when the modern-day tourist decides to take a leisure trip and visit the historic core and its various monuments and museums. It remains to be seen how the various urban development proposals will thus affect the outlook of the two distinct factions that make up Pune and whether they will appreciate the same. In the end, it’s not just a case of modernization versus adaptive reuse and restoration, but it is also a case of changing mind-sets so that the two factions of thought are able to meet in the middle, to thus enjoy a newer, more progressive and cohesive Pune, having equal love for its past, present and potential future.