It is the 125th year of the construction of Moore Market. And it therefore follows that it is forty years since the precinct was swallowed up by fire. The conflagration was mysterious but it was convenient – the space was handed over to the railways for the construction of the suburban terminal. Infrastructure, it was argued, was more important than a heritage building. The shopkeepers were placated by compensation by way of cash and also alternative accommodation. A pond was filled up for that – a very necessary sacrifice it was said, in a water-starved city, for taking care of the displaced. Years of looking the other way when the place degenerated into a byword for lawlessness had made it a headache for the administration. And so the fire was indeed a blessing.
In reality, everyone was glad Moore Market was gone, except for a few heritage activists who did not matter anyway. And forty years later, we do not seem to have learnt any lessons from it, especially on how not to administer public infrastructure.
Constructed in 1900, Moore Market was envisaged as the city’s first organised public shopping area. But certainly by the 1960s, it had become one of those facilities which people hesitated to go to. At the time of the fire, there were 572 stalls, each paying a rent of Rs 150 pm and in addition there were smaller traders who paid Rs 30; these were 300 in number. With years of lack of political will to increase the rents and also no maintenance of any kind, Moore Market was quite an urban horror, much of which is forgotten in a wave of nostalgia. There were several unauthorised hawkers, and then there were pickpockets. The shopkeepers too were a law unto themselves and indulged in all kinds of intimidatory tactics. The administration watched.
Sounds familiar? Cut to early 2000s when Traffic Ramaswamy began a campaign for moving unauthorised vendors off various places in the city. The administration was complicit in the mess, lacking political will to regulate them. The alternative was to find building space for them and this was done — at a multi-storey complex in T Nagar and a warren of shops in George Town to give just two examples. In the former instance, vendors have moved in to an ill-designed building but others have come to replace them on the footpaths. At George Town, the vendors have moved out of line of sight as far the High Court goes, but only just. The shops assigned to them remain locked.
Meanwhile, at the beach, which had not one vendor around forty years ago, a whole lot of stalls have come up. They were all encouraged by the political outfits while the administration kept quiet until the problem could not be ignored. Enter, the courts. Once again there is the debate on authorised and unauthorised vendors. What is forgotten is that forty years ago there were none! How did any of them become authorised? Let us not be surprised if a permanent building soon comes up on the beach to house these vendors.
It was just the same in Moore Market. It needed a fire to get rid of several inconvenient truths. And the replacement, when built, was poorly designed. And remains so. Lily Pond Complex is an apology for a shopping precinct.
And so, when will the administration wake up to realise it needs to tighten its grip over regulating its vending spaces? Or are we waiting for fires to help us out each time? We seem to have learnt our lesson on heritage restoration but not on routine civic discipline.