How to Resolve the Gymkhana Imbroglio
The Ministry of Urban Development's order to resume land occupied by the Delhi Gymkhana Club has correctly drawn sharp attention to Delhi's chronic deficit in sporting and leisure infrastructure — a deficit that is real and must be addressed. Delhi ranks 141st out of 173 cities on the EIU Global Liveability Index, is the world's most polluted capital, and has only 16 DDA sports complexes for 33 million people — one per 2 million residents, roughly 90 times worse than England's ratio of citizen leisure centres. Singapore has eight times more Olympic pools per resident than Delhi, 17 track and field stadia, and 108 community clubs accessible by public transport. Nations that lead both competitiveness and liveability rankings — Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark — do so precisely because they invest aggressively in parks, community clubs, and sporting complexes. Delhi's ambitions as a global capital cannot be taken seriously without matching infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, shuttering the Gymkhana Club before alternatives exist is a cure worse than the disease. The Club's 27.3 acres house 30 tennis courts, 2 swimming pools, squash courts, a gymnasium, a library, and extensive green grounds — a rare oasis for over 15,000 members, the majority of them elderly retired professionals with a genuine need for accessible sports and leisure facilities. Forced out, they will have nowhere to turn except elite private clubs like DLF, Unitech, and Jaypee (going to be Adani) — whose membership fees run into millions of rupees and are entirely beyond the means of upper-middle-class retirees. The sole beneficiaries of the Gymkhana's closure, in the absence of alternatives, would be precisely those private real-estate and hospitality interests.
The real solution is a bold, large-scale redesign of Delhi's urban fabric to create sporting and leisure infrastructure on a war-footing. DDA's 5,000-acre unused land bank, Cantonment areas, and government properties across Delhi should be unlocked for this purpose. The Lutyens Bungalow Zone — nearly 6,900 acres accommodating merely 950 bungalows at 15 persons per acre — is the most glaring opportunity: redeveloped sensibly, it could yield a secure residential township of 2000 acres for VIPs and 5,000 acres of public commons for parks and a world-class International Sports and Leisure City. This is the kind of transformative intervention that cities like New York (840-acre Central Park) and San Francisco (1,000-acre Golden Gate Park) have made. The Gymkhana debate is an opportune moment for exactly such a course correction — and if abundant, accessible facilities are eventually built across Delhi, even its most devoted members may find they no longer miss the Club.
Raghav Chandra, IAS (retd)
