Video Editor: Sandeep Suman
Prime Minister Modi has appealed to the nation to join the Fit India Movement. You must have heard about it by now. But it seems that people of Delhi won’t be able to actively participate!
After all, if there aren’t any gyms, how can one stay fit? If yoga and meditation centres are shutting down, how will people learn to calm themselves?
On 24 September, a monitoring committee appointed by the Supreme Court has instructed all three corporations of Delhi to shut down more than 1,000 gyms, meditation and yoga centres in the civilian-populated mixed land use and commercial areas.
Notably, these are the fitness centres that were established after 12 August 2008.
But why?
Fitness centres don’t cause pollution. They don’t cause long traffic jams. What danger could a gym pose to nearby residents?
We often find out about a warehouse in a residential area catching fire due to short circuit, sure. But fitness centres aren’t hazardous that way. So, what’s the logic behind this move? If the gyms are established before 2008 can operate, why not gyms established afterwards?
These centres found no place in the residential areas in Delhi’s Masterplan 2021. An Amendment was passed in 2013 to allow centres established till 12 August 2008.
Gym owners say that if restaurants established as recently as 17 September 2019 have been allowed on the ground floor in mixed land usage areas, why shouldn’t gyms be?
Fitness centre owners raised their concerns to Union Minister Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri. He has assured them that the new masterplan will include fitness centres established post 2008.
This means that the government doesn’t mind Delhiites eating chola bhatura at a restaurant near their residence, but they can’t go to gym in their locality to burn off those calories.
As per the masterplan, gyms can only operate in DDA market or shopping malls.
Amazing! On one hand, people are already too lazy to go to the gym, and on the other, you give them the added obstacle of gyms being far from home!
One more question: Who will pay for the inflated charges of gyms in shopping malls? And in DDA market, one can hardly operate a grocery shop, how do you expect one to run a gym? The area is too congested!
And spare a thought for those running these gyms. There is already a job shortage... now, all these people who are running the gyms will also be unemployed. And yes, a masterplan isn’t an LoC that once drawn can’t be changed. Masterplans have been changed to allow Delhi residents build multi-storey buildings or even increase floor areas.
Amid heavy protests against sealing permissions from clinics to tuition centres, why do we need a lock-in period for gyms now? Why not leave it open? Anyone who has a spare space in which to run gym can choose to do so. What is the problem in that?
Only a fit body can accommodate a fit mind.
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