India, April 3 -- Rising from the dislocation of Partition, Chandigarh embodied a nation's determination to design its future with clarity, discipline, and hope. Le Corbusier conceived it as a modernist experiment rooted in order and human scale. The city was meant to stand apart from the improvisation and congestion that defined much of urban India. It was India's most deliberate act of urban imagination-a greenfield city of its kind.

That promise has not collapsed, but it is undeniably fading. The Chandigarh of today feels distant from the original vision-less coherent, less breathable, and less equitable. The signs are visible, but, more importantly, they are cumulative.

Congestion has crept in quietly, environmental stress has deepe...