The Mumbai Project

For the last fortnight or so, the Hindustan Times has been running a series of articles called the ‘Mumbai Project’. Here’s an introduction to the series, as it appears on their website:
‘Mumbai is booming. Mumbai is crumbling. With our new aspirations, new money and new confidence, we feel — we know — that we can take on the world. Yet, as Mumbai pursues a great global dream, the reality is that it is a third-world city. So, we now roam the farthest corners of the globe, and are shocked when we return to traffic snarls, potholes and the tensions of daily life.
HT believes we live in a time of hope — and great change. So, it's time to hope, certainly, that we can transform our city. It's also time to understand the change that is upon us. Did you know we are the process of spending Rs 43,000 crore to transform Mumbai? New flyovers. New trains. New taxis. New pavements. New roads. New drains. That's just the start. Where the money's going? Can we do better? How do we make sure we have the best in the world? It's time to begin the first real public dialogue for the new Mumbai.’
I believe, as much as HT does, that we live in a time of hope and great change. And while our cities need transformations, maybe even complete makeovers, to cope with all the additional pressures, there is an equally pressing need to go back to the source of the problem, and try to contain and prevent a further spread of it.
Most of the city’s problems stem from the fact that its infrastructure can no longer cope with its huge, and rapidly increasing population. Add to this the booming economy and its rewards, and it isn’t merely a problem of numbers, but one of a population that now has higher disposable incomes than ever before and an eager, enterprising market, keen to show them exactly how to spend it.

So this is the scenario. We have a city of 14 million and growing. We have an infrastructure that is crumbling.
The source of the biggest problem that Mumbai faces today is also its biggest resource: its teeming millions. And what is bringing these millions to the city, every day, day after day? The promise of jobs, the dream of making it big, of having a better life for themselves and their families back home. And are there really that many jobs in the city? Certainly there are, because it’s the economic capital of the country, a huge number of industrial and business houses have their head offices and branches here, and more than anything else, its a growing city, which in turn means that there is always a further creation of jobs happening simultaneously.
This is what they call a vicious circle, and someone’s got to realize it and break it. (And that doesn’t just mean creating a New Bombay. I have driven through some parts of New Bombay and it is the most repetitive and characterless township I have seen.)
In fact the story of Mumbai is not very different from the stories of the other metros. They are all suffering from massive urban migration leading to a shortage in infrastructure, further leading to related problems such as traffic snarls, overcrowded local transport, airports struggling to manage the massive traffic, electricity and water shortages, lack of proper maintenance of public utilities and so on and so forth. These have been researched thoroughly and discussed by the HT team of journalists in their articles over the last few days. (HT story)
So what is it that I am trying to say? Nothing new or innovative, as it happens, but something so blatantly obvious…
What Mumbai, and other Indian metros need, is not just a makeover.
What they need is a breather.
It’s in the interest of the whole country and not just the big metros that we look at developing our small towns as centers of trade and industry, and create enough opportunities for jobs and a standard of living that is appealing enough for a sort of reverse migration to take place. Equally importantly, we need far reaching reforms in the agriculture sector (I wonder when HT will do an equally in depth series on the Rural Agriculture Project?) so news like farmer suicides can become a thing of the past.
An interesting tool/ phenomenon (and one used frequently in the current series by HT) is our tendency to look towards other countries and cities, and emulate their example. While it is good practice to learn from other’s successes, it is equally important to study the same examples for possible flaws, and feasibility studies when the model is applied in the local context and culture, and to inform the public of the results. May we remind ourselves that the very cities we are talking about are the ones with huge ecological footprints that are unsustainable in the long run.
To take an example, a higher FSI is touted as the solution to Mumbai’s space crunch. Needless to say, it is a solution. Possibly the only solution, given the current situation. But is it necessarily a happy solution? The people residing in the high rises close to even higher-rise office buildings, are surrounded by an artificially created environment all day. They would most certainly have a higher standard of living (indeed they would need to, to be able to afford a high rise in Mumbai), but will they also necessarily have a better ‘quality of life’? Can we have studies comparing the health and happiness quotient of people residing in low and high rises in a city, given that all other factors be more or less equal? I don’t need to even say what the results of such a study would be. And yet we all know that there is no escaping high rises as a solution in the current scenario. But can we afford to ignore the merits of the alternative? And should we not try to preserve, as much as possible, the horizontal and organic character of our cities, and in turn the (relative) mental well being of its inhabitants?
This again is not possible if we let the same cities become hubs of every kind of activity. That brings me back to the point I made earlier. We have no choice but to develop smaller towns, and in a way that is efficient and sustainable.
To be fair, its not like it hasn’t started already. Infosys, headquartered in Bangalore, another city bursting at its seems, has now a mini township in the smaller neighbouring town of Mysore. We've already been shown a way. We need to study and built upon the experience.

A lucky generation

Many years ago, when I was in high school, 9th standard or so, a History teacher made a remark in class that has remained with me to this day. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and she was trying to explain to us young minds the importance of the occurrence. While its significance was not lost on any of us considering all the media coverage it was getting, I’m not sure any of us could completely fathom the extent of it, or the repercussions it would continue to have for years afterwards. Anyway, the point she made was that we were a lucky generation, to have witnessed events as important as that, and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the invasion of Kuwait, and the first Gulf war. These were historical landmarks, she told us, and we were all witnessing them with our own eyes, brought into our living rooms through our television sets.
I remember her words every once in awhile, every time I go to Delhi and lose my way, because a new flyover has come up, or a metro station, or a mall, or a road made one way. I have the usual Delhi versus Mumbai arguments with my architect friend, who insists Delhi is no better off today than it was five years ago. I go to Connaught Place and marvel at the number of options to eat and drink, and contrast it with many years ago, when as a child, it used to be a birthday treat to go to CP and have ice cream at Nirula’s. Not to mention the regular trips to Chonas in Khan Market, a short walk from school (also usually for birthday treats) which was one of the few eating places then to offer fast food, and salads and pizzas. Now Khan Market is a changed place, with the biggest brands jostling for space. A newspaper article informs me that it’s the most expensive real estate in the country at the moment, and the 16th most expensive in the world. Chonas still exists I believe, though I don’t go there any more.
I witness all these changes in my own country, my own cities, so much closer to home and heart, and I feel lucky indeed. (But then again, the human race is progressing at such a maddeningly fast pace, that that’s an honour no generation will be able to escape.)
I realize they are all a result of the changed economic policies brought about by the Congress in the 90s, and while I do appreciate them on the one hand, realizing the good that they have done the country, I cant also help but be apprehensive of getting blinded by all this prosperity, and forgetting how inequitable the rewards of this progress has been, favouring the cities, and not so much villages and small towns, and the rich and not the poor.