Saturday, December 8, 2007

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.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

ookk .. another post that seems to have hit the spot .. : ) .. yup .. here are some observations from a US visited and now returning to motherland wala desi .. LA is supposed to be one of the most polluted cities in the US .. and yet, when i landed in IGI, i could make out the thickness in the air, courtesy the dust and pollution .. nothing that really bothered me for more than 5 seconds, but still, a perceptible change .. the next marked difference was visible outside the airport .. we'll skip the description of the airport itself, since its standards are pretty low in itself (which means that i really don't need to compare it to any other airport to point out how crappy it is) .. the taxi ride was interesting .. again, we'll disregard the taxi itself (apparently a new speed limit of 40 kmph has been imposed on delhi taxis, which means that they now crawl along the roads) .. i was more interested in the roads .. and i remembered this while i was reading your blog .. my thoughts as i roller coasted along the road was that "why can't anyone build a decent road in india?" .. why does the road have to be a series of wavy patches, alternating with potholes, with no lanes, and different widths every 100 meters ? .. what is so difficult about building a decent road .. i mean, the land is already there .. the money is there .. the people are there .. the machinery is there .. so why not build a decent road ? .. and therein lies your answer about the 43,000 crores and the great transformation and what the metros need .. defintely a breather .. but not from people who live in the metros, but instead, from the people who suck the very life out of the metros by not addressing even the very basic requirements that a metro has .. everyone is so busy making a quick buck that no matter what kind of money one pumps into a metro, nothing is going to move forward .. yes india is progressing .. yes india is moving ahead .. yes india might become a second world country soon .. but indians ? .. no sir .. they are staying firmly where they always were .. what we need today is not a change of infrastructure, but a change of mindset .. everything else will follow on its own .. the funny thing is that a change in mindset, even though it is very difficult to achieve, can be achieved much more quickly than a corresponding change in infrastructure .. but for that, we need people with a vision and a will to enforce that vision .. the last time we had such a person was 80 years ago .. : ) .. who knows what the future holds though ..

Sgrk said...

I completely agree with you that "development" had to be spread more evenly in the country. Not to mention the fact that it would ease the pressure on the major metros, it would help the economies of the smaller towns and give them a much needed fillip. In addition, it would (perhaps) ease a lot of the tension between the centre and the states about only certain regions in the country being promoted (because of politicians from those parts being in power at the centre). But I don't see such a move coming so much from the state as from the private sector. The IT industry in particular is doing this very thing in towns like Mysore (for instance your example of Infosys), Bhubaneshwar, Chandigrah, and now they are thinking of exploring the North East. One must remember, however, that this is largely due to the lack of available "talent" in the metros and the crying need for English speaking college graduates in the IT industry. But then, corporates are generally driven by needs other than altruistic and cannot blame them for that.

poosha said...

Thanks to Anupam and Sagarika, for those very insightful comments. Both of you reacted to entirely different things, making me realize, all over again, how complex these issues are, and what a multi faceted approach they require from people trying to address them.

Anupam: I rather agree with most things you say.
Yes, so why can’t we make decent roads? However, of the few things you mention that would constitute a decent road, I will pick one, the road width, to make a point I tried to make in the post as well. The money, the people, the machinery may well be there, but that may not necessarily be true of the land. Nothing in this country comes easy, certainly not land, even to the government. So every time the government tries to take over land, to improve infrastructure, they might well be encroaching on someone’s living space. This land might have been illegally occupied to begin with, but that’s another discussion. So the people need to be rehabilitated, and that is another can of worms.
Then again, a lot of Indian cities are organic and might actually have roads that meander and narrow down and open up. So an even width might be out of question. These are all stray examples, I know, and the point you made is valid in itself. What I am trying to add here is that this country, like any other, has its own unique culture and any model borrowed from another, that has to be applied to any facet of our lives, should be flexible and alterable to suit our needs, and should provide solutions without creating more problems.
Yes, we need a breather from people making a quick buck out of schemes that should be helping the country progress. No arguments on that one.
What we need is a change of mindset? Absolutely. If we could achieve that, everything else would indeed fall in place.
A change in mindset achievable quicker than a change in infrastructure? You’ve got to be kidding me! I haven’t actually thought this through, but that is my first reaction to what you say. A change of mindset of a few might lead to massive infrastructure improvements that would be for the benefit of many, but while the latter is quantifiable, and achievable in time targets, the former might take decades to just take shape, that too with limited reach and success. I have a feeling this really is a whole separate discussion in itself.

Sagarika: That’s the funny thing, you see. Is it that we don’t see the move coming from the State because they are not in a position to make changes as effectively as the private sector? Or is it that they just won’t? Or a complex combination of many such factors? And what are these factors? For certainly the corporates are driven by motives other than altruistic, so it cannot be expected that they will address the repercussions responsibly, if it doesn’t fit into their scheme of things. The State might then need to step in anyway.
I am reminded here of a conversation I had with a friend sometime ago. He works with a leading international investment bank that is increasing operations in India, for which he is moving back from abroad. He said the future (of the country) lies in manufacturing, and that villages needed to be a thing of the past. Really, I thought to myself. I am completely out of depth here, and could offer no arguments, but I really always thought that the future of the country lay in its villages. And where does agriculture figure in their scheme of things? And indigenous cultures like migrant tribal populace?
Obviously all the foreign investors we see rushing in (and God knows there are many) have a plan for this country.

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