This panel focused on ‘Cities in Crisis’, using Mumbai’s struggles with infrastructure, housing, and pollution as a lens to examine wider national challenges of sustainable urban development. The panelists were all experts in various aspects of urban planning: Structural engineer and urban planner Shirish Patel, urban researcher and teacher Hussain Indorewala, and Amita Bhide, urban policy and governance professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The discussion was moderated by senior journalist Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar. They explored strategies for creating inclusive cities that benefit all residents, regardless of income. With Mumbai as a microcosm, the panel looked at the complex interplay of infrastructure, housing, green spaces, historical preservation, and livelihood concerns, seeking solutions that prioritize both environmental sustainability and human dignity for all city dwellers.
NWMI member and senior journalist Kalpana Sharma introduced the panel discussion. She said the focus on Mumbai would help us understand the crises in other parts of the country as well. For instance, despite being a city by the sea, Mumbai now experiences high levels of air pollution. Was this inevitable? Also, infrastructure continues to be built to benefit a small percentage of the population while the poor in the city struggle for basic needs. Furthermore, while Mumbai once had an ideal mixed use neighbourhood system, this has now been replaced by gated communities that cater to the needs of the residents alone.
Urban planner and structural engineer Shirish Patel said that although capitalism would not disappear and was here to say, we needed a change in mindset to ensure that everyone had the right to education, food, livelihood. Also, the poor had a right to shelter. Patel suggested three approaches to changing this mindset.
The first is to stop looking at land as a commodity. While capitalism is built on the belief/premise that land is a trading commodity, it is not, he argued. Land is fixed in quantity and land markets need to be treated differently. “Most of the land is not tradeable,” he said, as it “belongs to the Sovereign”. This land is put to public use like roads, railways, forests and wildlife reserves. Land can be leased to individuals, corporations, or religious entities. It is only private land that can be traded.
The second change is to ensure housing is spread uniformly. This would mean ensuring a mix of income groups that could live together in different parts of the city. The third change is to accept that ownership of land is different from ownership of structures. Just as roads, parks, schools are off the market, land for the lowest 40% percentile of the population should be as well, said Patel.
TISS professor Amita Bhide focused her presentation on the M-East Ward of Mumbai and traced its history as a site for resettlement (due to development projects) since the 1950s. People who were earlier in the western, eastern suburbs and in the island city of Mumbai had been resettled to the M-East Ward where property value is low.
She said 70% of the population there lives in slums. Health data for the area has shown that it is also a site for illnesses. Displaying a map with the health facilities available in Cheetah Camp in M-East Ward, Bhide explained how these were disproportionately low compared to the population residing there. This illustrates what a low development index looks like.
Bhide outlined the instruments and processes of resettlement. She called it a ‘hands-off job.’ There are multiple agencies involved and responsibility cannot be pinned on any one of them. Developers determine locations after which constructed tenements are handed over to state agencies. The allocation of tenements is with project implementing agencies. This raises the question of who delivers on infrastructure like sewage and water lines, open spaces, and commercial spaces. Bhide gave the example of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) resettlement by the World Bank. This resettlement project at Cheetah Camp was showcased as successful, even though many of these colonies did not have sewer lines. The third point in the process of resettlement is the loss of livelihood. Bhide said many times people lose their source of livelihood once they are relocated but there is no compensation for this loss. Moreover, in the new resettlement colonies, there are buildings with vacant tenements or floors that affect the safety of those living in them. And lastly, eligibility criteria for allocation of tenements in the resettlement colonies often result in families and communities being fragmented.
The emerging issues, Bhide said, are lack of livelihood opportunities and an enhanced tax burden on these newly resettled residents. There are families that opt out of resettlement. Electoral constituencies change when thousands of people are resettled in an area. Sometimes, when the resettlement buildings exist alongside old slums that have not yet been rehabilitated, there are tensions over the sharing of basic services. Together, this results in a struggle over power and control over spaces.
Veteran urban researcher Hussain Indorewala began his presentation with the example of the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, also known as the Atal Setu. Indorewala said that in 2003, the ‘Vision Mumbai’ report by McKinsey had suggested that the Trans Harbour Link should have rail and road connectivity. However, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) decided it should be a road-only project.
Another example of skewed costs and benefits was the Bandra-Worli Sea Link which opened in 2009. It had been estimated to cost Rs 400 crores. But the actual cost came up to Rs 1,634 crores. The ridership per day had been estimated to be 100,000 but the actual ridership per day is only 32,000-38,000 vehicles, said Indorewala. “We don’t have a concept of planning failures,” he said.
Indorewala spoke about the Mumbai Coastal Road Project which was sanctioned by a team, including architects, whose main justification for the project was ‘public health’ because slow movement of vehicles using fossil fuels leads to pollution and causes health problems. He pointed out that while the Coastal Road’s Detailed Project Report (DPR) states that cars can move faster on this road leading to reduced pollution, the DPR for the Metro rail claims that widening the metro network would reduce cars on the road. However, the Metro rail network that is currently being constructed in Mumbai has not been able to convert the car-using population to switch to public transport. While in 1998, the dependence on public transport in Mumbai was 78%, this has come down to 55% today, said Indorewala. The transport policy has become car-centric over time, he noted.
Debates about infrastructure are also debates about values. There must be an acceptance of inequalities. Political choices rather than technical ones tend to shape decisions, said Indorewala. There has been “prioritisation of some people over welfare for all”, he observed.
In response to a question from the audience about how he had approached housing in Navi Mumbai, Patel said that CIDCO, the autonomous authority created to plan Navi Mumbai, was set up as a multi-disciplinary urban planning body, with a view that Navi Mumbai would provide housing to all income groups according to their share in the population. Asked to give an example of an equitable slum redevelopment project, Bhide mentioned Shivaji Nagar in M-East Ward. She said greater thought had been given to the project including how to address the impact on livelihoods. In addition, toilet blocks were built between sets of 25 houses, making them more accessible.
Responding to a question, Indorewala said infrastructure development needs to be oriented towards railways, buses and pedestrian infrastructure. But instead, we are moving towards the metro rail, airport and freeways. A 1994 study had strongly recommended the building of east-west rail connectivity in Mumbai, but this has not yet been carried out, he said. Indorewala said usage of cars should be disincentivised, adding that a World Bank study had envisioned a car-centric transport system with more sea links and flyovers. Only 12% of Mumbai’s trips are made by cars. “The population being served by the new infrastructure is very small,” he said.
The BEST (which runs public buses) has been completely defunded, said Indorewala, and instead buses on contract are being used. Also, the existing bus system was seen as a competition to the Metro. While the Metro Line 1 does offer east to west connectivity, the unaffordable ticket prices mean it is not being utilised as much, he said.
In response to an audience question about how gender dynamics are affected during resettlement projects, Bhide said that the impact on women’s livelihoods has been disastrous. Women are mostly engaged in informal livelihoods including recycling processes, animal rearing, making papads, and so on. These cannot be carried out in their new residences owing to the lack of space. There is also a decline in the role of women as community managers in their new residences.
Laxmi Murthy asked about the economic cost of free bus travel for women and reporting around it. Indorewala gave the example of BEST which was set up as a cross subsidy service. (It distributed electricity and also ran the bus system.) The World Bank had recommended that BEST should be run by the transport department. He said all bus systems are subsidised or cross subsidised. “Public transport is not meant for profit; it is a service,” he said. Patel added that the subsidy must be extended to the Metro. “The notion that each enterprise has to be profit making comes from capitalism,” he said.
Priyanka Borpujari asked about the destruction of Buddhist heritage sites for the construction of an airport in Navi Mumbai. Patel answered that any development plan should include the preservation of heritage sites and that the original location of the airport was supposed to be in Mandwa, but it was changed because of pressure from villa owners in Alibaug.