To the Present

With Bombay at breaking point in terms of congestion and living space, the Bombay Metropolitan Regional Planning Board took steps in 1967 to promote a New Bombay on the mainland. The proposed site for New Bombay covered an area of 344 square kilometres, integrating 95 villages spread over the districts of Thane and Raigad.

BMRDA

The intention for this new city of two million people was to distribute the existing population between the old and new city and also to absorb additional migration. On March 1, 1975, the BMRDA (Bombay Metropolitan Regional Development Authority) was established to coordinate the development of Bombay and its surrounds. However, Government offices were not transferred to New Bombay as was proposed and instead, development intensified in south Bombay. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade were reclaimed and developed, reflecting a nexus between the builders’ lobby and the Maharashtra State Government. It was the last leg of the Backbay Reclamation scheme.

The names of the same group of builders kept recurring, suggesting to many evidence of collusion with the Government who sold them prime land at low prices. In the 77 acres of land at Nariman Point, there are 40 clustered skyscrapers housing over 300,000 office workers. There is no green space or provision for shops and restaurants.

Cuffe Parade

It has become the ultimate single use zone and is deserted at night. Cuffe Parade was reduced from a picturesque, recreational seafront to the status of a backyard to the insensitive development of skyscrapers dominating its southern end. It is synonymous with an increasingly uneasy urban architectural relationship in Bombay: Edwardian and Art deco apartment houses, upper class high-rise blocks, an urban fishing village and squatter shanties all coalesce.

Ironically, as the city was turning its back to the water, its original inhabitants, the Kolis, were reclaiming their place in the city by the waterfront, all along the city’s western foreshore – at Colaba, Cuffe Parade, Worli, Mahim, Bandra, Juhu, Versova and beyond. Nestled in settlements amidst high-rise apartments, the Kolis dry out their nets, mend their boats and sail into the Arabian Sea – for their lives are intrinsically and inextricably linked to the ocean. The Kolis continue to occupy the water’s edge, looking out to the horizon from the edges of the metropolis, seemingly oblivious to the implosion taking place in the cities within.

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