The city betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, aka ₹814.04 crore

Mumbai's waterfront development plan faces setbacks due to land mismanagement, prioritizing private greed over public benefit, hindering urban progress.

MUMBAI: Mumbai has again been buried under the debris of broken promises. The Mumbai Port Authority’s (MbPA) cynical parceling of 215 acres of land effectively means that, instead of a planned mixed-use development of the almost contiguous eastern waterfront, we will be stuck with ad hoc commercial or industrial monoliths blocking out the sky and refreshing sea air. This is the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of the inevitable fall of dominoes.

The city betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, aka ₹814.04 crore

More space earmarked for public good will be swallowed by private greed. Covert as well: ₹814.04 crore is a clear undervaluation of prime, shore-line land; remember, the surrendered non-dock-use, 966-hectare bonanza stretches from Colaba to Wadala.

The incredible excuse offered is that in toto development could only happen if the entire area was available; much of it is currently tenanted, and only untenant parcels are up for the 30-year lease. Wow! So MbPA’s ‘solution’ is to further encumber the valuable stretch, and thus make in toto development even less possible. Moreover, as Pankaj Joshi pointed out in these columns last Thursday, the land is not MbPA’s to hand out. When port activities shifted to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), non-dock-use lots were to be returned to the city for purposes such as “urban planning infrastructure, economic, environmental, housing development, tourism”.

There’s scary déjà vu about the way a second windfall has blown away, and with it the opportunity to make Mumbai livable, workable, breathable again. Just as the Bombay Port Trust (as MbPA was earlier called) had been gifted land for economically important shipping, millowners were granted long leases at nominal rates for Bombay’s other wealth-creator. In 1991, under Charles Correa’s visionary masterplan, Development Control Regulation (DCR) 58 ordained a three-way division of freed-up mill-land: one-third each for public utilities including open recreational spaces and affordable housing; the rest retained by original owners for private development.

But in 2001, Vilasrao Deshmukh’s government castrated DCR 58 by declaring that only vacant mill-land was eligible. Since mills are scattered with diverse sheds, the city got a pointless 32-acre instead of the expected, transformative 166. Only mill-owners, developers and political facilitators laughed all the way to the bank. The former Girangaon of Lalbaug-Parel continues to weep over its multiple afflictions.

The Waterfront project would have specifically uplifted the city’s eastern flank – cruelly bypassed by the infrastructure lavished on the west. Planners seem to think that the stretch along D’Mello/ Dockyard Road is still just a depression of scabrous warehouses, when in fact there’s an increasing density of housing colonies with correspondingly deeper problems of connectivity. To wit:

· Eastern freeway mockingly whizzes past; to use it, ‘easterners’ must negotiate the snarl of Antop Hill or travel all the way to Reay Road.

· Engineering marvel Atal Setu’s entry point is more manageable, but who needs its distant destinations?

· At-hand monorail doesn’t serve the needs of adjacent populations either, but it has swallowed half the carriageway of arterial roads.

· Ambitious Sewri-Worli Elevated Connector will be this congested area’s first gateway to the Worli-Bandra Sealink and all the blandishments to its south and north. Its two arms are growing apace, but their union is barred by old Elphinstone bridge; its closure has been held up by residents of two abutting chawls demanding intractable in situ rehabilitation; even dismantling and reconstruction could stretch interminably going by the Kaftaesque experience of nearby Delisle road bridge.

· Metro? Yes, the city’s true public transport saviour will come – but on the wrong, undeveloped side of the Harbour Line track.

Obsolescence is an essential of progress. Rust belts echo ‘Ozymandias’ -- P B Shelley’s poem on the crumbling legacy of a once-proud king, and reimagined in the eponymous episode of Breaking Bad. But, the world over, new Phoenixes rise, and shine with a well-planned mix of leisure, retail and entertainment that serves both public good and private gain. Like Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, the Waterfront project had unique potential for learning and leisure, with enough commerce to bankroll it. If we let it sink, it will take the city with it. Docks facilitated Bombay’s glorious past. Current greed will blight not just its present, but its future too. Mindless over-construction isn’t threatening only the distant Himalaya.

(Bachi Karkaria is a city chronicler and best-selling author.)