I took part in a television debate on the day the Development Plan 2014 to 2034 was scrapped by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. The Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson was jubilant, “This just shows what a responsive and caring party we are.” The Congress spokesman too took credit: “We put so much pressure on the government that they had to drop it.” The Shiv Sena spokesman also tried to score brownie points, forgetting that it’s his party that controls the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and was, therefore, responsible for the plan in the first place. All of these reactions are typical, wouldn’t you say of our country, where everyone’s rushing in to take credit, not for creating something, but for cancelling something!
Not that Development Plan 2034 didn’t need scrapping. Over the days when it was revealed to the public, newspapers and television channels carried gleeful reports of its many bloopers: major heritage sites not shown or wrongly labelled; roads going right through housing colonies, or through century-old structures like Bandra’s Mount Mary Church; large swathes of mangroves disappearing from the plan and reappearing as development zones. The bloopers, in fact, were totally extraordinary: cemeteries marked for housing and roads, Jehangir Art Gallery as a veterinary hospital, the already constructed Lokhandwala township as a no-development zone, the newly constructed Bandra-Kurla Complex shown as a water body, the iconic Marine Drive, Asia Society and Prince of Wales Museum ceasing to exist. There are many more, but these will do to show that they are so glaring that they couldn’t possibly be mistakes.
I am not usually a conspiracy theorist, but in this case I am beginning to wonder if this wasn’t a well-planned exercise. Suppose the “mistakes” were calculated, and suppose they were made deliberately massive so that they couldn’t be missed? In such a scenario, uproar was guaranteed and protests by the hundreds to be expected. A successful diversion would thus be created and the chief minister would have no option but to cancel the development plan and order its revision. The revision — given a four-month deadline — would then correct these “blunders” and everyone would be happy. And the development plan could then have achieved its sinister objective, which is to make Mumbai a huge development zone — a bonanza for builders and developers.
Sounds far-fetched? I once attended an iftar party hosted by a Mumbai builder. He is a prominent one, but by no means one of the top guns. Yet, the then chief minister downwards, every Cabinet minister was present, breaking bread with the man. That’s just a small illustration of the lobby’s clout. If you remember Prithviraj Chavan’s tenure as chief minister, there were daily reports in the papers about his departure from the chair. Why? Because he had issued a diktat that he would not meet any individual developer on a one-on-one basis, but would only meet the association’s office bearers.
The furore caused by the extraordinary mistakes of Development Plan 2034 was justified, but it has succeeded in hiding its major flaws. In concentrating on errors which are easily corrected, we have overlooked the long-term disaster the plan will bring to the city. For example, there’s the matter of increase in FSI (floor space index), the proportion of land to the permissible built-up area. The development plan raises this alarmingly through the city from one and 1.33 to two. There is also an increase to the staggering figure of eight in certain parts. This is justified on the grounds that the increase to eight is only in already high-density areas like railway stations. But surely, the purpose of a development plan is to improve intolerable conditions, not to perpetuate them?
The argument for the general increase in FSI is that an artificial freezing results in limited residential spaces, totally inadequate for a growing population. This, then, results in slums. But if you study all the new residential towers that have come up, you will see that their cost is so prohibitive that no lower-middle class person can afford this accommodation. So does that solve the problem of slums, or is a direct reason for greater future proliferation? It is only affordable housing — and that means really affordable housing — which can make Mumbai slum-free. Development Plan 2034 does not have the vision to do that.
Nor does it have the vision to improve the quality of life of the average Mumbaikar. For a builder, the salt pans that dot the periphery of the city are wasted space. To the rest of us, salt pans provide much needed open space. That goes for the Aarey Milk Colony, or the city’s beaches, its few remaining gardens, or even the Raj Bhavan’s extensive green cover. The inaccessibility of these areas is still important to give the city its lungs; as for the accessible areas, have you seen the masses of people who go to Hanging Gardens, Chowpatty, Shivaji Park, Juhu beach and similar areas in the evenings and on a Sunday?
Development Plan 1991 allocated two square metre per person of open space in the already crowded island city, but six square metre per person in the suburbs. Development Plan 2034 reduces it uniformly to two square metre per person. Similarly, development zones are reduced by a massive 6,784 hectares; Aarey Milk Colony, so far a no-development zone, will have only 300 hectares of green cover left, while 1,009 hectares are proposed to be developed. Incidentally, London’s open space figure is 10 square metre per person, and New York’s, even with its high FSI, is in excess of 25!
Last, but not least, Development Plan 2034 has not only failed to solve the problem of hawkers, but has made it infinitely worse. The hawker-pedestrian relationship is a peculiar one: the pedestrian hates the encroachment on space, yet finds the hawker’s services indispensable. How do you solve this contradiction? The BMC tried to move hawkers into market buildings in Grant Road, Andheri and so on, but those structures have remained unoccupied for as many as 16 years. A hawker, it seems, has to be on the pavement. So you should allow hawkers on pavements, like M.G. Road, which have the space, but not on Linking Road, which impede traffic.
No one is suggesting that there are easy solutions, but drawing up a development plan for one of the biggest cities in the world, isn’t supposed to be simple, is it?
The writer is a senior journalist
