Dear Milind,

Good to see that you are so pro-actively engaged. About the urban decay & deteriorating infrastructure, I would like to offer some radical-sounding (if the malady is serious, the medicine has to be bitterer, right?) suggestions:

The fact is.. the more the people live in city, the more problems it brings in. No matter how efficient the civic administration is, there is only a limit to stretch. Once the population exceeds beyond that critical number (by bursting at seams), the only direction is can go is..southwards! Why blame Mumbai, I’ve seen New York, LA & New Jersey, how systems succumb to the growing population & a host of allied problems. So the radical solution is..

• Shift the political capital from Mumbai to a completely obscure town in Maharashtra. There would be one time cost of doing this, but in one shot, you are reducing the population of Mumbai by a sizable chunk (think of all the allied offices, employees, their families etc). The development of the obscure town (& its near by towns) will happen almost overnight (ensuring jobs to millions around). Let it remain the financial capital but the political center should be somewhere else. This is similar to the proven model of USA. Tell me, the capital city of NJ. It is a small town called Trenton hardly few know. Or , for that matter, Sacramento being capital of California. For that matter, Washington DC being capital of USA (& not New York!)

• Don’t allow any new company to have their registered office or factory in Mumbai. In short, put a freeze on new development/expansion. This will ensure that good care will be taken of the existing companies, factories. This will also ensure that those companies will be forced to open offices/factories somewhere else prompting a uniform development of the region. USA is the best example of uniform, consistent development. If you remove just 20 cities from India, there is nothing much remaining (the development is so concentrated in 4 metros & other few cities)

Half of Canada's population live in Mumbai. The need of the hour is proper urban planning to create suburbs. We need to promote B line cities and take the load of the Metros(which are still in the developmental stage!).It's a catch- 22 situation.
The Pune - Mumbai Stretch needs to be industrialised in a phased manner through zones for industries and residential areas. Right now its wild, go where they want to as long as there is money. Chennai has done a better job of that by earmarking, Tharamani, Old mahabalipuram road, Sripermbuthur sectors for IT, Automotives, Pharma etc.

Milind, unplanned construction can cause nature's havoc as we have seen in Mumbai, B'lore, New Orleans etc.

"India’s growth rate is largely attributed to her cities and its important that urban renewal and development be given top priority – even if it means one has to rely more on the judiciary than on the government."

You nailed it. If people like you can put together a Mumbai visionary team that can help plan urban sprawl in partership with fast growing cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Houston etc some detrimental effects can be reduced. Yes, you need an elcted Mayor who really has strong passion for Mumbai to lead the battle.

Heartened to hear your point of view, and completely agree with it. Mumbai could do with arresting some development. What also needs to be addressed, however, is the sad state of public utilities and infrastructure in Mumbai. Parts of NYC are almost as crowded as Mumbai and definitely the skyscrapers guzzle a lot more power, water and the like.

It seems to me that there is absolutely no sensible approach to this problem anywhere in India. We have tons of arguments, promises, court cases and debates about water and power - but the situation is sadly not improving as a result.

Roads in Mumbai compared with New Delhi are horrible. Before my eyes Delhi has changed from a polluted (make that industrial strength polluted) city with lousy roads into a virtual paradise in some spots with the expansive network of roads and CNG conversion. There are hot spots of traffic in Mumbai every day (Lokhandwala Circle for one) and things have been that way for years, decades. Is it too much to ask for someone to sit and plan out a better road network?

Hi Milind

This is an issue very close to any urban Indian's heart .The way our cities are degrading due to the reckless and indiscriminate development is quite a tragedy for the sheer millions who suffer everday for it .
Mumbai is already a catastrophe Id say.

Its great to see a a politicain and a resident Indian to take note of this issue and work on it.

Hope more guys in power will take heed of the mess thats being created and take even radical steps like Prashant suggests, to curb it.

Good luck for all your efforts in the political sphere. Keep up the good work.

Mr Deora you sound more like a member of the opposition, when u say u r just an MP and possibly cannot do much in rectifying the condition of Mumbai city, perhaps u r forgeting u r part of the ruling alliance both at State and at the center , so if u have the real will and authentic concern you should be able to redeem the situation, u obviously r better off than a commoner or an MP who belongs to the opposition.
Well its said pen is stronger than sword , I guess todays glitterati take it too seriously and resort more to penning their thoughts than transforming them into action.

Hope we will see more of actions than hear of your thoughts or opinions.

All the best

Ispita Saha

Milind,

It was heartening to read your views. In fact I read it in the Indian Express and was duly impressed. Please follow through on your ideas and you will make a difference, a big and very welcome difference.

There is only one aspect which kind of worries me in your excellent article -"Had the committee arrived at a solution, the judicial process could have been averted and everyone concerned would have been a winner. It is in this context that I see the Bombay High Court judgment as greatly beneficial to Mumbai."

This is now becoming the rule rather than the exception. The political process is becoming a millstone and judicial activism is fortunately stepping in to steay things for the ordinary citizen. Though nice, it is also an ominous sign of where politicians are taking us. So Milind, I hope people like you will make yourselves heard and follow through with action - not get frustrated and give up.

Dear Milind,

I wish more politicians think like you do. There are several maladies affecting Indian urban development. Top most is corruption at the highest levels. Bangalore is a prime example. I don't need to name names, but there are some families who have indulged in mass land grab. For them, all that matters is that the land they have grabbed appreciates in value, no matter what. The good of the community and the city goes down the drain. Therefore these people will do anything to bring more development to places like Bangalore while ignoring Bijapur, Gulbarga, Belgaum what have you.

That brings me to lopsided development. It is not enough that only Bangalore or Mumbai grow in population and jobs. Rest of the state needs to grow too. In that respect, Maharashtra has done a better job that Karnataka. Politicians keep saying that the real India lives in villages but they don't do enough for them.

Thirdly poor or non-existent urban planning. In the United States, they plan townships and layouts decades in advance. The space for freeways and roads are laid out 20-30 years before a locality is developed. There is no question of anyone grabbing that land and benefitting or taking the government to court preventing development. The planning is not done by bureaucrats sitting in ivory towers. The local people have a say in it and the planners have a lot more accountability. Not to say that there are no vested interests or some amount of corruption here, but all in all, it works out pretty good.

Last but not the least, the business leaders must take some leadership and move out of large urban areas. There is no good reason why companies like Infosys can not open offices in Mangalore, Gulbarga or Belgaum, which fortunately they are. Without jobs, people are going to continue to flock to Bangalore and Mumbai putting a lot more strain on the infrastructure.

Regards,

Ravi Kulkarni

testtest

hi milind
it is a very nice article posted by you.
i actually think that you should take some
strong action against these malaise coz u have the
power in state and centre as well.
it seems to be very nice that u people arevery much aware about these problems

regards

shamsher alam
delhi

“”…..while activists and urban planners see it as an opportunity to better plan the city’s transformation into a world-class metro…….”””

Well ,Mr Deora ...I don’t agree with your notion that the court ruling was positive. Instead of pursuing pro-active measures, the Bombay high court went back to perpetuating an old guideline that had for years frozen the mill lands. We are just back to square one.
Also, we don’t live in an altruistic world but a purely capitalistic one. Like before, the mill owners might just go back to their older strategy of holding on to their property instead of sharing it with the city…
Even if they “CHOOSE TO” redevelop -it's a myth that we are going to get 200 acres of land. The administration doesn’t have a holistic policy which means that we will have paltry pieces of public land , scattered all over , which will inevitably turn into shanties....and let’s not even get into the low cost housing that MHADA offers the city.
I think in the whole process the private enterprise has taken a beating. Why would anybody want to invest in the city, when we treat them so shabbily? I am not saying the older idea was completely foolproof- but at least it did not move the city into decay!!...

“”..Infrastructure VS Development..””
Infrastructure has been primarily the govt’s domain and as we can see around us it’s truly awful. 75 % of Mumbai City lives in slums and another large fraction lives in old dilapidated structures…No wonder the state of our Municipal finance is terrible- with 75 % paying no taxes and another segment paying old cesses taxes!!...The municipality can’t even recover basic costs of providing essential services. When you say “infrastructure before development”…. Is the govt really doing anything to upgrade and enhance our infrastructure services??????....We take years to just commence infrastructure projects.
Also, the vision of common man and the developer who is responding to the demand created by people is not contradictory. If the developers don’t put up apartment towers – all of us will not have homes!!.. Both infrastructure and development have to be pursued simultaneously.
Even though, urbanization is the key propellers of growth, Indian administration has never really focused on it.. Obviously because of the dynamics of politics…In the last 55 years – There have not been too many attempts to create new urban centres or seriously implement massive urban renewal schemes. According to the UN, by 2050 , the world is going to experience a massive shift of population from rural to urban areas. And for the first time in history, the world is going to become more urban than rural. This massive urbanization is going to be the fastest in developing nations. And India is nowhere close to being prepared for it. The next decade is going to be critical. We cannot take forever to just arrive at basic decisions!!. ...The entrepreneurial spirit of this country is fiercely dynamic but our government mechanism’s indolence and lack of vision is what is putting us behind.

Hi Milind,

I am a resident of New Panvel, Navi Mumbai. I want to work towards making New Panvel a Green Zone. Can you guide me what is the process for this?

Regards,

Pradipta