CRAMPED FOR ROOM
Mumbai’s land woes
A PICTURE OF CONGESTION
In This Issue
The Brabourne Stadium, and in
the background the Ambassador
Hotel, seen from atop the Hilton
2
Towers at Nariman Point.
About a City
The story of Mumbai, its journey from seven sparsely
inhabited islands to a thriving urban metropolis home
to 14 million people, traced over a thousand years.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUMAN SAURABH
Land Reclamation – Modes & Methods
A description of the various reclamation techniques
currently in use.
COVER PAGE
In the absence of open maidans
in which to play, gully cricket
seems to have become Mumbai’s
favourite sport.
16
Land Mafia
Why land in Mumbai is more expensive than anywhere
in the world.
The Way Out
Where Mumbai is headed, a pointer to the future.
ARTICLES AND DESIGN BY AKSHAY VIJ
12
20
THE GATEWAY OF INDIA,
BOMBAY PORT.
AND IN THE BACKGROUND
About a City
THE STORY OF MUMBAI
Seven islands. Septuplets - seven unborn babies,
waddling in a womb. A womb that we know more
ordinarily as the Arabian Sea. Tied by a thin vestige of
earth and rock – an umbilical cord of sorts – to the
motherland. A kind mother. A cruel mother. A mother
that has indulged as much as it has denied. A mother
that has typically left the identity of the father in doubt.
Like a whore.
To speak of fathers who have fought for the right to
sire: with each new pretender has come a new name.
The babies have juggled many monikers, reflected in
the schizophrenia the city seems to suffer from. The
Koli fishermen were the first to lay claim. From them
possibly comes the present name of the city, derived
from a shrine to the goddess Mumbadevi. The Kolis have
survived unobtrusively in small pockets along the
shoreline while the city has grown up, grown apart.
From the 6th to the 13th century, the islands served as
home to several Hindu dynasties, most famously that
of the Yadava king Bhimdev who made his capital at
Mahikawati, familiar to us as Mahim. The Mohmeddans
of Gujarat annexed the islands in 1343, bringing with
them the beautiful Haji Ali Mosque and the religion of
Islam. The Portuguese dropped anchor in 1508, and
were quick to snatch the islands away from the
Sultanate. They dubbed the deep natural harbour Bom
Bahia – Good Bay. The islands were of little more utility
to the Portuguese than as a weekend getaway, apparent
from their alternative name for the archipelago: A Ilha
da Boa Vida, or The Island of Good Life.
In 1661, Catherine de Braganza, the Portuguese
princess, married King Charles II of England and the
main island of Bombay came to the British as part of
dahej. After some initial Portuguese resistance, the
British in 1665 took control over the other six islands of
the archipelago, as well as the large northern island of
Salsette. The city’s name was anglicized to Bombay.
The name persisted for several centuries, till of course
the Hindu nationalist party - the Shiv Sena, led by the
demagogical Balasaheb Thackeray, came to power.
Thackeray in a superficial quest for roots revived the
nomenclatural battle, and the city has ended where it
began, albeit a little bigger, a little larger. The city has
stopped at Mumbai.
4
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007
The original Bombay archipelago, prior to the
reclamations
GRANT ROAD
NAMED AFTER ROBERT GRANT, GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY FROM
1835 TO 1839, ONE OF THE MOST DENSELY POPULATED
NEIGHBOURHOODS IN THE CITY. ALSO HOME TO KAMATHIPURA –
MUMBAI’S INFAMOUS RED LIGHT DISTRICT.
First Birth
Mumbai as we know the city was born when the British
Crown leased out the islands to the East India
Company at an annual “farm-rent” of 10 pounds, to
be paid in gold! The Company was headquartered at
Surat and was in need of a deeper port that would
allow larger ships to dock. Trade was booming and
Surat couldn’t cope. Bombay, with its naturally safe
harbour and strategic location on the western coast,
was perfect.
The city began as a fortified outpost. Most of the
population was concentrated on the main island of
Bombay, in the area that we call now simply as Fort.
Work on the Fortification was initiated in 1715 by then
Governor Charles Boone, who also oversaw the
construction of the St Thomas Cathedral, from where
comes the name Churchgate (the battlements may
have disappeared but the name has stayed). The
harbour needed strengthening. The first Parsi arrived
to the city in the form of Lowjee Nusserwanji, a foreman
from the Company’s shipyard at Surat, invited to
Bombay to build war ships for the town’s defense.
Much of the 18th century was spent in establishing
firmer control over the island, and in repelling invading
parties sent by the Maratha kingdoms to the north.
Coming of Age
The city had begun to grow. The southern island of
Bombay was witness to a steady stream of migrants
from the hinterland who made their home within the
Fort area. The Englishmen lived in the southern part
of the Fort while the Indian migrants organized
themselves into colonies in the north. However,
increasing congestion compelled the Company to
undertake the project of connecting the seven isles.
In 1782, William Hornby, acting as Governor,
commenced Bombay’s first real engineering project –
the Hornby Vellard.
Near the northern base of Malabar Hill in the area
known as Breach Candy, there once stood a Great
Breach that separated Malabar Hill from the northern
island of Worli. Hornby proposed to the Directors of
the East India Company that the sea be shut out at
its opening at Breach Candy, in order to make the
low-lying land known as the Flats (ordinarily
inundated during high tide) habitable. The proposal,
costing an estimated one lakh rupees, was deemed
too expensive and rejected. City myth says that Hornby
proceeded with the project, unfazed by the refusal.
18 months before his tenure was to run out, the irate
6
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007
Directors served him with a notice of suspension.
Hornby, or so goes the legend, calmly pocketed the
notice and carried on with the implementation of his
scheme until he was forced to hand over charge to his
successor.
The Hornby Vellard, despite all the trouble that it
landed up poor Hornby in, provided Bombay with some
badly needed room for expansion. 400 acres of land
were made habitable, and the city was allowed to
overflow its Fort boundaries. Civic amenities were
improved, a ferry service was commenced between
Bombay and Thane in 1776, new markets were built,
and the city’s drainage dramatically improved. The
precincts of Mahalaxmi, Kamathipura and Tardeo were
settled. Reclamations and causeway building
continued apace. In 1803 Bombay was connected with
Salsette by a causeway at Sion. The
name Sion comes from the Marathi
word shinva, or boundary – Sion here
being the boundary between the
islands of Bombay and
Salsette. The Causeway
connecting Mahim and
Bandra was completed in
1845 at a total cost of oneand-a-half lakh rupees,
donated entirely by Lady
Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy under
the precondition no toll be
charged to citizens for its
use by the Government. In
1838, the Colaba Causeway
linked Colaba and Old
Woman’s Island in the east
to the island of Bombay. The
city was rapidly evolving
into one single fused land
mass. Mumbai was
seemingly coming of age.
In the Prime of Youth
Once the seven islands had been connected there was
no stopping Mumbai’s transformation from trading
post to industrial centre. Better connectivity between
the islands needed to be supplemented with better
links with the mainland. On Saturday 16th of April,
1853, a 21-mile long railway line, the first in India,
between Bombay’s Victoria Terminus and Thane was
opened. Two more lines began operation in 1860 and
a regular service of steamers on the west coast was
commenced in 1869. The earliest cloud of black smoke
sent sailing across the city’s skyline in 1854 by the
city’s first cotton mill was a quiet announcement of
this impending metamorphosis, abetted in no small
way by significant historic events that happily
coincided in and around that time.
The American Civil War began in 1861. The War lasted
a total of five years, during which time ports in the
southern American states were blockaded. America
was the English’s main source of cotton, and the
opportunity created by the gap in supply was grabbed
at with both hands by Bombay’s cotton merchants.
Raw cotton grown in Gujarat was shipped to
Lancashire via Bombay, and several personal
fortunes were made during this period from the
resulting trade. The War
ended in 1865, and
although there was a
temporary recession the
economy managed to
recover, in part due to the
opening of the Suez Canal
in 1869. By the turn of the
decade, Bombay had
become home to 36 cotton
mills. The city had truly
been set on the path to
industrialization.
However, the setting up of mills heralded the arrival
of a vast new population. The island city needed more
room to house its people. The walls of the Fort held
the city handcuffed, as a result of which it was decided
in 1862 by Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay, to
dismantle the battlements. Vital land in the very core
of the city was freed up and made available for
development. Other schemes were initiated by the
Bombay Government to contain land scarcity.
Reclamations were carried out at Apollo Bunder, Mody
Bay, Elphinstone Bunder, Mazagaon, Tank Bunder
and the Frere reclamation on the eastern shore, and
from Colaba to the foot of Malabar Hill on the western
shore.
The grandest of these schemes was proposed by the
Back Bay Reclamation Company, which intended the
reclamation of the entire portion of the Back Bay on
the western foreshore. The Company had been formed
during the boom years of the early 1860’s. However,
when the American Civil War ended in 1865, a
depression set in and land prices fell. The company
went bankrupt and had to be liquidated. The
Government took over the task of completing the
Company’s projects but restricted itself to reclaiming
only a narrow strip of land wide enough to provide for
laying out the tracks from Churchgate station to
Colaba.
The Back Bay Reclamation fiasco though was only a
minor trip-up. Nothing could really impede the city’s
march. Bombay was positively blooming, as was only
too apparent from the importance it was being
accorded by the Crown. No more was the city merely
a fortified trading town. It had become, during the
course of its youth, a symbol of colonial power.
Mumbai had arrived.
JUMA MASJID
ISLAM CAME TO MUMBAI IN THE 14TH CENTURY. THE JUMA
MASJID, ONE OF THE CITY’S BIGGEST MOSQUES, LOCATED NEAR
CRAWFORD MARKET
WAS2007
COMPLETED
IN 1802.
JAN -, JUL
| YELLOW
7
MARINE DRIVE
THOUGH
OFFICIALLY
NETAJI SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE ROAD,
THIS MOST
BEAUTIFUL THREE KILOMETER STRETCH OF ASPHALT WAS LAID DOWN AFTER
COMPLETION OF THE
BACK BAY RECLAMATIONS
DURING THE
1920S.
The Island City over the years: Notice the changing shape of the eastern and southern coastline. Also of interest is the manner in which the city has
spread northward in an attempt to decongest its traditional heart.
Early Greys
Migrants continued to flock to the city, lusting for jobs
created by new building projects, a booming cotton
industry and flourishing trade with the West. A large
share of these industries that afforded employment
to the city’s populace were crowded together in the
narrowest part of the island. Congestion was taking
its toll. The demand for housing was initially met by
private entrepreneurs who put up the first of Mumbai’s
chawls. These single room habitations, occupied by
five to ten persons each, covered in the early part of
the twentieth century about 75% of the city’s occupied
houses. Naturally, chawls were commonest in the
industrial areas of Byculla, Parel and Worli, in and
around the cotton mills.
From the very start though, supply was chasing
demand. It was only a matter of time before the first
slum mushroomed in some obscure corner of the city.
Public health was on a downslide: the island town
found itself faced with regular outbreaks of influenza,
small pox and cholera. The proverb: “Two Monsoons
are the Age of a Man”, was seemingly holding true.
What broke the camel’s back though was the outbreak
of the dreaded bubonic plague in September 1896.
Mumbai’s grey hair were beginning to show.
To check the white from spreading across the city’s
aging scalp, the Bombay City Improvement Trust was
formally constituted on 9th November, 1898. A need
was felt to direct the expansion of the city towards
the northern suburbs of Dadar, Matunga, Wadala and
Sion. Housing projects were commenced. An area of
about 440 acres of low lying paddy fields in the Dadar
area was acquired for the scheme. By the 1920s the
city had swallowed up the suburbs of Kurla Kirol,
Trombay, Chembur, Danda, Khar, Andheri,
Ambernath and Chapel Road in Bandra. By the early
1930s, town planning schemes had been completed
at Bandra, Santa Cruz, Vile Parle, Andheri, Malad,
Borivli and Ghatkopar. Mumbai’s parade had in all
earnest begun its march northwards.
Simultaneous with the Improvement Trust’s efforts
to spread Mumbai northward were the Bombay Port
Trust’s forays into the sea. The entire Cuffe Parade
area, all 90,000 square yards of it, was salvaged from
the western foreshores of Colaba. Reclamation work
at Apollo Bunder carried between the years 1915 and
1919 gave the city land on which to raise the Gateway
of India, and the adjoining Taj Mahal Hotel. The
development of the Ballard Estate on the eastern coast
entailed the conversion of 22 acres of sea-flooded
foreshore into a consciously planned commercial
precinct. The Ballard Estate not only decongested the
Fort area in terms of office space, it also assumed a
symbolic role in representing the city’s mercantile
power in the early decades of the 20th century. The
second Back Bay Reclamation Scheme, despite all the
aspersions that were cast by the media and the public,
and justified though they were (the Back Bay Enquiry
Committee set up in 1926 exposed serious blunders
in financial calculations and raised grave doubts over
the credibility of the scheme), despite all the
controversy and furore, the scheme in the end won
for the city a total of 439.6 acres of land, land which
now boasts of the city’s most beautiful stretch of road
- a three kilometer long promenade flanked by the
ocean on one side, lanky palm trees on the other,
smelling of salt and pickled childhood memories, a
road that we know more simply as Marine Drive.
The city may have aged, but it had aged with grace.
JUL - DEC 2007 | YELLOW
9
Liposuction and Botox
Partition brought to the city Sindhi migrants from
Pakistan. Bombay’s belly swelled from 1.49 million in
1941 to 2.3 million by 1951. The demand for housing
peaked in the southern part of the Island. Former
English properties on Malabar Hill and surrounding
areas were sold and redeveloped into multi-storeyed
blocks of flats by Sindhi and Marwari entrepreneurs.
Almost all property in the Dadar-Matunga area had
been leased and built over. The neighbourhoods of
Nagpada, Grant Road, Bhendi Bazaar and Dongri had
already achieved densities that the rest of the city is
crumbling under today. If infrastructure were the belt
round the city’s waist, then Bombay was about to be
caught with its pants down!
The fat needed redistributing; it was time to turn to
the woodlands in the north. The new suburbs of
Bandra, Khar, Juhu, Santa Cruz and Andheri came
into being. Bungalow villas sprouted where there once
stood forest. Sports clubs, gardens and playgrounds
were developed by local citizens. Housing societies
flourished. Shacks and cottages were built to serve
as weekend retreats. “History was created when in
October, 1932, the enterprising JRD Tata landed his
Puss Moth on the inaugural flight of Tata Services
from Karachi to Bombay. The memorable event marked
the genesis of India’s national carrier, Air India.” As
air traffic increased, a new international terminal was
built at Santa Cruz, replacing the Juhu aerodrome.
The core city was becoming increasingly dependent
on the suburbs. Recognition of the fact came officially
in the form of the Greater Bombay Laws and the
Bombay High Court Act of 1945, which stretched
municipal limits to include the boroughs of Bandra,
Parle-Andheri and Kurla together with 42 villages in
the Bombay suburban district.
CENTER ONE MALL, VASHI
NAVI MUMBAI
HAS BLOSSOMED INTO A PROSPEROUS CITY,
ACCOMMODATING GLOBAL CONSUMPTION ICONS SUCH AS
MCDONALD’S
AND
NIKE
IN SHINY NEW MALLS SUCH AS THIS ONE.
Liposuction and a shot of botox under those drooping
eyelids had evidently done the trick for now, though
it was only a matter of years before time caught up
with a seemingly laggard Bombay.
Two Sons
The period immediately before and after independence
witnessed the birth of the idea of developing land
across the harbour. The idea, first mooted in 1945 by
Foster King, a member of the Indian Institute of
Architects, wished to decongest the city by moving
industries to the peripheries of Greater Bombay and
through the creation of a new township at Bassein
(Vasai). The idea gained greater currency through the
50s, and the lethargy of the various official committees
notwithstanding, culminated in the publication in
1964 of a Development Plan of Greater Bombay, and
a few years later of a Regional Plan for the larger
Metropolitan Region of Bombay.
The Regional Plan emphasized the need to discourage
industries from locating in Bombay. Furthermore, it
proposed a ban on office space in the Fort area and
suggested that commercial activities be located in new
centers like the Bandra-Kurla area in the suburbs.
Recognizing the nature of the exploding city, the plan
made a case for a ‘multi-nucleated Metropolitan
Region’ with many separate new towns which would
take pressure off Bombay from the mass distress
migration that had manifested itself in the 1960s and
was projected to continue for the next few decades.
The authors of the Regional Plan - Charles Correa,
Pravina Mehta and Shirish Patel - in their
recommendations gave prominence to King’s idea of a
‘Twin City’ on the mainland across the harbour from
the old. The starting point for this idea was the already
planned extension of Bombay’s port at Nhava Sheva.
There were also two industrial zones, Thana-Belapur
and Taloja, for which housing and ancillary services
would in any case have to be provided and the Thana
Creek Bridge was also under construction. The idea
on which their proposal hinged though was that of
the State Government moving to New Bombay. By
getting the Government to shift office the intention
was to kick-start the city’s growth, as also to get people
to commute on an east-west axis instead of a northsouth axis.
On the mainland then was built the world’s
largest ever planned city, spanning
an area of about 344 square
kilometers, integrating 95 villages
spread over the districts of Thane
and Raigad. The City and
Development Corporation, or
CIDCO, was established by the
Government of Maharashtra in March,
1970, specifically to plan and manage
the twin city of New Bombay.
According to the plan proposed by
CIDCO the new city was to comprise
20 nodal settlements built along major
transport corridors and to have an
ultimate population of 2 million. The
intention was to distribute the existing
population between the old and the
new city and also to absorb additional
migration.
However, the precise relationship
between the two cities and their
administrations was never outlined or
clearly understood. The Regional Plan
had no vision for ‘Old Bombay’, and its
role vis-à-vis the New Bombay, and this
ambiguity in the relationship frustrated
the potential of the old city to rejuvenate itself. The
new city was not helped by the fact that the State
Government never did move to New Bombay, thus
depriving it of the very catalyst that was supposed to
spur its growth. Poor transport links between the
mainland and the island city didn’t aid the cause
either. The reclamations of the 60s and 70s at Nariman
Point exacerbated the problem to the point that by
1991, Navi Mumbai had a population of 600,000,
scandalously low when compared with the 2 million
targeted by the Regional Plan.
Politics had played spoilsport. Nariman Point had
stolen Navi Mumbai’s thunder. For a myopic State
Government in the 70s, it seemed easier to place
related commercial activities across the road rather
than across an entire bay in New Bombay. Successive
committees appointed by the Government postIndependence had warned against completing the last
leg of the Back Bay Reclamation scheme. The
Government turned a blind eye and proceeded with
the reclamations. To make matters worse, the
development plan of 1964 had recommended a high
FSI of almost 4 for the area. The result was a bouquet
of some 40 skyscrapers that had sprouted on a measly
77 acres of land at the southern end of Marine Drive
at Nariman Point. Nariman Point had become the
family star, exceedingly tall and in the pink of health,
while there lay Navi Mumbai in a corner, weak and
neglected, by itself - the bastard child of a promiscuous
government.
The railway link between Mankhurd and Vashi,
completed in 1992, has been the crutch that’s allowed
the new city to stagger back to its feet. Today, Navi
Mumbai is flourishing, boasting a per capita income
considerably higher than that of old Bombay. It has a
dynamic commercial node at Vashi accommodating
global consumption icons such as McDonald’s and
Nike. It is home to a sizeable fraction of Bombay’s
middle class. Once better links are established with
the island city, there is no stopping Navi Mumbai’s
rise.
The battle for attention between its two sons has come
to symbolize the crux of Bombay’s problem. The island
city needs to be decongested. The vacant mill land
might be the lungs that allow South Bombay to breathe
again. The city’s future lies in the east, on the
mainland, with Navi Mumbai. The trans-harbour link
currently under construction is proof that the
Government has learnt its lesson. A Navi Mumbai
International Airport is in the pipelines. The Central
Business District of Belapur continues to bloom. The
future seems promising.
Maybe the family’s ready to welcome back the dark
horse to its stable - a family reunion to buy the head
of the family a peaceful funeral.
Y
Information courtesy Bombay: The Cities Within by Sharada Dwivedi
JUL - DEC 2007 | YELLOW
11
MODES
&RECLAMATION
LAND
METHODS
That Mumbai desperately needs land is a gross understatement, and it is a
combination of geographical constraints, historical reasons and economic factors
that are obliging the city to look towards the sea for a way out of this particularly
congested corner.
T
reclamation to circumscribe land scarcity would be
Singapore and the low-lying Netherlands.
he act of raising the level of land which is either
just below or adjacent to water is known as land
reclamation. Each country has its own favoured
mode of practice. Mumbai, as was discussed in detail
in a previous article, employs fill material excavated
from mountains to bury the sea under. Small hillocks
deemed expendable by the people-in-charge are razed
to the ground, making way for level land that can be
exploited more profitably, and the rubble obtained is
used to extend the coastline that crucial meter beyond.
Prominent among countries which have relied on
HOW
SINGAPORE
WAS
WON
Singapore undertook its first reclamation as early as
the 1820s, but reclamation only really picked up after
Singapore attained autonomy in 1959. The first
reclamation schemes employed rubble obtained by
digging up hills, but growing concerns for the ecology
have since prompted authorities to employ alternative
materials, primarily sand dredged from the ocean floor.
FROM
THE
SEA
STEP ONE
Singapore has relied heavily on reclamation to satiate its people’s appetite
for land. Singapore is a small city-state, just one-and-a-half times the size of
Mumbai, that began as a humble fishing village. Increasing urbanization
and a steadily growing population has resulted, since the 1960s, in the
reclamation of some 100 square kilometers of land, and a plan to reclaim an
equal amount over the next thirty years. Reclamation has literally redrawn
Singapore’s coastline. Large areas have been straightened by the construction
of dykes across estuaries, swamps lying between the city-state’s 63 islands
have been filled up and the coast has been extended significantly on the
eastern and western fronts. Between 1961 and 1991, more than 5400 hectares
of sea was swallowed by the tiny country.
When Sir Thomas Raffles acquired
Singapore from the Sultan of Johor in
1819 on behalf of the East India
Company, Singapore was no more than
a fishing village spread over 63 islands.
12
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007
Dredging literally means digging up the sea bed. It is
an important way of obtaining sand and gravel for
construction and reclamation works. The dredging
process consists of excavation, transportation and
utilization. Excavation entails the dislodgement and
removal of sediments from the bed of the water body.
The dredged material may then be transported in selfcontained hoppers of the dredgers, via barges, or it
may be pumped through pipes. Finally, the excavated
material could be utilized as fill, or as construction
aggregate. For instance, dredging may take place in
the middle of the ocean but the dredged material may
have to be transported to near-coast areas where
reclamation is being carried out.
There are limitations to the amount of land that can
be reclaimed in a feasible and viable manner.
Singapore is a case in point. In its nascent years
reclamation work was carried out at relatively shallow
depths of 5-10 m. With increasing forays into the sea
the situation now demands reclamation be carried at
depths deeper than 15 m, meaning greater costs. There
is also a need to preserve existing navigation channels
and sealanes. Land reclamation must not be at the
expense of port activity, which is why planning new
schemes is such a tough balancing act.
Reclamation isn’t merely drowning the sea in an ocean
of dirt. The fill needs to be compacted and cemented
to impart it the requisite strength to bear the weight
of structures that will be built upon it. The fill site
needs to be protected from mass movements or
slippage of under-consolidated clays, which can cause
instability, and erosion must in any case be checked.
The coastline is under relentless attack in the form of
waves from the sea. Waves pick up energy and
momentum from near-surface winds blowing across
vast expanses of uninterrupted ocean. Most of this
accumulated energy is dissipated near the coast in a
narrow zone known as the surf zone. The breaking of
the waves in this zone produces turbulence that
results in the mobilization and suspension of
sediments. The breaking waves also create near-shore
currents that flow across the coastline, and in the
process transport massive quantities of sediment.
Hard-engineering structures are built along the coast
to preclude erosion and movement of sand along the
coastline. Structures designed to prevent erosion of
the upland are generally bracketed under the category
of coastal armouring and include seawalls and
revetments. The other types, the kind that impede
sand movement, include groynes and breakwaters.
Seawalls protect the upland by preventing wave
attack. They are most often vertical walls made of
timber, concrete or steel-sheets that form a protective
front against incident waves. Mumbai has extensively
used seawalls, or bunds, to cut out the land from the
sea, and filled it up with either dredged material or
rubble from mountains. Interestingly, seawalls have
been used to protect nuclear reactors built on artificial
islands against submergence.
Revetments are shore-parallel structures used
commonly to contain erosion. The structure is
designed to create wave breaking by causing waves to
STEP TWO
STEP THREE
The East India Company wished to convert
The razed material was dumped into
With better connectivity between the
Singapore into a trading post that would act
shallow mangrove swamps which
islands and the mainland in mind, the
as a link between Europe and China. The
were subsequently drained, and thus
Johor-Singapore
conversion entailed some amount of
was born the entrepôt town of
constructed in 1923 connecting
reclamation. Rubble for the fill came from
Singapore.
Singapore to Malaysia. A second road
razing hills in the locality.
STEP FOUR
Causeway
was
link has been added since to reduce
congestion at the Causeway.
lose energy when they impinge the shore. This is done
through both the reflection of waves and by turbulent
dissipation of the wave energy. The design consists of
two or more layers of stone with the upper, larger
stones providing stability against wave attack. The
stone sizes must be graded to ensure that the lower,
smaller stone does not wash out through the upper
layers. Typically, the stone is underlain by a geotextile
fabric to prevent the base sand on which the structure
is built from washing out. Geotextile fabric is in
essence a filter paper with a much finer pore size.
Offshore breakwaters are similar to revetments in
that they aim to preclude erosion by limiting the
amount of wave energy that reaches a coastline. But
unlike revetments, they are built parallel to the shore
at a fair distance away from the coastline. A breakwater
can either be submerged or emergent, depending upon
whether it rises above the surface of water or not. No
amount of searching will ever reveal a breakwater in
Mumbai. The city is oblivious of the concept, and this
ignorance is well-explained. Mumbai is a natural
harbour. The port has deliberately been developed on
the eastern face, the leeward side, in such a way that
the seven islands fused into a single land mass act as
an improvised breakwater. Other reclamation methods
that deserve mention would be those that employ
groynes, dikes, artificial headlands and jetties.
As of today these are probably the most practiced,
and possibly the most successful techniques in use.
But knowing man’s capacity for innovation, who’s to
say what the morrow may herald.
Y
HARD ENGINEERING STRUCTURES
A groyne is usually a vertical barrier built perpendicular to the
GROYNE
coast, extending offshore, constructed to control the sand
deposition pattern on coasts with significant alongshore
movement. The groyne causes accumulation of sand on the
updrift side while resulting in erosion on the downdrift side.
BREAKWATER
A breakwater is built seaward, parallel to the shoreline, at a
distance from the coast. Typically it consists of one long
continuous strip of artificial land, but occasionally it may be built
as a series of multiple offshore breakwaters separated by small
gaps, as is the case along the Kaike Coast in Japan.
REVETMENT
Revetments are shore-parallel structures constructed to limit
landward erosion. They generally consist of stones, asphalt, or
as is the case with Marine Drive, concrete tetrapods placed on a
slope at the foot of the coast face.
14
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007
GOING
DUTCH
DIKES
The case of Netherlands stands up as a sterling example
of land reclamation. The Netherlands is an averagely
small European nation that lies at the mouth of three
great rivers – the Rhine, the Maas and the Scheldt –
that empty into the North Sea. Two-thirds of the nation’s
land is situated below sea level. Consequentially, much
of the Dutch landscape is a result of human intervention,
An oft-recited local saying goes,
devoid of which large parcels of land would be
“God made the world, but the Dutch
permanently submerged.
made the Netherlands.”
The earliest of the country’s inhabitants lived along creek
ridges, and constructed rudimentary mounds to which
they could retreat with their livestock during periods of
flooding. With a more highly developed social
organization from the Middle Ages on, the Dutch adopted
more elaborate means of protecting their lands against
water. Water-control boards were formed which
undertook construction of a system of dikes (earthen
walls) to hold back the water. With the aid of windmills
they drained the enclosed tracts of land and took
measures to ensure that they remained permanently
dry and available for farming. These lands reclaimed
from lakes or the sea are called polders.
Polders initially encompassed small areas, but now
reclamation techniques have been extended to larger
areas. Immediately after the polders are pumped dry,
the muddy bottom is sown with reed by aircraft. Reed
strengthens the surface, making the polder accessible
by foot and motorized vehicles, as well as assisting the
formation of arable soil. Trenches and canals are dug
for drainage to keep the polder permanently dry. The
land thus reclaimed is utilized mainly for cultivation,
Windmills, used extensively in Holland to drain reclaimed
land, have become part of the country’s landscape
but the creation of artificial lakes and beaches has lent
them some recreational value as well.
JUL - DEC 2007 | YELLOW
15
Sixty percent of Mumbai’s population lives in slums while 600 acres of land in the very heart
of the city lie undeveloped. More than a hundred thousand people find themselves compelled
to sleep on decrepit street pavements every night on an empty stomach while a decapitated
government machinery chases itself in circles to ensure for itself a full belly. The city has one
of the nation’s highest per capita income levels yet a majority of its citizens are forced to
wallow in such shameful indigence. Why?
A
rchaic
laws,
corrupt
politicians, an inefficient
administration
and
a
powerful builder’s lobby are why
land prices in Mumbai are the
highest of anywhere in the world.
In this article we look at how these
four factors have conspired to
induce land scarcity when there
should have been none.
Land Regulations That Serve
Nobody
Acts that were put into place in a
different era with a different purpose
in mind have lingered on as bad
memories and worse. The Rent
Control Act, implemented during
the Second World War, put a freeze
on rent levels which seemed then
to be on a never-ending upward
spiral. An unforeseen demand was
created by the arrival of a large
number of British soldiers fighting
in the Second World War to
Mumbai, who were willing to pay
substantially more than current
16
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007
rates, resulting in evictions all
across the city. The Act was an
essential piece of legislation that
stipulated a tenant could not be
evicted as long as he continued to
pay his rent, and that the right to
live on could be inherited by family.
The Act guaranteed permanence of
residence to a large number of the
city’s citizens. But that was back
then, some sixty years ago. No
government has since had the
political gall to do away with what
is quite clearly an irrelevant
regulation in these times.
Consequentially, families have
stayed on in their ancestor’s plush
bungalows on Cuffe Parade paying
not more than a few hundred rupees
a month for property that would
easily fetch a thousand times more
on the open market. The tenants are
unwilling to let go of such priceless
tracts of land, and this is preventing
the reentry and subsequent
development of some prime real
estate.
Another reason for the scarcity of
land in Mumbai is the Urban Land
Ceiling Act, which places a limit of
500 square meters as the maximum
size of plots that can be sold in
urban areas. Any land in excess of
that will be redeveloped by the State
for the poor. The act also prohibits
the use of residential areas for
commercial purposes. The Act was
implemented during the Emergency
of 1976 with an intent
to
redistribute resources by taxing the
rich and using the money to fund
housing for the poor. In Robin Hood
argot - to steal the rich people’s land
and distribute it amongst the
destitute.
What has happened instead, as is
easy to guess, is that the rich have
bought the right to hold onto their
land. Corruption has proliferated,
and exemptions to the Act have been
paid for in typical fashion - under
the table. Even worse though is that
large parcels of land are being held
on to by private trusts that are
Mumbai has an average population density of 28,000 persons per
square kilometer. New York City has a density of 25,000. The tallest
building in Mumbai is the Shreepati Arcade, a residential complex
built in the vicinity of Bombay Central, which measures up to a
grand height of 161 m. Buildings in NYC taller than 161 m number
one hundred and forty three!
reluctant to sell because they fear
invoking the Act. As a result,
valuable real estate is once again
being held back from the market.
In addition to these there are Floor
Space Index Restrictions. Floor
Space Index (FSI) is the maximum
area of floor space that can be built
on one unit of land. Cities that are
geographically constrained tend to
rely on a high FSI to provide housing
for their citizens, which is why there
is such an abundance of
skyscrapers in New York City and
Hong Kong, and a seeming dearth
of the same in the more spread out
Source: Census of India
2001
1991
1981
1971
1961
1951
(in millions)
0
1
Migrants into the city
2
3
Population Increment
Fig 1 Migration’s
Contribution
to
Fig 1 Migrant
Inflow
Population Growth
Migration into the city peaked in the 80s, but
has shown signs of decline over the last two
decades. Migration contributed 36.8 per cent to
total population increase over the period 19912001. On an average, 42 families come to the
city every day in search of livelihood. “A migrant
to Mumbai is typically a male villager in his
twenties. Most often, he is illiterate. Nearly 22%
of these migrants are child labourers.” (Times of
India report, 28 Dec 2006)
European capitals of Paris and
London. There is no city more
bridled by the topography of its
surroundings than Mumbai, and yet
the authorities continue to persist
with an incomprehensibly low
average FSI of 1.33 for residential
areas. The highest in the city is 2,
in the Bandra-Kurla complex.
Compare it with New York where the
highest FSI in residential areas is
15.
FSI restrictions first came into place
in the 1960s. The city was struggling
to keep pace with the population,
and infrastructure was beginning to
show the strain. The Act was
conceived to contain congestion by
inducing an artificial land scarcity
that would push up land prices.
High land prices, the government
thought, would discourage people
from coming to the city. But much
to the government’s disappointment
the migrants didn’t stop coming. A
city like Mumbai in a third-world
country like ours is a magnet that
draws in people from the rural
hinterland in the thousands on a
daily basis. Most arrive with empty
pockets. They sleep on the
pavements for most of their lives,
and if they’re lucky they get to die
in a one-room chawl. That is the
ineluctable tragedy of the abject in
a land that offers limited
opportunities.
YOU SAID IT
R K LAXMAN
Taken from the Times of India
Look, one of those satellites hanging about there!
Are you sure you are not an unscrupulous builder
who has violated FSI?
Like all laws this one too has a
notable sub-clause. Higher FSI can
be bought in return for developing
low-cost housing, through what are
known as Tradable Development
Rights (TDRs). TDRs are an
important source of state revenue.
Money earned from TDRs in the
period 2003-2005 was used to fund
the construction of 55,000 free
housing units for slum residents, a
point that we return to later.
JUL - DEC 2007 | YELLOW
17
(in millions)
Number of Slum Dwellers
Fig 2 Growth of Mumbai’s Slums
18
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007
Delhi
Mumbai
Bangalore
Seoul
Taipei
Combine all these regulations with
an over-bloated and lethargic
bureaucracy that takes anywhere
between 90-180 days to sanction
building approval and it’s no
surprise that there’s such scarcity
of land. Mumbai is being strangled
by red tape and its citizens are
merely looking on, either too
disenchanted or too powerless to do
anything. The government lacks the
courage to rescind the Urban Land
Ceiling Act, or remedy a clearly
defective Rent Control Act. A
bankrupt municipality can’t afford
Tokyo
Singapore
CRZ I encloses a small fraction of
the city’s land that has been deemed
particularly sensitive, and it is
generally agreed upon by all that
these stretches needs to be
protected. However, it is the CRZ II
and CRZ III areas that exemplify the
judiciary’s
predilection
for
projecting India as a first-world
country in matters of the
environment and the ecology. Ours
is possibly the only country in the
world that has laws that protect the
entire length of the nation’s
coastline. The CRZ is admirable in
An Ineffective Administration
Sydney
Bangkok
that it shows concern for our
wetlands and mangrove forests, but
it has virtually brought to a halt all
reclamation work and rendered
impossible any scheme that aims to
redevelop the city’s port. Much of
the area under CRZ II and CRZ III
is highly built land falling within the
municipal limits of the Island City
and is of vital importance to
business.
Constraining
development in these areas impedes
the city’s economy - a city that
contributes 40,000 crore in taxes
every year to the national treasury.
Kuala Lumpur
The Coastal Regulation Zones
(CRZs), marked out by a legislation
passed in 1991 which restricts
development on land affected by the
tide, compound the problem.
According to the legislation,
Mumbai is divided into three zones
on the basis of ecological sensitivity.
New construction is prohibited in
CRZ I. Construction is only
permitted on the landward side of
roads in CRZ II, and that too at a
minimum distance of 50 meters
from the sea. In CRZ III areas,
construction is allowed only after an
approval has been obtained from the
State Ministry.
Rent to Income Ratio with Mumbai as Base 100
While Mumbai’s population has grown steadily over the last 40 years, so have the city’s slums. What is of
interest is that both have grown almost at the same rate - total population increased by nearly 7 million
persons, of whom only 1.8 million have been fortunate enough to escape the city’s sprawling slums. In
other words, three in four people who have entered the city or been born in it after 1961 have passed their
life in a slum.
Source: Census of India
Jakarta
Total Population
Fig 3 Property Rates and Per
Capita Income
Property rates in Mumbai are among the highest
in the world. This has led to the emergence of
speculation and hoarding in real estate as one of
the more lucrative forms of investment.
Consequentially, while thousands of flats lie
vacant in wait for the right price, a million people
continue to sleep on the street.
From 2003-2005 TDRs were used to fund the construction of
55,000 housing units given free to slum residents. The figure is
about equal to 3.5% of the number of slum dwelling families as
identified by the government. Going by historical data, if we assume
the number of slum dwellers increased by 1% p.a., it works out that
the number of subsidized units just about matches the increase in
the number of slum dwellers. In other words, the absolute number
of people living in slums has (thankfully) not increased, but nor
have the TDRs been successful in bringing the number down.
to
develop
the
requisite
infrastructure that a higher FSI
would call for. The powerful
builder’s lobby has bought for itself
sufficient political leverage to ensure
that land prices continue to rise, as
bizarre as it may sound. And the
State isn’t exactly overeager to
normalize land valuation as is
overtly visible from its disinclination
to abolish the practice of TDRs.
TDRs are disincentives for builders,
and doing away with these may
prompt the entry of new players into
the real estate development market.
That though is unlikely to happen
anytime soon seeing that the State
itself relies on high land prices to
fund development schemes such as
those undertaken by the Slum
Rehabilitation Authority. These
schemes appear superficially to be
pro-poor - it is indeed hard to believe
free housing could be of detriment
to anyone. But scratch the surface
a little and it becomes apparent that
the money for these schemes comes
from obliging some nine million
people to live in a one-room unit or
worse.
The government needs to normalize
land valuation by deregulating the
market and increasing land
availability. When the cost of
developing idle land exceeds the
benefits,
then
the
policy
environment has effectively halted
the development process. 500 acres
of closed port land and almost 600
acres of land belonging to 25
bankrupt and long-closed mills are
rotting in the heart of the city (see
Fig 4). Where then is the incentive
to develop these lands?
The city needs to get past its
socialist hangover. We’ve tried
public
planning
rather
unsuccessfully for sixty years. It’s
time we admit it doesn’t work.
Rather than taxing builders with
social responsibilities, we need to be
giving them incentives. If over the
next five years a million housing
units can be added to the market,
not wholly unachievable, land prices
will automatically retreat, and a
decent house that one may call
home may still become affordable for
a fair majority of the city’s
population.
Mumbaikers pay a considerably
greater proportion of their earnings
for considerably worse housing. The
amount of land isn’t increasing, and
neither are FSIs. What is happening
though is that the average per capita
land size holding is going down. In
simpler terms, more people are
being squeezed into the same
amount of land, and we have come
to share this city not even 500
square kilometers in area with
fourteen million others. If the
situation is to improve, the city
needs to rid itself of these
regulations stuck to its flesh like
blood-thirsty leeches intent on
sucking every vein dry. In the
meanwhile though, watch where
you put that foot of yours. You don’t
want to be treading on somebody
Y
else’s toes.
Source: Charles Correa (2005)
Fig 4 Idle Public Lands
Idle public land lying either with the Bombay Port Trust
or private mills or the Railways adds up to 2152 acres.
The McKinsey Report ‘Vision Mumbai’ estimates land
supply could increase by 50 per cent if the administration
were willing to swallow a few hard pills: increase FSI to
an average of 3-4, relax CRZ II & III, and rescind the
Urban Land Ceiling Act and Rent Control Act.
JUL - DEC 2007 | YELLOW
19
T h e
C
onsider this the next time you’re standing on
Marine Drive, with your face turned to the sea,
cool wind fingering your hair: A single square
foot of land at Nariman Point costs twenty thousand
rupees. Twenty thousand: slightly less than what the
average Indian makes in an entire year. Twenty
thousand: slightly more than what the average
engineering graduate starts on for a monthly wage.
Twenty thousand. That’s precious real estate you’re
standing on. For free!
Who in this manic city doesn’t dream of a visiting card
that reads xyz, Marine Drive? And yet, the collective
desire of a few million for office space on Marine Drive
won’t allow it to happen. Marine Drive is only three
kilometers long - only room for so many people.
This pattern of spatial development along a
predominantly north-south axis, with commercial
activity squeezed at the southern end, and residential
and industrial areas spread across the northern
suburbs, has been the bane of Mumbai’s existence.
Most cities typically grow radially, branching out in
several different directions at once. Mumbai’s
abnormal arrangement is not borne from some
perverse desire for experimentation, but rather by the
dictates of topography, abetted by some naive choices
of infrastructure projects.
Mumbai is a peninsular city bordered by the Arabian
Sea in the west and south, and Thane Creek in the
east. The city began as a small fortified outpost
functioning from the southern tip of the peninsula.
North was the only direction that offered room for
expansion. Matters were not helped by the
construction of a suburban rail network oriented along
the same cursed north-south axis. In a city where an
astounding 85 percent commuters rely on public
transport, the impact of such a choice is profound.
Moreover, government offices too are located in the
south, as a result of which most business activity is
also concentrated in the region. In the absence of eastwest linkages, is it any wonder that Mumbai has come
to follow this “mono-centric, linear pattern of growth”?
To state the obvious: this isn’t exactly the best spatial
organization Mumbai could have chosen for itself. A
look at San Francisco, a city similarly constrained by
its topography, reveals what Mumbai did wrong. If a
city is to spread across a body of water, there must be
sufficient linkages between both sides. San Francisco
boasts of four east-west linkages with the mainland
in addition to the Golden Gate Bridge across the strait
BLUEPRINT
Mankhurd-Vashi rail link opens, bringing the
1973
northern part of Navi Mumbai into closer
contact. The neighbourhoods of Vashi and
Belapur witness tremendous growth.
The Regional Plan makes a case for a ‘multinucleated’ city with separate centers to relieve
pressure off the island city. The Plan proposes
the development of a twin city across the harbour
from the old, to be called New Bombay.
1992
2008
Bandra-Worli Sea Link, the first leg
of the Western Expressway, opened
to public use.
W a y
O u t
joining San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean.
Mumbai at present has only two crossings from the
mainland, both of them too far north to relieve any
pressure off the island city.
In addition, most of the world’s larger metropolises
essentially function as conglomerations of two or three
cities. The Greater Tokyo Area comprises of Japan’s
three biggest cities: Yokohama, Tokyo and Osaka. New
York and Philadelphia too share this symbiotic
relationship. San Francisco has Oakland to its east,
across the Bay, and San Jose to the south. And don’t
be conned into thinking that Philadelphia is in any
way subordinate to New York, or Osaka is riding piggyback on Tokyo and Yokohama. The nature of the
relationship is far from parasitic. Oakland is home to
USA’s fourth largest container port. San Jose is also
known as Capital of Silicon Valley.
Mumbai too tried the strategy with Navi Mumbai. Navi
Mumbai was first conceived in the Regional Plan of
1973. It failed to take off due to reasons that were
mentioned in a previous article: poor linkages with
the mainland, failure of the government to shift office
across harbour, and the Nariman Point reclamations.
The scenario improved dramatically for the northern
part of the new city after completion of the Mankhurd-
The Trans-Harbour Road Link, connecting south Navi
Mumbai to the Island City, completed. Second phase of the
Western Expressway – the Worli-Nariman Point Sea Link –
also finished, marrying the CBDs of Nariman Point and the
Bandra-Kurla Complex. The first corridor of the Mumbai
Metro begins operation.
2010
Vashi rail link. The southern half however, has
remained largely undeveloped, principally due to the
absence of quick communication with and easy access
to the island city. Seen in this light it is easy to
understand why the proposed trans-harbour link is
so imperative to Mumbai’s continued growth.
The Trans-Harbour Link was first mooted in the
current Regional Plan for the years 1996-2011. The
Plan aims to set in motion an “irreversible process of
spatial decentralization”, calling for development of
new centers of growth and addition of better transport
linkages between these centers. The idea is to help
Mumbai move from a “mono-centric” to a “multinucleated” model. South Bombay will of course remain
the dominant center, but central business districts
(CBDs) will be developed at other areas to share some
of the load. The Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) is well
on its way. The Belapur and Vashi CBDs have taken
off in recent years courtesy of the Mankhurd-Vashi
link. Through the construction of a Trans-Harbour
Link, the same could be achieved for areas in and
around the Nhava Sheva Port. The potential of the
region becomes clear when the following fact is taken
into consideration: the southern half of Navi Mumbai
has 2500 hectares of fallow land that can potentially
be used for housing. Once the link is complete,
2012
A second international airport built at
Navi Mumbai, to lighten traffic at the
Chatrapati Shivaji International
Airport.
The Trans-Harbour Rail Link completed
- a happy denouement to the proposed
integration of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
2015
commuting time to the island city will come down to
an hour-and-a-half. Thus, Nhava Sheva could well
supplant the neighbourhoods of Thane, Kalyan and
the Vasai-Virar corridor (regions that have shown large
population growth over the last decade) in their role
vis-à-vis Mumbai.
The grand design is to ultimately integrate these five
regions: Nariman Point, BKC, Vashi, Belapur CBD and
Nhava Sheva (see map) through the completion of some
world-class infrastructure projects. The Bandra-Worli
Sea Link (BWSL) currently under construction and
the Western Expressway are two very important links
in the chain that the Plan envisages forging – a chain
that will shape the city into a pentagon of sorts, with
each node acting as an engine for greater economic
growth. The Western Expressway would be a 15
kilometer 8 lane expressway that will run along the
shoreline from Worli to Malabar Point, and then across
the bay to Nariman Point. When complete, the
expressway, in combination with the BWSL, will act
as a direct connect between BKC and Nariman Point.
The project is expected to reduce commuting time from
the southern end of Mumbai to newly developed job
centers in the suburbs by at least a half hour. Proposed
bus lanes along the entire length of the Expressway
would ensure that it serves low income groups as well.
The Mumbai Metro is another attempt at improving
east-west connectivity. There is also a plan to develop
a second international airport for the city across the
harbour, to absorb part of the air traffic currently
borne by the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
These grandiose projects are admittedly consistent
with the government’s agenda to decentralize the city
and thereby relieve some of the pressure off its
traditional heart. The sole source of concern is the
proposed financing of these projects, particularly the
Trans-Harbour Link and the Western Expressway. The
plan as of now is to recover costs though the charging
of tolls, and this is of worry. Tolls would almost
certainly be self-defeating for a bridge whose purpose
is to distribute people and jobs from a place that is
over-crowded to a place that is less crowded. Past
experience stands up in support of this point of view.
Revenues from the NOIDA freeway near Delhi have
been, at the very least, disappointing. Reason: traffic
counts are not meeting projections thanks largely due
to a hefty toll. In this context, the proposed toll of Rs
100 for a one-way commute across the Trans-Harbour
Link would almost certainly debilitate the
administration’s vision for Nhava Sheva.
between the two cities much like the kind shared by
Yokohama, Tokyo and Osaka. The success of this plan
hinges upon the success of the Trans-Harbour Link.
A high toll rate could well be a deathblow. Hafeez
Contractor suggests an alternative,
“to reclaim land from the sea off the east coast
of Mumbai, which will link up to the mainland.
This solves many problems at one go: it creates
3,400 acres of land for us to build houses
upon, and creates a lake, which after three
monsoons will be a fresh water lake that can
serve Mumbai’s need. So we will have a lake
next to Mumbai, fed by three rivers, which at
present just disappear into the bay.
“Moreover, by linking Mumbai to the mainland
through the reclamation and the making of a
dam, the trans-harbour link that has been
planned and which is going to cost us billions
of rupees, is created for no cost. Also, since the
mainland is easily accessible, that makes
available more land to meet Mumbai’s growing
needs.
“And finally, when the government sells the
reclaimed land, it can earn up to Rs 120 billion,
which can be used as seed money to upgrade
infrastructure in the city.”
The proposed plan calls for reclamation of a very large
area. The ecological consequences of shutting off
Thane Creek and converting it into a fresh-water lake
could well be disastrous. A technical study of the
consequences of such a reclamation has not as yet
been carried out. The government is reluctant to
pursue such a course of action since the reclamation
would be in direct conflict with the Coastal Regulation
Zone Laws. The political risk is high, the
administration doesn’t wish to risk facing the
environmentalists’ ire. No government will even
consider it.
The plan as it is on paper sounds perfect. The city
gets land (and fresh water), the government gets money
(lots of it). In the end a direct land connection between
the twin cities is fashioned. Contractor is very
optimistic, “… this idea is so simple and solves so
many problems at one go that nobody will believe me.”
It would indeed be a pity if a project that promises so
much was never even explored.
Is anybody listening?
There is widespread consensus that the city’s future
lies in the East and South-East, along the MumbaiPune corridor. The aim is to foster a relationship
Y
Excerpts taken from Rediff Interview with Hafeez Contractor (October
29, 2003)
JUL - DEC 2007 | YELLOW
23
Editor’s Page
My loyal chair to which I owe this aching back.
Breathe.
The crowd’s louche body
A bottle of cold water tasting mildly fizzy. Deck of cards
for a game of 29 on a lazy afternoon. An XXL-size ash
clings and parts in place, an ovation
rigid and adrift, alive. It is the sea
tray and a pack of cigarettes to get through the night.
that sweeps the sea.
Laptop on which most of this magazine was made. A
Broom tight with inner bickering.
box of dry fruit that came from home - lasted an entire
A mortal scour. Meaning,
day, it did. All Out to drive away the mosquitoes. Wish
how the crowd hates the crowd.
there was something to drive away my equally
pestilential equally ravenous wing mates!
Outwardly. It admits you or me
as an enormous lidless eye admits
glittering
Foooootball!
beams. Endless watching, washing us
My humble eight square meters of land in this crowded
in.
The crowd’s object, its point,
city. Mine for now, mine for a year. Or maybe not;
with reservations set to be enforced next semester,
and the number of students expected to increase by a
third, who knows with how many I might be sharing
this little piece of land that I fancy thinking of as mine.
is always vanishing into its own mass. It
is a sea
with no concern for us, even as it scores.
From Crowds Surround Us by Tom
Thompson
24
YELLOW | JUL - DEC 2007