The space-starved city is set to get its largest land parcel ever
— 1,080 acres of port trust land along its 28-km eastern coastline. But
will Mumbai be able to utilise what may be its last opportunity to
transform itself? Shalini Nair reports… photographs by Vasant Prabhu
Scrawled all across the inner stone walls of Mumbai’s 17th-century
Sewri fort are vandals’ proclamations of love while empty bottles of
correction fluid left behind by addicts jut out from the weed on the
floor. Perched atop a cliff, the decrepit fort offers a rare view of
Mumbai’s eastern waterfront and its degenerate docklands that have
remained insulated from the rest of the financial capital.
Now, the prime stretch along Mumbai’s 28-km sinuous eastern coastline
from Colaba to Wadala is set to be the largest land parcel to come the
space-starved city’s way. A land development committee set up to chalk
out detailed plans for port land regeneration submitted its report to
the Centre a month ago. The Sunday Express has accessed the report that
is yet to be made public.
The last time the city was tantalised with such a promise was years
ago when two-thirds of 600 acres of erstwhile mill land was to be
released for creating social housing and open spaces. In a travesty of
urban planning, the mills metamorphosed into malls and super-luxury
residential and commercial high-rises.
The inhabitants are to be rehabilitated on the cleared land; some
demolitions have already begun as port trust tries to reclaim its land.
(Express photo by Vasant Prabhu)
Among the derelict structures on MbPT land are the mountains of coal dumped at Koyla Bunder. (Express photo by Vasant Prabhu)
This time, the stakes are thrice as much, with total port land
amounting to 1,800 acres (721.21 hectares), or a tenth the area of
entire South Mumbai. A paper presented at the 2013 World Bank Conference
on Land and Poverty pegged the value of even a third of the port trust
land at a staggering Rs 1.25 lakh crore.
The Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), known for tenaciously holding on to its
under-utilised land bank, will streamline port operations and shut down
some of the polluting and loss-making activities. It will then release
60 per cent of the land, i.e. 1,080 acres, for the city’s use, to
decongest its choked streets and infuse the cityscape with fresh green
lungs. There will be public-private participation, with an initial
corpus of Rs 1,000 crore to be raised by Maharashtra and the Centre.
***
The waterfront once served as the nerve-centre of the port city of
Mumbai. It was here that cotton, the mainstay of colonial and
post-Independence Mumbai, was brought from the hinterlands to be taken
to the city’s famed mills. The textile industry and the mills died long
ago.
Among the derelict structures on MbPT land are cement warehouses. (Express photo by Vasant Prabhu)
The idea to utilise unused port land was first mooted by the
Maharashtra government in 2002, only to be buried in bureaucratic
rigmarole. It got a fresh lease of life when Union Minister of Shipping
Nitin Gadkari constituted the land development committee.
Gadkari’s refrain has been, “I won’t give a single piece of land to
builders”. After the proceeds of mill land sales went entirely into
private coffers, Gadkari clearly knows he has to reassure the city.
And yet, this port land was “excluded from the city’s imagination”,
as the foreword by former Maharashtra chief secretary D M Sukthankar to
the expert panel’s report puts it. “Finally, everyone seems to agree
that the entire land is no longer required for the port’s operational
needs. It can be used effectively for meeting the deficiencies in the
city’s development plan,” said Sukthankar.
The underlying theme is “Open, Connected and Green”. In other words,
the land would be opened up for public use, while ensuring vast green
spaces, and connected through transit modes.
While the finer details are yet to be worked out, going by the
proposals — an amalgam of suggestions by government agencies and
citizens’ groups —Mumbai may become the first Indian city to re-imagine
its docklands for such use.
***
Under the plan, 30 per cent of the freed land is to be reserved for
parks, playgrounds and other such breathing spaces — open spaces in the
city amount to 0.03 acre for every 1,000 people currently. Another 30
per cent would be earmarked for roads, transport facilities and social
amenities. The rest will be for mixed-used development such as zones to
promote entrepreneurship, strengthening of fishing industry, office and
retail market and a finance centre.
“We have tried to preempt any repeat of the mill land sale where
almost everything was appropriated for private use,” says a panel
member.
Mumbai, which has three north-south mass transit corridors in its
Western, Central and Harbour railway lines, could get three additional
ones in the form of a Bus Rapid Transport System, an underground metro
line, and intra-city and inter-city transport. The eastern waterfront
will be made more accessible through sea-side promenades and cycle
tracks. New tourism facilities are proposed to be developed around the
water theme. There’s also a plan for a London Eye-like ferris wheel, to
be called Sudarshan Chakra. Marinas — docks to handle small yachts or
boats — are proposed to replace the docks that once handled cargo
vessels.
Special emphasis would be laid on heritage and ecology conservation.
For a city whose speculative real estate puts houses beyond the reach
of most people, there is a mention, though cursory, about creating
modest-sized social housing in addition to the reconstruction of
workers’ quarters and shanties. These low-cost homes and rental units
will cater mainly to those working in the new jobs expected to be
generated on this land.
Narinder Nayar, a member of the land panel and chairman of Bombay
First, a businessmen-led urban transformation think-tank, points out
that the last time large green spaces were created in Mumbai was more
than 100 years ago by the British. “At the time of Independence,
Mumbai’s population was 1.5 million; it is 12 million now but the open
spaces have shrunk greatly. The bad planning of mill land development
has worsened the traffic density in Mumbai. The 1,000 acres of port
trust land once again presents a tremendous opportunity.”
***
Of the other cities in the world to use their docklands is Melbourne,
which has done so to expand its commercial business district, and
Sydney. London Docklands, which was once the world’s largest port, has
reinvented itself into a residential and commercial hub linked to the
city by the Docklands Light Railway. Cardiff, Rotterdam, Liverpool,
Baltimore and Boston have all re-united their city centres with their
port land for uses ranging from social housing, retail and international
finance centres to creation of cultural, recreational and tourism hubs.
However, no other city had the unique complexities of Mumbai. Its
port land is a labyrinth of encroachments, both by slums and corporate
houses, derelict properties and polluting activities. It also has
spawned demands from multiple claimants ranging from citizens’ groups to
various government agencies.
For instance, MbPT trade unions are up in arms against any move to
create helipads and marinas at the cost of trimming port activities.
Fearing loss of jobs, the union wants homes at construction cost for its
11,000 employees and 36,000 pensioners on 122 acres of land that
currently houses 7,000 workers’ quarters.
“In 2013-14, we managed a turnover of 60 million tonnes of bulk
cargo, but to make available land for their many plans, MbPT is slowly
diverting loading and unloading of cargo to the Kandla port in Gujarat,”
says Maruti Vishwarao, secretary of Mumbai Port Trust, Dock and General
Employees’ Union. He adds that while the unions are not opposed to
releasing some of the land for the city’s needs, the revenue generated
should be ploughed right back into the port trust’s coffers. “After all,
the Mumbai port has existed since 1873, much before the financial city
that Mumbai is now.”
Sulakshana Mahajan, an urban planner with the state government think
tank Mumbai Transformation Support Unit, points out that the decline of
port cities all over set in a few decades after the end of colonialism.
Port activities decelerated further with increasing containerisation,
which the traditional ports were ill equipped to handle. “Unlike Mumbai,
most western cities were quick to consolidate their port activities and
let go of what was unviable in order to release the additional land,”
she says.
Mahajan further points out that as far back as the 1980s, then prime
minister Indira Gandhi had directed the MbPT to release its surplus land
for public amenities as soon as the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in
nearby Navi Mumbai became fully operational.
***
Of the total 1,800 acres with the MbPT, only 23 hectares is actually vacant, and that too is scattered all over.
Take the Sewri fort. Under the plan, it would be restored to serve as
a viewing gallery for a flamingo park to be created down below. For
now, the view from the fort is of withering coastal mangroves on slurry,
splattered with pink patchworks where the flamingos have flocked. From
the Rann of Kutch they come here to feed on algae soaked in toxic
effluents, waste from the nearby ship-breaking yard and sewage from a
municipal outlet.
The sky to the north is lined with thick smoke emanating from three
oil refineries, a coal-based power plant and a chemical fertiliser
plant. In the southern-most tip of Sassoon Docks, a hub of fish trade
worth a couple of crore rupees daily, the land is covered with
fish-scales and offal. At the fishermen’s colony, 62-year-old Kamlakar
Vaity is more worried about his granddaughter’s daily battle with
bronchitis than his own. “She is only three and has to be put on
nebuliser often,” he sighs.
The shipbreaking yard at Darukhana, Mazgaon. High toxicity levels in
the area mean it will take up to five years for soil quality to be
restored for habitation.
For the last six years, lakhs of tonnes of imported coal has been
arriving at the port land to fuel Mumbai’s power plants. From the giant
stacks that sporadically combust due to the heat, the coal is ferried in
open wagons and dumpers that carpet the worn-out roads with soot. All
along this stretch are virtual ghost towns of crumbling housing
quarters, run-down warehouses, iron scrap yards and rows of tarpaulin or
corrugated roof shanties. Then there is an urban cesspit of two dozen
slum pockets housing at least 1.5 lakh residents who are worse off than
their counterparts elsewhere in the city.
Most of the people who live in these quarters are informal sector
workers, employed in the scrap yards, warehouses, ship-breaking and
repair units.
Since all this land belongs to the port trust, the slums could never
get the civic body to provide them any facilities. Kawla bunder’s
40,000-odd residents share two unusable toilets. Water is collected on
the sly from nearby fire brigade tankers, through hoses passing through
raw sewage.
The land development panel has been emphatic on the need for a policy
on the lines of the Rajiv Awas Yojana, which will involve a survey of
all slum residents, housing them with security of tenure, and
rehabilitating them in terms of livelihood once the hazardous activities
are forced shut. The panel has said that such a policy, to be framed by
the MbPT, should not follow the state government’s flawed model of slum
redevelopment based on arbitrary demolitions and free housing for those
declared ‘eligible’, in return for allowing builders to exploit a part
of the land.
However, even before the report is set in motion, officials have
started simply effacing the shanties and reclaiming port land, cordoning
off the cleared areas.
Sassoon Docks, a hub of fish trade, is covered with fish remains.
MbPT Chairman R M Parmar says the port trust is simply doing its job
as the prevailing laws allow them to demolish shanties irrespective of
how long they have existed. “The Union government is yet to decide on a
policy for slums based on the panel’s recommendations. But till that
happens, we are allowed to carry out demolitions under law,” he says.
Conservancy worker Senthil Kumar has been battling sleepless nights
since the MbPT mowed down hundreds of shanties in neighbouring Powder
Bunder. According to him, officials swooped down on the colony at night
with a demolition notice, ordering residents to vacate their homes
within 12 hours. Typed in English, it was indecipherable to most of the
Dalit and Muslim migrants.
“We have been here for three generations now. If I had a home in the
village to go back to, I would have taken my family out of this hellhole
long ago,” says Kumar, 36.
Fifteen-year-old Aarti Nandkishore doesn’t recall seeing demotions of
this scale before. “They seem determined to get rid of the slums this
time. I grabbed my school bag and rushed out before the bulldozers could
flatten my hut but I have not been able to go to school since,” she
says. Her school bag is now kept at a relative’s house, as Aarti and her
mother Jamuna forage the ruins of their house for wood to sell for some
money.
Other displaced residents continue to live on the fringes of the newly cleared land, banking on hope.
***
The shanties incidentally are not the only encroachers on the prime
land. Fifty per cent of it is occupied by lease-held properties,
including by a few corporate giants. The port trust’s tenants include
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, and the MbPT is caught in legal wrangles
on the issue with Tata Group’s Indian Hotels Taj Mahal Palace and
Tower, Bombay Yacht Club, Radio Club, Hindustan Unilever, among several
others.
“Many of these tenants, including corporate houses, have constructed
entire buildings illegally or sub-let the property in breach of the
lease agreement. The MbPT should go after the bigger encroachers instead
of gunning for slum residents,” says Arvind Sawant, the Shiv Sena’s MP
from Mumbai-South.
Much of the leases have long expired but are deadlocked in litigation
in anticipation of a real-estate bounty whenever the land is opened up
for development. Attempts to rationalise the paltry rentals at today’s
market rates are also stuck in litigation.
Even once the land has been acquired and hazardous activities such as
ship-breaking, handling of rock phosphate and coal are shifted out to
ports outside Mumbai, as proposed, the toxicity levels along the
waterfront areas abutting it are so high that it will take up to five
years for its bio-remediation and for the soil, water and air quality to
be restored to habitable levels.
The report also has chapters detailing how to go about getting land
back from the lease holders and defaulters, and how to shift out harmful
industries.
Across the waters from Powder Bunder, where slums were demolished
recently, is the ship-breaking yard of Lakri Bunder in Darukhana. Here,
at Plot No. 10, a Bollywood film crew is busy preparing the sets for the
next day’s shoot of an Akshay Kumar starrer. The crew goes about
assembling heavy metallic props unmindful of workers from the nearby
slums, sawing open and dismantling what was India’s first aircraft
carrier and one of the heroes of its 1971 war, INS Vikrant.
It may be a little too late in the day to resurrect that ship, but
beneath and around it, may lie Mumbai’s last chance to assert its needs
on the urban cartography.