On The Spot
Tavleen Singh
From the time twenty years ago that I first came to live in Mumbai I have been amazed and horrified by the municipal incompetence with which housing problems are handled in a city with the most serious housing problems in the whole of India. I have spent much time trying to find out why none of the managers of this city by the sea realized ever that the construction of low-income, rental housing was a vital necessity and I have not heard a satisfactory answer. Some people say it was because political leaders wanted slum votes that they allowed them to spread across the city and some people say it is because the people who live in the vast, hideous shanties of Mumbai refuse to be rehoused that the slums exist. But, as someone who works with a community of street people who have lived near Marine Drive for more than forty years I can tell you that if low-income rental accommodation were available in Mumbai nobody would choose to live on pavements or in slums. To rent a hovel in a slum costs more than Rs 5000 a month in south Mumbai and to buy one involves a ‘pagri’ of more than Rs 3 lakhs. So there really is no explanation for why low-income accommodation was never built other than municipal incompetence.
The irony is that Mumbai’s poorest citizens are in matters of housing better off than the middle classes. This is because they have no compunctions about living on pavements or qualms about slum accommodation that does not provide minimum municipal services like electricity and water. This is something that middle class people cannot do so they have the choice of paying a small fortune every month to rent rooms that are often no bigger than a double bed or putting their savings together to buy a tiny home in one of the city’s more affordable buildings. This is what happened when the residents of the Campa Cola compound bought their flats thirty years ago. Municipal officials now claim that they would have known even then that their were illegalities in construction so it is their fault that they went ahead and bought the flats but the truth is that there are illegalities involved in the construction of most residential buildings in Mumbai. And, more importantly glaring illegalities for everyone to see in the houses of political leaders and the buildings that house MLAs, judges and high officials.
It cannot be otherwise because building in Mumbai is restricted by all kinds of absurd regulations that should have been changed long ago. There is for a start the FSI (floor space index) regulation that was violated by the builder of the Campa Cola building. It is an irrational rule because in a city as bereft of affordable housing as Mumbai there should be no restrictions on how much covered area you can build. There is no FSI policy, for instance, in New York but builders are obliged to ensure that they can provide water, electricity and other amenities when they construct a building. Why should Mumbai not do the same? Why have none of those who govern this city ever thought of making this vital change?
The other equally illogical regulation is the CZR (coastal zone restriction) one that prevents buildings from being constructed too close to the sea. When this regulation was being made why did nobody notice that Mumbai is built on the sea and that while the CZR regulation might make sense in more rural places so that beaches are not encroached upon it makes absolutely no sense in a city that is built mostly on land that has been recovered from the sea? When I asked a builder friend why nobody had removed these bizarre regulations he said, ‘Because officials benefit in very lucrative ways from keeping them in place.’
Is this what happened when the ill-fated building was coming up in the Campa Cola Compound? When the Municipal Commissioner, Sitaram Kunte, was asked why his officials should not be held responsible for allowing the extra flats to be built this is what he told the Mumbai Mirror. ‘Our officials have issued stop work notices time and again. We haven’t found any dereliction of duty on part of any BMC staffer. The residents and the builders had been issued enough warnings.’ Can this be considered a good enough explanation? I leave it to you to decide.
What is even harder to understand about Mumbai’s housing problems is why in a city with such grim shortages of land there should be so many expensive acres occupied by derelict government buildings. On Worli Seaface where land costs several hundred crore rupees an acre a sprawling government dairy farm occupies a vast tract of prime acreage. And, on Marine Drive where land is even more expensive there is a state owned children’s home that could easily move to a less expensive part of the city. Whenever I have tried to ask officials in Mumbai why they have done so little to make better use of public land the only explanation they have given is that things move slowly in government offices. So slowly that the pace alone leaves room for small fortunes to be made by corrupt officials who may not be able to monetize public land but know very well how to monetize regulations.
One of Mumbai’s biggest problems is that it is governed by the Maharashtra government instead of by a powerful elected mayor as other cities of this size are all over the world. The reason why Delhi, despite its problems, is one of the only Indian metropolises in which living standards have improved is because the Chief Minister of Delhi is in fact an elected mayor. No city needs a powerful mayor more than Mumbai and yet nobody has even begun to talk about this here.
Meanwhile, my heart goes out to the people who are fighting to prevent their flats from being demolished in the Campa Cola compound because they are being punished for illegalities that are no fault of theirs. Only in India is it possible for corrupt municipal officials to get away with their criminal deeds while the victims of their crimes get punished instead . Victims whose only crime was to invest their hard earned money in that ultimate urban dream: a permanent home. What is happening in the Campa Cola compound is an urban horror story that must be ended. There should be no demolitions.
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