Is Mumbai’s pain point one of too many authorities?

Short answer: No. The problem is the lack of an organisational framework to allocate tasks that require implementation at both regional and sub-regional levels

Recently, the justices of the Bombay High Court scratched their heads over the mystery of the Sahar Elevated Road in Mumbai. The Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), the planning authority for the airport, claimed that this major road lies outside its planning jurisdiction. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) - which is the planning authority for what remains of Greater Mumbai after subtracting the airport, port, slums, National Park, and some business and industrial districts - disowned the road as well. The High Court seemed confounded by its discovery. The bench called it a piece of land in Mumbai “that lies outside the control and command areas of every known public planning authority.”

Almost anyone familiar with Mumbai knows that while the BMC is responsible for the overall urban management of Greater Mumbai, the interventions of many development agencies of the state and Central government shape the city. (Hindustan Times)

Almost anyone familiar with Mumbai knows that while the BMC is responsible for the overall urban management of Greater Mumbai, the interventions of many development agencies of the state and Central government shape the city. Analysts often bemoan this as a problem of ‘too many agencies' passing the buck to each other. If we had one authority, we are told, we would have better accountability, and better planning.

However, multiple authorities are not unique to Mumbai. The problem is not so much the number of agencies but rather the organisational framework for metropolitan planning, and the allocation of tasks at the municipal and metropolitan levels. Basic services, transport, land use, environmental conservation and finance are all aspects of metropolitan management, and each of these requires tasks of planning, funding and implementation at both regional and sub-regional levels.

In this regard, Mumbai is plagued by unique problems. Every 20 years, a Development Plan for Greater Mumbai is prepared by the BMC. Nevertheless, since the early 1990s, the state government has unilaterally made numerous amendments to the development regulations as well as land use reservations, which the BMC is forced to adopt. Even in terms of territory, different planning authorities such as the MMRDA, Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA), Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), and others plan specific parts of the city as their own little islands (called ‘Special Planning Areas’) and carry out their own development projects. In the words of urban planner Shirish Patel, Mumbai’s planning system is territorially and functionally “balkanized” — with agencies often disregarding, sometimes competing with each other.

Take say the suburban (North) section of the Coastal Road project. In 2011, a Joint Technical Committee concluded with laughable arguments that such a road is necessary for Mumbai. It recommended a combination of reclaimed and stilted roads as a “cost-effective option” as compared to a sea link for the entire stretch. In 2011, the Committee debated these two as alternatives, both of these will be built by three separate agencies. A Coastal Road from Versova to Dahisar was constructed by the BMC, a sea link by Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) from Bandra to Versova (it will be called the Versova-Bandra Sea Link or VBSL), and a sea link by the MMRDA from Versova to Vasai-Virar (VVSL). In short, after constructing the problem as a choice between a bad option and a worse one, the authorities in their majestic wisdom decided to adopt both.

It turns out that the VBSL and the VVSL are neither a part of either the MMRDA's Regional Plan of 2016 nor of the BMC's Development Plan of 2018. Note that the MMRDA will execute a major project contrary to its own Regional Plan and the city’s Development Plan. Furthermore, while the MMRDA makes a case for the metro network to move people from cars into mass transit, it also, on the other hand, is building massive freeways to move people from mass transit back into private cars. So we find that even the same agency is riddled with incoherent thinking and inconsistent practice.

In some ways, this is an old story. We may recall that one of the main objectives of the twin city of Navi Mumbai when proposed in the 1960s was to decongest South Mumbai. To ensure that this objective was met, it was necessary to prevent a further concentration of commercial activity in South Mumbai while developing other business centres in the suburbs and on the mainland. However, around the time that the ground was being prepared for Navi Mumbai, commercial and residential developments mushroomed in the Back Bay, undercutting the very purpose of the twin city.

Planning in Mumbai has always bent to the whims of economic and political elites rather than towards the goals of general economic efficiency or social welfare. The working poor are frequently invoked as justification for urban interventions, but their lives are either untouched or adversely affected by them. In recent decades, planning has been reduced to an uncoordinated collection of real-estate schemes and infrastructure mega-projects championed by different development authorities.

The frequent incursions of state government in municipal and regional domains, and the utter neglect of inter-sectoral and inter-jurisdictional coordination have made planning less about foresight for future-oriented public action, but more about the promotion and justification of schemes and projects concocted by state agencies and real-estate interests.

The social, economic and environmental costs of this irrational planning are borne by common citizens, who have almost no say in the way the city is being conceived and transformed.

With global temperatures rising, the very existence of this coastal city is in peril. Unless these institutions are reclaimed by citizens and reorganised to ensure a realistic assessment of its myriad problems and a well-coordinated response, Mumbai may well be driven into the sea.

Hussain Indorewala is an Assistant Professor at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) in Mumbai. The views expressed are personal