Why Mumbai choked

Newly built multi-storeyed residential buildings behind an expanse of slums in Mumbai. Town planners blame land reclamation and misuse of no-development zones as reasons that blocked the city's lungs during the week-long deluge. - INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP

Great damage has been done to Mumbai in the name of development and on the pretext of providing houses to the poor. As a result, the city lost its natural checks and balances against disasters.

AT the very start, claims of the Maharashtra government with regard to the nature of the catastrophe itself need to be exposed. There have been cloudbursts in the past but Mumbaikars have never faced a situation like this before, so the government cannot blame the crisis on unprecedented rainfall. That is unacceptable. Years of bad development have been exposed by excess rain. The writing has been on the wall for a long time. So whether it was 95 cm or 50 cm of rain is not the issue. It has nothing to do with the quantum of water. It has everything to do with the faulty planning of the city. In any case, disaster management planning is supposed to be for 1.25 to 1.5 metres of rain within 24 hours.

Why did this happen? Basically flooding happens in any city adjacent to the sea for two reasons. During the high tide surplus water hits the city. If it rains at the same time, the force of the surplus rainwater is blocked by the high tide. At times the sea even enters the city, and the domains of sea and land become a grey area. Let us look at the sea component first. Every city has its share of dissipation spaces - wetlands, wastelands, mangroves and salt-pan lands. These act like sponges and take the pressure out of the high tide. In the past 10 years each of these has been destroyed systematically in Mumbai. Mangroves have given way to golf courses. Reclamation has been permitted on a wide scale.

The mouth of the river Mithi has been reclaimed under the guise of providing the Bandra-Worli sea link. This sea link could have been built without reclaiming 41 acres (16.4 hectares), but this reclamation was thrust on the scheme. This has actually closed the mouth of the Mithi, in a way strangling the river, and has filled in most of Mahim bay.

Or take the case of the Sewri-Nhava Sheva link. This will take over a significant part of the Wadala-Sewri mangroves. The authorities could have changed the alignment and saved the mangroves but they refused to. At Cuffe Parade, mangroves have been destroyed by encroachers and slums with the consent of builders and politicians. The same is the case in Versova, Oshiwara, Lokhandwala complex, Charkop, Gorai and Madh island. It is happening all over the city's coastline. The State government and the municipal administration are involved in this. My theory is that Mumbai is being strangulated. I use that word deliberately. Whenever the authorities get environmental clearance for any infrastructure project, they use that project to create more land so that this extra land could be allotted to builders and more money made. That is the usual procedure.

It is a carefully planned strategy. It is a transition from wetland to wasteland. From the domain of the sea you create land that is first deemed wasteland. Then you change its status to a no-development zone. Then you say `it's a no-development zone' but it is contiguous to development areas so you allow small construction. Then it is easy to take the next step and allow non-polluting industry like software. And then there is no turning back. In July, there was a circular asking for objections from across the board for all "no-development" lands to be made available for development albeit for a smaller floor space index (FSI). The plan could be justified by saying that it was a small FSI and it would not make any difference. After that, you increase the FSI and then you raise it to unlimited FSI. That is how the transition from sea to land occurs. This has happened in Chedda Nagar in northeast Mumbai when salt-pans were filled in to create land. Because of actions such as this the sea is thwarted.

Under town planning rules, in the case of cities that do not have dissipation spaces there are buffer zones. Mumbai had the advantage of having excellent buffer zones in the form of 60,000 ha of wetland in Vasai-Virar and Bhayendar, just outside the northern outer limits of the city. These could absorb the effects of the sea. So even assuming that Mumbai's development went out of hand these regions would still have acted as a buffer. But the greed did not stop there. Permission was given to urbanise Vasai-Virar and 20,000 ha of wetlands were converted for urbanisation. Another possible buffer was New Bombay but even the wetlands and low-lying areas of this region were taken over for development. In fact the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust itself is a major reclaimed area. Perhaps, on the grounds of infrastructure that could be justified, but, along with that, about 7,000 ha of land is proposed to be reclaimed for the new Special Economic Zone. So no buffer space is left for the surplus water of the sea to go. The sea has no alternative but to hit the land.

NOW let us look at the land aspect. Initially, this newly created land from the sea was kept as no-development zone but in the past one year or so it has been opened up for development. There were other no-development zones on virgin lands and on hills and mudflats. These were also opened up for urbanisation. This means concretisation of these lands. If you concretise land, then the soil is unable to soak in the water. This is a double loss because the underground acquifers are also not regenerated.

The city's development plan has earmarked lands for gardens and playgrounds within the city limits. These are being de-reserved at a phenomenal rate. As Chief Minister, Sharad Pawar de-reserved 285 plots; Manohar Joshi 300 plots; and Narayan Rane, in his eight-month rule, de-reserved about 180 plots, one of which covered 660 acres (264 ha) in Mankhurd (an area that was severely affected by flooding with water rising to 12 feet). Vilasrao Deshmukh continued the trend. Sushilkumar Shinde de-reserved 67 plots. All these put together would perhaps amount to almost 50 per cent of the space for amenities. On paper, the development plan's amenity spaces ratio is 0.2 acres per 1,000 population. Of this, 82 per cent is taken over by slums so that the actual ratio is 0.03 acres per 1,000 population. This is the lowest in the world. By Indian standards it should be 4 acres per 1,000 population. If you take international standards it is 12 to 14 acres per 1,000 population. The other metropolitan cities, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata, have a ratio of about 4 acres each.

The target in Mumbai for the next 20 years was to improve the existing situation and have a ratio of 0.4 acres per 1,000 population. But actually it is dropping. When a plot is reserved, it has no commercial value since nothing can be built on it. Its price is zero. But when it is de-reserved, the price shoots up to the level of land price prevailing in the area. It is a major source of income for politicians. When more FSI is given on that plot its worth increases further. So with an investment of a lakh of rupees you can make Rs.20-50 crores. That is what is fuelling the greed.

THE other policy that is under attack by developers is the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ). It is a zone where no construction is permitted but the CRZ rule is such that if there is a road running near the coast, development is permitted on the non-coastal side of the road. So development plans show roads, which are proposed but actually never constructed. The new development plans started in 1992, around the time when the judgment regarding CRZ rules was given. The first development plan showed a ring road almost touching the sea and encircling the city. This does not exist in reality but it was inserted into the plan so that wherever they wanted to get exemptions for construction they would actually build a road, say that it was in the original plan and then proceed to carry out the so-called permitted development near the road and violate the CRZ. Slum redevelopment is possible in the CRZ areas within the present rules. If the CRZ rules are relaxed or waived completely, builders will benefit tremendously.

An all-party delegation met successive Prime Ministers to convince them of the need to scrap the CRZ rules. Needless to say, the builder-politician-bureaucrat-underworld nexus was engineering every move. The maximum damage to the city was done during the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena regime. Two major actions taken in 1997 were the slum re-development scheme and the old and dilapidated buildings reconstruction scheme. The slum scheme has a unique position among such schemes worldwide. If this scheme just said that land, which is occupied by slums, is declared as valid for slum re-development then it is understandable. But the Mumbai scheme is such that vacant land, which is a garden or a playground, has been declared as a slum. This is purely for the benefit of builders. This scheme, under the garb of providing free housing to slum-dwellers, has taken over all the vacant land and incorporated it into slum development with a 2.5 FSI where the normal FSI permitted is 1.

Such were the powers given to the slum re-development authority that if a builder came to it and asked for some vacant plot to be included in the scheme the authority could do so. Incidentally, it is worth noting that the Chief Minister is the Chairman of the Slum Re-Development Authority and also that of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). The Chief Minister also holds the Urban Development portfolio. The present Chief Minister is also the Housing Minister.

Old and dilapidated buildings have been taken over by builders because they have unlimited FSI. There have been cases where the FSI granted to builders has been 9, 11, 12 and even 16. This is granted by fraud. First old buildings had 2.0 FSI. Then they came up with an odd norm that said that 2.5 FSI or 50 per cent FSI in excess of that which is required to accommodate the existing tenants. Which means that the moment you increase the number of tenants you get more FSI in the garb of accommodating existing tenants and you get 50 per cent over and above that.

So manufacturing bogus tenants became the order of the day. There have been cases of buildings in south Mumbai where without accommodating a single tenant a building of 45 floors has come up. But on the record, this entire building is supposed to be a tenant rehabilitation building. There are 1,300 such properties in the city, which have been developed with bogus tenants. They have deprived the Centre and the State of at least Rs.20,000 crores. How? When you remove a tenant and show a bogus tenant, he is in fact a buyer of your flat. So when he buys a flat he pays taxes - capital gains and others. But if you are getting it as a tenant then you are getting it in lieu of your old house so you do not show any payment. The buyer does make payments but in cash. He does not pay stamp duty because tenants are exempted from this. The State loses this money and it loses it knowingly.

And what does the Centre do?

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government exempted builders who owned property of more than one acre from paying income tax. Then came the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and its Finance Minister P. Chidambaram argued that if owners of large properties could be exempted why should those with smaller properties be left out. And so they also got exemption.

One of the reasons for the Congress' return to power in the State was its promise to fight this development policy. As soon as Vilasrao Deshmukh assumed office as Chief Minister, he appointed the Godbole Committee for good governance and the Tinaikar Committee to go into the issue of slums and old and dilapidated buildings. In his report, Tinaiker clearly says that the slum scheme needs to be stopped immediately because it is of the builder, for the builder and by the builder. If a senior and honest bureaucrat like Tinaikar, who has been Additional Chief Secretary to the State government, Housing Secretary, Municipal Commissioner and chief of the Housing Board, says so, should not his advice have been taken? The government accepted his report but did not implement it. The Godbole Committee made a fervent appeal saying if there is to be good governance and if catastrophes are to be prevented there should be a permanent commission at the State-level to monitor and guide the process of urbanisation.

Again, the committee's recommendations were shown as accepted, but the government compromised with the builder-underworld nexus and pushed the slum scheme and the unlimited FSI scheme with gusto. As far as these destructive schemes are concerned, all the major political parties are culprits. The slum re-development scheme threw up a major problem of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) wherein the TDR generated on one plot can be used on another. Because of this about two crore TDRs have been loaded on the suburbs of Mumbai without even checking if the infrastructure can take that or not.

The five years of the BJP-Sena rule were crucial since that was when the destructive development policy was put into action. The Congress has continued it with great vigour.

Chandrashekhar Prabhu is president of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, Chairman, Advisory Committee, Department of Housing, Government of Maharashtra, and adviser to the Government of Maharashtra. He has been associated with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority and the Slum Redevelopment Authority. He is also a Member of the State Legislative Assembly, representing the Opera House Constituency in South Mumbai.