GO

Home
Today's Paper
All Sections
News
National
International
Opinion
Business
Sport
Elections
Features
Sci-Tech
Entertainment
Cartoon
Columns
Editorial
Interview
Lead
LettersComment
Open Page
Readers' Editor

OPINION COMMENT

January 20, 2016

Updated: January 20, 2016 02:01 IST

Maximum City, minimum space

Brahmin Retirement - Community in Kumbakonam, Agraharam Type Villas with Facilities
Inquirewww.vedaanta.com/panchavati
Ads by Google

SACHIN KALBAG
COMMENT (2) PRINT T

inShare
5

The Hindu

The fight for open spaces is also about the future of the city. Picture shows the Mahalaxmi Race
Course in Mumbai. Photo: Vivek Bendre
TOPICS
Maharashtra
Mumbai

The demand to convert the Mahalaxmi Race Course into Mumbais

Central Park brings out the citys strained relationship with space:
there is too little of it, and too many who want to control it
In Mumbai, the battle for public open spaces is being fought against closed
minds. A city starved of open recreational spaces is being subjected to another
round of controversy following the Shiv Senas heir apparent, Aaditya Thackeray,
tweeting about how his party wants the 226-acre Mahalaxmi Race Course to
be converted into what he calls The Mumbai Park, to be built on the lines
of Central Park in New York. It is a seemingly noble suggestion, but scratch the
veneer and it could well be a municipal corporation-controlled entertainment
zone.

Another battle is being fought simultaneously between citizens groups and the
citys municipal corporation that has released a draft plan couched in jargon and
bureaucratese but intended to hand over several open spaces in Mumbai to
private developers. Activists were so enraged that they forced the State Chief
Minister Devendra Fadnavis to stop the proposal from being passed by the
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). It has been put on hold for the
time being, but there is no guarantee that it wont be passed. The Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), after all, is an ally of the Shiv Sena in both the BMC as well as
the State government.
Mr. Fadnavis is battling Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, too, on the open
spaces policy. On Sunday, Mr. Thackeray launched a few verbal volleys into the
State governments court for what he called a flip-flop by the BJP on the issue.
The Nationalist Congress Party, on the other hand, has begun a signature
campaign against the policy. The policy is faulty, the partys city president,
Sachin Ahir, said. We want a review by the State government.
Open spaces in Mumbai
That Mumbai has few open spaces is not secret, but the data are stark. Mumbai is
spread across approximately 483 sq. km, but gardens and parks account for only
0.52 per cent of this area. Playgrounds make up for 0.83 per cent, and
recreational grounds measure 1.62 per cent of the total area. Promenades and
beaches together are 0.29 per cent of the city. If the heavily encroached Sanjay
Gandhi National Park (11 per cent of the total area) is excluded, Mumbais open
spaces for free public use account for a mere 3.26 per cent of the citys total area.
Compare this with, say, Adelaide in Australia, where more than half of the citys
area is open spaces for free public use.
In a mapping of Mumbais spaces by urban planning consultancy P.K. Das and
Associates, 45.7 per cent of Mumbais remaining open space could be potentially
given up for development of residential housing, and industrial and commercial
use, in addition to amenities and services.
In that sense, the battle for Mahalaxmi Race Course is symbolic. The Shiv
Sena says the open space will be used to build a park that will have an iconic
tower, a reserved area for music concerts, an amphitheatre, an art corner, a kiteflying area, a yoga area, water games, an outdoor gym, an open-air movie theatre,
restaurants, a farmers market, and even a rock-climbing arena. It is seemingly a
reasonable plan. Activists, on the other hand, feel that in political hands, the Race
Course land will be subjected to the same treatment that other open spaces have
been in the city. Shiv Sena insiders also say that the primary reason the party
wants quick action on the race course (whose 99-year lease ended in 2013) is to

name its proposed park after the partys founder, Bal Thackeray. Uddhav
Thackeray has denied this.
While the younger Mr. Thackeray is battling the State government to make the
Mahalaxmi Race Course into a BMC-regulated open space, he had openly
supported the preservation of Aarey Colony, the 1,600-hectare tract of green
cover that has been identified by the State government for a Metro train car shed
which will be spread over 130 hectares. Aarey is home to leopards and several
other species of animals, birds, and insects, and activists are fighting a long, asyet-unsuccessful battle for it to be declared a protected zone. Even if the train
depot will take over only 10 per cent of the land, it will destroy the habitat for
close to 50 species, they say. Besides, thousands of trees will go on the chopping
block to make way for the train car shed.
The State government has not gone back on its decision to convert the area into a
train depot despite the protests. Instead, in early 2015, it appointed a panel that
was headed by Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA)
chief U.P.S. Madan when MMRDA is the nodal agency for the Metro rail
construction in Mumbai. From all indications, the State government will stick to
its original plan of using Aarey land.
Growth vs. green spaces
Essentially, then, Mumbai is stuck between an important public transport
milestone (the third phase of the Mumbai Metro will be 33-km long and will
potentially carry more than 10 lakh passengers a day between Colaba in south
Mumbai and Santacruz Electronics Export Processing Zone in the north) and its
intense desire to keep its open spaces alive. The Chief Ministers expert panel has
not yet suggested an alternative to the car shed location despite Mr. Fadnaviss
express instructions to do so when the committee was formed in March 2015.
The Metro rail project consists of four lines and is slated for completion by 2021,
but that deadline seems to be increasingly out of reach. The battle for Mumbais
green cover was inevitable, and activists say they will not stop fighting for Aarey.
It was thus important that the State government had anticipated this before it
went ahead with proposing Aarey. Now, the city has lost almost a year in the
tendering process, and it is not any closer to finding a solution.
Aarey is important to Mumbai from a social as well as an ecological standpoint. It
has always been an important picnic spot for thousands of families and schools
for decades, and even though the car shed location is separated from these social
gathering places, the ecological impact of the neighbouring areas may hurt the
picnic spots too, as it will significantly reduce leopard territory, and thus impair

the delicate food chain of not only Aarey but also possibly of the neighbouring
Sanjay Gandhi National Park.
The politician-builder nexus
To overcome some of Mumbais core infrastructure issues, including its open
spaces, the BMC had released a Development Plan 2034 in 2015. It was
filled with so many errors that it had to be sent back to the BMC. The next
development plan will only be released later this year. The faulty plan put on hold
1,600 city projects, creating a sense of panic among builders who are desperate to
recover lost money. One way to do it: use the open spaces policy to reclaim land
that is currently in the ownership or supervision of the BMC. It is no wonder that
citizens groups are incensed at what they see is capitulation to the builders
lobby.
This brings the city back to square one. Mumbai has always had a strained
relationship with space; there is far too little of it, and far too many want to
control it. The BMC, Indias richest municipal corporation, has, on many
occasions, succumbed to the builders lobby; mostly because rent-seeking
municipal corporators have been able to create laws that encourage corruption,
with no regard for either urban planning or for creating a city that Mumbais
residents would be proud of.
The fight for open spaces, therefore, is also about the future of the city.
sachin.kalbag@thehindu.co.in