From: [email protected]
To:
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/columns/comment/The-road-to-nowhere/articleshow/48508186.cms
If you are one of the lucky seven per cent of Mumbai's citizens, you are in for
good times. As a car owner, you are being promised a smooth, scenic ride along
the city's gorgeous coastline. But if you are one of the unfortunate 93 per
cent of the Mumbai's population, you must continue to live with the existing
public transport system with a few incremental crumbs thrown your way. Put
simply, this is what the grand Western Coastal Road plan that the Maharashtra
government is pushing ahead with means - Rs 12,000 crore and more to be spent
for less than seven per cent of the population. The enormous cost to benefit a
few is not the only reason we, as Mumbai's 93 per cent, need to wake up and
understand the consequences of this foolhardy plan. It is a plan that runs
counter to received wisdom from around the world about what makes cities
liveable for all citizens. The supreme irony of the government's grand project
is that the Dutch government has offered to help. In Holland, cars are
discouraged; people walk, cycle, use buses and trains. For a country that has
learned to live with the sea, a road along its coastline for cars would be
inconceivable. Yet, with investment opportunities drying up in Europe, the
Dutch have found a reason to encourage this foolishness on other shores. Forget
the Dutch, for a moment. What about us Mumbaikars? Our litany of complaints
about the way this city is managed never ends. Yet, we seem to wake up to
disasters only when it is too late. The spirited opposition to the municipal
corporation's Mumbai Development Plan 2034 earlier this year ultimately
resulted in it being abandoned (although one is not confident that a new
version will really be better). The process of information, consultation, and
participation by the people of Mumbai proved that it is possible to reverse and
even stop the government's plans if enough people decide to intervene. No such
process has taken place so far on the coastal road. Initially, the government
gave hardly a month for objections. Many questions remain about the process by
which the plan was finalised. For instance, how was the Environmental Impact
Assessment done? And how did the Ministry of Environment and Forests give
environmental clearance with such alacrity despite the adverse impact the road
will have on mangroves and the tidal patterns? The deadline for objections has
been extended to August 27. But even today people living along the coast where
the road will be built are not aware that this project is imminent. If the plan
goes through, what will certainly happen is that Mumbai's uniqueness, its
undulating coastline, will be destroyed by an eight-lane highway running
alongside it, or under it in some instances. The ramps for entry and exit from
the tunnels will destroy the rocks that emerge on many parts of this coastline
during low tide. Furthermore, the planners of the project seem to be unaware
that Mumbai has changed drastically in the last decade. Hence, inexplicably,
the road begins in Nariman Point, an area that is getting depopulated as
business has moved north for more than a decade now. It ends in Kandivali even
though areas beyond that are crying for better connectivity. If the government
has Rs 12,000 crore to spare, why, we should ask, does it not invest it in
public transport - enhancing and improving what exists, and adding to it? Why
not put every effort to speed up the metro rail, improve existing bus systems
and the commuter trains that are stressed to almost breaking point? You don't
need to be a planning wizard to realise that cities improve if you invest in
whatever benefits the majority of people. Choosing public transport over
private cars is a no brainer. But somehow, this kind of common sense has
escaped our government. Our only option then, as citizens, is to assert our
right to question and object to a road that is going to lead nowhere. The
writer is a Mumbai-based independent journalist and columnist.
