‘12-hr shifts, 7 days a week’: Meet the workers who made Mumbai Coastal Road Project a reality

On Monday, the labourers were in a celebratory mood. Clicking selfies, playing with the flowers and cheering for swathes of passing vehicles, the workers celebrated their labour of love away from the limelight.

As Mumbai City geared up to drive through the southern arm of the Coastal Road, The Indian Express spoke to workers whose labour translated into the project going from the drawing board to the ground.

Ritesh Kumar Singh

When Ritesh Kumar Singh (38) arrived in the city to work on the project in 2021, the country was in the grip of a Covid induced lockdown. However, that was no deterrent for Singh, whose motivation to persist even in tough times lay in educating his three children who currently study in Triveniganj in Bihar’s Supaul district.

Ritesh Kumar Singh

Having had experience with tunnel boring machines (TBM) in past projects across the country, Singh was more confident working with the Mavala TBM on the MCRP worksite. “When I worked inside the TBM tunnel for the first time for a Delhi-based project, I was very scared. But by now, I am more confident. With the Mavala TBM, being the largest one in the country so far, the work was even more exciting,” he added.

Even as he was overjoyed the project finally opened to the public, Singh said that his family members are yet to visit the city. While he lives in Worli, he visits his hometown every 3 – 4 months. Owing to the high costs of living in a big city like Mumbai, his was unable to visit the coastal town as well as his work site.

“It is difficult to manage the costs in Mumbai. But I have been working hard and saving. Hopefully, my family will be able to visit the town soon as well as join me on my next project,” Ritesh said with a smile.

Anil Kumar Nishad and Dilip Kumar

Anil Kumar Nishad, a daily wage labourer with the MCRP, worked in an array of roles since he had arrived on the work site. One of these was providing signals to the cranes. The 34-year-old, who hails from Jaunpur, was staying in Thane and commuted daily from here to reach the construction site. Speaking to The Indian Express, Nishad said he had worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week during his work on the project. “We worked under all types of circumstances for all 30 days of the month. We faced the most difficulties during the summers owing to the heat.”

Anil Kumar Nishad and Dilip Kumar

To keep themselves going through the summer, Nishad and his colleagues would take frequent breaks as well as drink a lot of glucose-based drinks. In the monsoons, they would wear raincoats and remain on the ground. “No matter what the situation, we worked tirelessly. We undertook a lot of strenuous work, which sometimes included carrying heavy material,” he added.

Dilip Kumar (24) , a colleague of Nishad, said, “On some days, we would also injure ourselves in some small ways. But after first aid, we would get back on our feet. Stopping was never an option for us as it was what our job demanded. Now that phase one is opening, we are extremely excited today, But soon, we will get back to work on the northbound carriageway.”

Ashwini Kumar

After completing his course from NIT, Patna in 2020, Ashwini Kumar (25), who hails from Bihar’s Vaishali district, came to work as a senior mechanical engineer in the Mumbai Coastal Project the same year.

Ashwini Kumar

Kumar was one of the 20 people who manned the TBM that was responsible for digging India’s first undersea tunnel. It was his first venture in the professional world and little did he know that over the next four years he would encounter multiple challenges daily. “Any project is not without challenges, but the ones we faced in this were different. Since I was working in the TBM, we were several metres under the ground and we couldn’t get a sense of day and night, but we had to stay alert since there was no scope for a mistake,” he said.

“We had to dig through a complex area and seawater would often seep in, which we had to control immediately or else water would enter the TBM and damage the device. There were also times when the ground above us would collapse, which we also had to stop from falling by spraying slurry on it,” he added.

Harishankar Prasad

A native of Bihar, Harishankar Prasad was one of the labourers who had been part of the project since its inception. Since 2019, when he joined the MCRP workforce, Prasad had clocked in 12 hours of work daily to make the project a reality.

On Monday, as vehicles drove along the Coastal Road and entered the tunnel, Prasad and his colleagues hooted with joy and clicked pictures of commuters. “We are overjoyed that the people are finally getting to experience this project,” he said.

Harishankar Prasad

Before arriving in Mumbai, Prasad had also worked on the prestigious Delhi metro project. Currently living in CSMT, Prasad was entrusted with the charge of lifting foremen at the MCRP project. “My family comprises four daughters and my wife , who live in Delhi. We don’t see each other often as they don’t visit Mumbai,” he told Express.

Even as he missed his family, he doesn’t plan to visit Delhi anytime soon as his responsibilities on the next phase of the project await him. Prasad said, “I am awaiting the appointment of my next set of duties.”

Vishwakarma Raju

“I got this work when the Covid outbreak took place, during the lockdown all of us worked round the clock to ensure not a single second of time got wasted. There were days when we worked 16-18 hours straight and this would continue for weeks without us taking any break,” Vishwakarma Raju (25) said as he recalled the early days of his work. Raju had come from Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district in 2020 to work as a labourer at the MCRP.

Like many of his colleagues, Raju would stay in a makeshift camp created by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation authorities to shelter the labourers. Raju’s work involved lifting and assembling metal objects.