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Journalism of Courage
Development did not reach Bhiwandi but parcels did.
Once a power-loom hub catering to over a third of the country’s cloth demand, Bhiwandi reinvented itself as one of the largest logistics hubs in the country in the 1990s. Its proximity to the financial capital of India — Bhiwandi is located at a distance of mere 40 km from Mumbai and 15 km from Thane, helped speed up this transition.
However, a walk through its lanes reveals a sorry state of affairs — sluggish civic development, debilitating infrastructure, pokey residential buildings and unplanned warehouses. On May 12, a massive fire broke out at a warehouse in Bhiwandi’s Rahanal. No fatalities or injuries were reported.
On April 29, a building operating as a godown-cum-residential complex here collapsed. Eight persons had died and several others were injured in the cave in at Wardhman complex. As all eyes stayed glued to the 45-hour rescue operation, there was one question on every mind — “What could possibly have led to the collapse of a building that was less than 10 years old?”
To a query by The Indian Express, officials at the Narpoli Police Station said their investigation into the building collapse was still underway. An official at the Thane Disaster Response Force (TDRF) said, “During our rescue operation, we found that some glass bottles from the warehouse, which operated on the ground floor, were stored on the second floor as well. This increased the load on the structure, which was already weak. Our jawans found it difficult to traverse through the rubble as the glass bottles kept breaking.”
Over the past decade, collapse of buildings and fires have become increasingly common in Bhiwandi. The biggest casualty of such incidents is not the warehouses but the labourers working in them.
According to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) survey inspection reports, there are a staggering 7,425 unauthorised structures sprawled over approximately 56,22,838 square metres in Bhiwandi. However, local warehouse owners estimate that the actual number could be between 15,000-20,000.
The e-commerce boom over the past decade came as a huge boon for Bhiwandi and its earliest warehouses sprung up in Dapoda, Kalher, Purna, Rahanal and Kopar. The rising appeal of Bhiwandi was not lost on locals — some who were farmers and others who worked in different industries. The locals started selling land parcels that couldn’t be cultivated to builders looking to develop godowns and gain inroads into the booming industry of logistics.
“One of biggest appeal of Bhiwandi was that it lay outside the limit of octroi duty (a tax — abolished in 2017 after GST was introduced — levied by state government on certain goods as they entered an area), ensuring cheap and smooth movement of goods,” said Upendra Godse, whose company has been offering warehousing solutions to pharmaceutical companies since the mid-1990s.
Besides its proximity to the municipalities of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar as well as the country’s largest container port — the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) Industrial Area in Palghar, Badlapur and Ambernath — Bhiwandi’s godowns also offered a welcome respite from Mumbai’s sky-high rent.
Godse said, “In the mid-1990s, the rent for a warehouse in Mumbai was Rs 50 per square foot. In Navi Mumbai, it was between Rs 10 and Rs 12 per sq ft. At that time, the rent for a warehouse in Bhiwandi was merely Rs 5 per sq ft.”
The trend continues to reflect in the rates today. According to industry experts, while the cost of renting a warehouse in Bhiwandi can be anywhere between Rs 12 and 15 per sq ft, the rent in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai is over Rs 200 per sq ft and Rs 45 to Rs 50 per sq ft respectively.
An official of the Central Railway said, packages worth Rs 15.66 crore were dispatched in FY 2022-2023 from Bhiwandi Road Station alone. In the previous financial year, goods worth Rs 10.84 crore were dispatched from Bhiwandi station. Within one year, a growth of 44.48 per cent was observed.
The report said, “Bhiwandi was developed as a business development unit only in 2020, when trucks couldn’t ferry (goods) because of Covid restrictions.”
As countless warehouses, in multiple sizes, mushroomed across the taluka, the MMRDA was in 2007 appointed as the special planning authority for Bhiwandi Surrounding Notified Area (BSNA), which comprises 60 villages surrounding the municipal boundary of Bhiwandi Nizampur City Municipal Corporation (BNCMC). SVR Srinivas, Additional Chief Secretary and Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA, told The Indian Express, “Over the past several decades, unauthorised constructions emerged in Bhiwandi. It is a huge urban planning issue since such structures lead to challenges related to planning and sustainability.”
Eight months ago, the planning authority commenced the process of regularisation. The aim was to establish Bhiwandi as a formal logistics hub. “We started demolitions earlier but then the High Court stepped in and asked us to stop. So we started the regularisation policy,” he said.
Having regularised over 1 million sq ft, the MMRDA has faced a litany of challenges. “Several issues came up in the process. For example, some of the buildings don’t have storm water drains, while others don’t have open space (a recreational ground, a government-mandated open space). So we fine and regularise them,” added Srinivas.
According to him, one of the biggest problems with Bhiwandi’s planning lies in the separation of roads between the local and the planning authorities. “While the local authorities (BNCMC) are responsible for providing basic services, the MMRDA is solely a planning authority. Although roads are defined into distinctive sections (some fall under BNCMC and others under MMRDA), they sometimes overlap between the local and planning authorities, leading to issues,” said Srinivas, adding that even village panchayats don’t have the capacity to provide essential services at times.
Despite its ongoing regularisation process, The Indian Express found that the MMRDA had not carried out any recent survey on warehouses. As per the records of its last survey, carried out in 2008, warehouses and godowns were spread over 651.12 hectare in BSNA and accounted for 4.54 per cent of the total area.
In Bhiwandi, the roads leading up to the tehsil office are lined with derelict residential buildings and warehouses of all shapes and sizes. Yet, tehsil officials said they did not have recent records on the total number of godowns. Thanks to administrative complacency and despite the MMRDA’s efforts to regularise warehouses in Bhiwandi, illegal constructions continue to flourish here.
Alankar Warghade, a social worker with Indian Women and Children Foundation, an NGO in the area, said, “There are two aspects of illegality when it comes to these warehouses. First, most of the buildings are constructed illegally. Second, these warehouses often store banned substances on their premises illegally. For example, a warehouse may have the license to operate a warehouse for food products but it may also illegally deal in chemical substances on the side.”
A Bhiwandi Fire Brigade official said most old as well as illegal warehouses neither have approved firefighting equipment on the premises nor a fire no-objection certificate (NOC) from the government. Compounded by neglect by the local authority, this dangerous combination of illegal constructions and sheer disregard for safety norms has started translating into major tragedies in Bhiwandi.
Congealed in poverty and living along the fault lines of Bhiwandi’s warehouses are its labourers. At the break of dawn, the unkempt streets line up with labourers — half walking and half waiting for a bus to ferry them to their places of work. Sunrise and sunset hold no meaning for them. “We don’t have fixed schedules. I am working the morning shift today. Tomorrow, it’ll be some other shift. Who knows?” said Ashraf, a warehouse worker.
A town brimming with a population of over 9 lakh, Bhiwandi’s warehouse workers could very well be the poster boys of this logistics hub. While one half of the workers at these godowns are locals, the other half comprise migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir. These migrants reside in buildings that have been constructed haphazardly by the locals. The monthly rent ranges between Rs 3,000 and Rs 3500 per room here.
A migrant worker from Bihar said, “My family of four resides in one room. The water supply is perfect but space can be a bit of a problem.”
However, he is one of the luckier migrants since several labourers, having no other recourse, end up residing in warehouses. In one of the warehouses, The Indian Express found off-duty workers from J&K sleeping on the premises. “Our contractor is from J&K and hires labourers from his state. Most labourers do not have their own rooms. So they stay here and sleep on the first floor of the warehouse after their shift,” said a worker.
Paid minimum wage as prescribed by the state government, these workers undertake activities such as packaging, loading, unloading, wrapping and folding, among other things. For Bhiwandi, which falls under Maharashtra’s zone I, the state government has prescribed a minimum monthly wage of Rs 14,076 for skilled workers and Rs 12,465 for unskilled ones in zone I.
Unfortunately, not everyone receives the minimum wage. Stating that they receive their salaries quarterly, a labourer who works at a warehouse in Bhoomi Complex claimed, “I earn a monthly wage of Rs 12,000 on paper. The contractor hands over just Rs 9,000 in hand.”
A native of Bihar, he moved to Bhiwandi three years ago. He lives here with his wife and two children. “I am yet to receive my salary for this quarter. How should I pay my rent and feed my family when I haven’t been paid for the past 3 months? Having used up all my savings, I was forced to borrow money so that we didn’t starve this past month,” he said.
It is pertinent to note that all warehouse workers are employed through contractors and not directly by the companies. These contractors pocket a huge chunk of their wages. Even e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flipkart employ labourers via contractors.
“Labourers are appointed by contractors, who are paid by the company. These contractors pay the labourers after deducting their commissions. Since the workers are not on company payroll, they do not receive the benefits these companies offer,” said Warghade.
While newly developed warehouses of big-ticket companies in Bhiwandi are MMRDA-approved and built in accordance with safety compliance norms, their polished façades hide the harsh realities of their workers.
“When payment is released, the contractor deducts his commission before it reaches us. Also, the work is contract-based. This essentially means that if they have no work for us, they can take away our jobs within 15 days or one month. This leaves us with no job security,” a worker at the Amazon warehouse said.
He added, “Under the name of ‘cross-training’, they make us work in multiple departments. This means that we can be asked to work in packaging now and a few hours later, it could be something else. It can be very frustrating for us but we have to follow these orders or else we could get fired.”
Rais Shaikh, Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA from Bhiwandi, said, “The sub-contractors who employ these workers exploit them. The workers don’t receive minimum wage, have no proper means of public transport, no insurance and no medical cover.”
Despite being aware of these conditions, labourers continue to work in these godowns due to the lack of alternate means of employment. “I am a graduate but I have no other job opportunities here. Nobody would want to work under such circumstances but what choice do I have?” said a Flipkart loader, who has been working in the sector for the past 2.5 years.
With the emergence of projects like the Samruddhi Mahamarg (or the Nagpur-Mumbai Expressway), Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, Alibaug-Virar Corridor, etc., transforming connectivity in Maharashtra, Bhiwandi is set to witness a bigger push in terms of its development as a logistics hub. “Through labour courts, full-fledged offices must be established here to ensure that the grievances of labourers are heard,” said Shaikh.
In the unplanned warehouse centres of Bhiwandi, labourers jostle for space with delivery trucks under piecemeal street lights. Architect K K Durraj of K K and Associates, who has been working in the industry for the past 30 years, said sanctioning authorities need to become more proactive in order to ensure that structures don’t pop up as haphazardly as they did decades ago.
“A local practice in Bhiwandi also needs to change. The concept plan of warehouses is made by one architect, the signature is given by another, the permission is obtained by a broker and after permissions are obtained, architects and consultants who are not even mentioned on paper end up working on site,” added Durraj.
Meanwhile, MMRDA is undertaking major infrastructure works in town with the aim of developing Bhiwandi as a formal logistics hub and opening its labour market to Mumbai.
“Bhiwandi is going to be a key growth centre for the MMRDA, which is engaged in building some bridges here and also the Bhiwandi by-pass road. Bhiwandi is a poor man’s city, with the majority of the population relying on public transport. We are, therefore, building Metro Line 5 between Thane and Bhiwandi, opening the entire hinterland to development,” said Srinivas.
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