A recent documentary titled, One City, Two Worlds, raises a major issue regarding the duality which exists in every city. It points out that in Mumbai, there is the formal, planned ‘‘static city’’. There is also the informal, unplanned ‘‘kinetic city’’, which has a ‘‘bazaar-like’’ ambience. A synopsis by Marg magazine, which produced the documentary, states: ‘‘In Bombay, two completely different worlds compete for the same space.’’ The film is presented by architect and conservationist Rahul Mehrotra.To begin with, the film’s facts are incorrect. Mumbai is one of the biggest but certainly not one of the fastest-growing conurbations in the world. Mumbai’s rate of growth is decelerating. It grew at a compounded rate of 1.88 per cent per year between 1981 and 1991 but declined to 1.82 per cent between 1991 and 2001. Even allowing, as demographers like Dr Sudha Deshpande do, for an undercount in the 1991 census, there is no denying that Mumbai’s population growth rate is declining.Since 1991, natural increase accounts for a far greater proportion of the bulge than migration. This contradicts the popular belief that ‘‘hordes’’ of ‘‘outsiders’’ are pouring into the city every day. I haven’t seen the 2001 statistics, but in 1991, it was around 300 people per day. The film’s synopsis does refer to ‘‘the need to find accommodation for millions of migrants from the countryside’’, which would tend to perpetuate this myth. Everyone tends to be vague about what we refer to as ‘Mumbai’. The film doesn’t help matters by not clarifying this either. People confuse Greater Mumbai, which is 466 sq km, with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which comprises 4,355 sq km and includes the outlying areas of the twin city and the townships of Kalyan and Thane. While the former has nearly 12 million people in 2001, it is the MMR which is expected, by one UN estimate, to grow to a staggering 28.5 million by 2015, the world’s biggest urban agglomeration, surpassing Tokyo. However, there is a more serious criticism. The film appears to fall in line with what a Mumbai evening newspaper’s banner headline exhorted: ‘Celebrate the spirit, bury the statistics’.Even if we obey this firman, there is much in the duality thesis that deserves to be questioned. It implies that there are two worlds which cohabit in the city. The film does mention that slums account for more than half of Greater Mumbai — that’s about 1.2 million households — but does not sufficiently emphasise that this is in fact the majority. We seldom realise that rather than question what the slum dwellers are doing here, they could be asking us the very same question.Are the two worlds only a matter of peaceful, if separate, co-existence? Are they merely in a symbiotic relationship? In other words, the argument may run: the rich need the poor to clean their homes and wash their clothes and cars; this in turn provides much-needed employment in this beleaguered metropolis. On the contrary, there is a tension between them, as witness the constant references to ‘‘citizens’’ movements against encroachments, hutment dwellers, hawkers and other ‘‘anti-social’’ elements. This in effect disenfranchises the poor of their citizenship, robs them of their rights and marginalises them. Who is responsible for their poverty?The film does pay lip service to the decline of manufacturing in Mumbai and interviews an out-of-work mill worker but stops short of taking this argument to its logical conclusion. Entire sections of the organised sector are gaping at the sunset. While many will argue that this is a ‘‘natural’’ process, which cities in every other country, Manchester and New York included, have faced, the harsh truth is that in the Indian context, those forced out of jobs in manufacturing will not find employment elsewhere. The service sector in general, and financial services in particular, cannot absorb these numbers. The growth of the informal sector, far from being a sign of dynamism, is the index of pauperisation of any society.Thus, the film’s paean of praise to the kinetic city falls flat in the face of the urban degradation that grips Mumbai in a vice. The energy of the dispossessed cannot be eulogised: it is their desperate will to survive, to keep body and soul together, that is driving most Mumbaikars.
