Condemned, Antop Hill colony awaits the Great Leveller

Only recently, one of the buildings, no 79 in Sector II, crumbled in a downpour, injuring two trespassers inside. “We stood there for hours together, praying that there were no bodies under the debris. Had there beenany, we would have been held responsible,” says an engineer of the Maintenance Department. Rampant thieving abetted by gaping holes where windows have been ripped off their frames has only served to further erode the stability of the structures, most of them 30 years old.

Yet to plug pilferage, officials have been forced to remove windows of the other buildings themselves. Where they have failed to, staircases have been walled in so that thieves cannot carry away the booty.

However, these feeble attempts will only postpone the inevitable. The collapse on August 9 was the third in as many years. At least seven more buildings are expected to give way any moment and have been earmarked for demolition. This will add to the tally of five buildings which have been demolished already.

However, for the colony’s residents, danger is a constant companion. Plaster has been peeling for a while now, the walls vibrate and mud spurts out at every attempt to drive a nail in. “Even now, there are cracks in the wallsinside,” says Ratna Padmakar, who has just been shifted from an unsafe building to a recently `repaired’ one. She is awaiting interior repairs before she paints her new home.

The Antop Hill Central Government Quarters is one of the biggest housing complexes for central government employees in Mumbai. It comprises 83 acres whose buildings cover around 42,000 sq mt. In a three-year exercise, which began in 1993, around 56 buildings have been labelled as totally unsafe for habitation. In fact, almost every one in Sector IV – which resembles a cemetery of dead buildings – is unsafe.

Extensive repairs were earmarked for a few other structures. “We decided to take up repairs only in buildings where the costs were less than 20 per cent of the construction costs,” confides an official. “Even that included only external repairs. Only where columns and beams have cracked, we are reinforcing and replastering them,” the official explains. But even that is no insurance against life.

But then why do centralgovernment buildings – are devoid of `illegal’ alterations and additions, considered culprits in collapses of private buildings – bite the dust in just 30 years? (A reinforced cement concrete structure is supposed to have a lifespan of around 60 years).

“The buildings are old,” a senior official justifies… “and then Mumbai being close to the sea, the salt in its air, the atmospheric conditions, high humidity and chemical pollution weakens the structures before their time.”

Another official confides that a study is underway to dig up reasons for the aborted lifespan. Committees have been set up, both local and central, to study the construction material used.

But as the Union Housing Ministry sifts through a scheme to build multi- storey buildings here, officials are keeping their fingers crossed as far as vandalism and collapses are concerned. Its skeletal policing staff has proved poor in patrolling the vast expanse from thieves and anti-social elements. Even demolishing the unsafe buildings willnot help, officials feel, as the land will be immediately encroached upon.

But they need not wrack their collective brain. The Great Leveller will probably make that decision… sooner rather than later.