Spin City

In his second term as Maharashtra chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh wants to give the city a lasting legacy. ‘‘Someone has to take the responsibility,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s time to give something back to Mumbai.’’ So he’s returning the favour by way of a

Rs 31,823-crore plan to be complete in five years.

Governor S M Krishna, fresh from his experience in revamping Bangalore, is eagerly helping Deshmukh with consultancy.

New Delhi will have to be roped in too. A sizeable chunk, Rs 9,659 crore, of the funds must come from the Centre. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had referred to the Shanghai route himself, on his October 6 visit to Mumbai. Talking about making Mumbai the country’s ‘‘number one’’ city, he said in December: ‘‘I share this aspiration… to transform Mumbai in the next five years in such a manner that people would forget about Shanghai and Mumbai will become a talking point.’’

So, as a bevy of senior bureaucrats single-mindedly chips away at the hideous face of a city awaiting its biggest makeover ever, the average Mumbaiite glimpses, through a complex web of acronyms, what Deshmukh calls a ‘‘masterplan’’ for the city.

BOMBAY DREAMS

THERE are already existing infrastructure projects like the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP), the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) and the 4-km Bandra-Worli Sealink and proposed 22-km Sewri-Nhava sealink—likely to be India’s longest bridge. Put these together with the Dharavi redevelopment plan and various beautification projects along the seafront, and what you get is the promise of a cohesive recuperation plan.

There will be quicker, more comfortable commutes by rail and road, slick highways upto 14 lanes wide, elevated roads escaping any leftover traffic pile-ups, safe subways, much-needed roads linking eastern and western suburbs and designer promenades for blithe evenings by the sea. Many of the road projects are due for completion by the end of 2005.

Municipal Commissioner Johny Joseph has a vision statement too, listing out a lavish spread for the city: ‘‘First, we’re contributing Rs 300 crore worth of concrete and asphalt roads to MUIP,’’ says Joseph.

India’s infotech behemoth, Tata Consultancy Services, is working overtime to computerise the civic body’s activities completely, including a geographical information system.

In the long run, there’s also Water Supply Master Plan 2021, for a projected population of 15.8 million people. The Middle Vaitarna dam project is scheduled to be complete by 2011, bringing an additional 455 million litre per day (mld). That is one sixth of the total water Mumbai consumes every day.

Corporate Mumbai is excited too. Bombay First, a lobby group including big corporates, activists and planners, is pushing for scrapping the Urban Land Ceiling Act and opening up hundreds of acres of mill land idling in Central Mumbai, which will both offer developers on a platter land the size of at least five or six Nariman Points (Mumbai’s downtown business district).

In a meeting with the Governor, they also spoke about a possible meeting of Mumbai’s bureaucrats with the team that revamped Bangalore between 1999 and 2003, which Krishna could help arrange.

CHANGE ON GROUND

THE change is already visible, sending a strong signal that this time around, the government means business.

In 23 days, 45,697 illegal shanties have been demolished, freeing up an area the size of nearly three Nariman Points. Protests notwithstanding, from Congress MLAs whose election manifesto had expressly promised to protect all shanties born until 2000 and now from activists decrying the state’s ignoring the 2 lakh homeless slumdwellers, the chief minister is pressing on.

‘‘There must be a strong deterrent against squatting,’’ Joseph says, listing laws other countries have against uncontrolled migration into cities. ‘‘We can’t stop people from coming to Mumbai, but they can’t assume it’ll be okay to live under a pipeline.’’

His fresh ultimatum to his assistant municipal commissioners: Tackle all illegal structures, shanties or otherwise.

Lists of builders’ illegal extensions and slumlords are being frantically compiled, admits one ward officer. Meanwhile, 83 squads continue to roam the city every working day, armed with landmovers, digital cameras, cellphones and policemen.

DARK SIDE OF THE SHINE

But a shiny, Shanghaiesque Mumbai can hardly be built on the debris of 46,000 shanties. Because over half of the city’s 12 million residents live in slum colonies, on land owned mostly by the municipality and various government agencies.

Practically every infrastructure project is stalled by the problem of rehousing slumdwellers. The law protects every shanty in existence before 1995 and such slumdwellers displaced by the new roads and flyovers will have to be rehoused.

MUIP’s rehabilitation component involves 35,000 slum families. MUTP will displace nearly 20,000 families. Now compare that to the performance of the body set up seven years ago to rehabilitate Mumbai’s slumdwellers. The Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) has fully rehoused less than 30,000 families in all these years.

Still, IIM-graduate and tech-savvy IAS officer who was SRA chief until last week, Ujwal Uke, says a slum-free Mumbai is possible.

‘‘But at a cost,’’ he adds. Let’s say there are 50 lakh slum dwellers eligible for rehabilitation in Mumbai. Or 12 lakh slum families. ‘‘Rehabilitating all of them will cost over Rs 21,000 crore,’’ Uke says.

Nifty as the chief minister’s funding plan for Vision Mumbai may be, it doesn’t allocate anything for these 12 lakh slum dwellers. Or, indeed, for the 2 lakh unprotected slum dwellers already turned into refugees by the ongoing demolition drive.

‘‘Uprooting homes like this serves no purpose,’’ is the stern and rather unexpected advice from G R Khairnar, retired deputy municipal commissioner and Mumbai’s original Demolition Man in the 1990s. Slums will simply keep coming back, he warns. ‘‘In 1992, we found that every civic ward office was getting paid per illegal structure,’’ he says, calling it a Rs 300-crore protection industry for the slums.

So, as neighbouring Thane’s civic commissioner orders officers to ensure that none of these suddenly homeless slumdwellers settles in Mumbai’s satellite city, the bourgeois middle-class makeover contemplates a definite hurdle.