What's going on at Aarey?

Spanning 3,000 acres, the Aarey Milk Colony is the last remaining green lung of Mumbai. It is also in imminent danger of being lost if the citizens do not explicitly ask the government to stop the destructive projects being planned. I'd like to draw your attention to three major projects that could drastically alter this area, and destroy its natural beauty and unique value to the citizens.

The first and foremost of these dangers comes from a car shed planned on 70 acres of land that is adjacent to the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road, behind the Reliance Energy substation and the cement plant. This verdant plot is earmarked for parking and servicing metro coaches of Line 3 Metro, which will ply between SEEPZ and Colaba. Almost 2,000 trees are slated to be chopped for this purpose. A large grassy area will not only be concretised forever but will also increase the chances of downstream flooding during the monsoon, at Marol and the international airport, since the site lies on the banks of the Mithi River. The city has witnessed the floods of 2005 so I cannot be blamed for being an alarmist.
The second big threat is that from the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road, which is being planned as an additional east-west connector. The Goregaon segment proposes to widen the Aarey Road by 50 feet and more. Once again, a thousand trees will be cut on both sides of the road. The third threat, though not imminent, is from a proposal to extend the Byculla Zoo on a 200-acre site within Aarey.

In the case of the first two dangers, viable alternatives are available but the MMRDA and the MCGM are refusing to accept this. There is a fear that all this is being done at the behest of real estate interests that would like to see the dairy industry close down, thus usurping all the available land. The dairy sheds are deliberately neglected and bureaucratic troubles are being created to frustrate them. As far as the zoo goes, there is no need for the extension.
The land belongs to the state government and in effect, the public, for which the government is a trustee. The land was reserved for moving all cowsheds from the island city in 1949. In 2015, however, the demographics of Mumbai have changed and bulk of the population now resides in a 5km radius of Aarey Milk Colony.

There is a need to create enough breathing space for these residents in the form of open, green, recreational areas. Aarey can be developed as a world-class recreational area, which can attain international acclaim. We can have hiking and bike trails, picnic areas, nature trails, botanical gardens, museums, cafés and more. We need politicians who can envision all this rather than make a quick buck from real estate.
Instead of discussing Mumbai's worst global open space ratios for any urban area in the world, it is time that we get acting on the issue. The time has come to exert pressure on the politicians and authorities and tell them to look into feasible alternatives, which have been proposed for these two infrastructure projects.

Last week, the government of Maharashtra facilitated an urban dialogue to discuss how Mumbai can be made into a liveable metropolis. One of the most impressive speakers at the event was the Mayor of Stuttgart, who emphasised the need to take care of the environment. Providing clean air, rivers and open green spaces is at the centre of Stuttgart's economic strategy—to ensure that they have healthy, happy citizens, who want to stay in the city and companies that want to invest in them.
Fifty percent of Stuttgart is reserved as open, green areas to meet the recreational needs of the citizens—and Stuttgart's economic numbers speak for themselves. On the other hand, our bureaucrats and politicians do not seem to learn anything from visits abroad or from foreign visitors who come to speak here. Maybe it is because the citizens of Mumbai are themselves okay with whatever their elected representatives are doing.