‘Thank God for Marine Drive’

City planner Charles Correa tells Salil Deshpande that greens should not dismiss offhand HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh’s suggestion made to dna.sunday last week that Mumbai should again reclaim land from the sea to overcome scarcity

Greens have been blocking proposals for reclamation over the last few decades. What do you make of that?
If any of us had been around 80 years back, Marine Drive would have never got built. There were several compelling reasons against it, and reclamation was not the least of it. And if it hadn’t been built, we would have still been using the Queen’s Road. Today, aren’t you glad that Marine Drive exists? It’s a magnificent urban gesture and is the defining image of this city

Of course, there’s no sense endorsing indiscriminately every new development. Any proposal must be studied. But this has to be done intelligently, keeping in mind the broader issues involved. Unfortunately, nowadays, this is very seldom true.  People are accepting at face value pronouncements made by self-labelled ‘greens’ about environmental concerns, in some cases, regardless of their total lack of experience, or training, or intuitive insight into the complex problems.

So, should developmental concerns override environmental fears?
Certainly not. If there are two alternative ways to achieve a goal, we should choose the one which is more resource-efficient and more environment-friendly. But let’s understand that almost all development involves a certain exploitation of resources. Obviously, what we need to do is not just maximise one extreme or the other, but find the point of balance between the two, i.e. that point of trade-off where both objectives are optimised.

Even otherwise, there’s a general apprehension about the concept, perhaps, out of the fear of ‘going against nature’
A century ago we would have all opposed the building of railways. After all, the British were introducing them for their own selfish ends. Besides, why should we import the best European technology?

What we need, we would have said, is a better bullock cart.  Well, we would have been right and we would have been wrong. For, as we all know, the railways have been the single most profound agent of change in this vast sub-continent over the last century. And in ways perhaps nobody could have ever predicted, they transformed our lives.

This may not have been exactly what the British had in mind, but this is what actually happened. Every change, small or big, gradual or sudden, causes hurt — but the wound heals, eliminating the negative aspects of each intervention, and capitalising on its positive advantages.

What can reclamation do for the infrastructure of the city?
Now that the population of Mumbai has crossed 18 million, we desperately need more land, and reclamation is the way out. But as long as the land so gained is used for public purposes - like schools, hospitals, maidans-there’s nothing wrong. There should be mechanisms to ensure that land and the infrastructure built upon it is used in an equitable manner.

Reclaimed land can be used for a north-south expressway, which should be reserved exclusively for public buses during the rush hours (say 9 to 10 every morning and 5.30 to 6.30 every evening). During the rest of the day, there should be reserved bus lanes, free of private cars and taxis.