The autocratic ways of the MMRDA

It’s all of a piece. Destroying a public urinal to make way for cars, and keeping bicycles for hire in a corporate hub, are characteristic of the arbitrary manner in which the MMRDA works. Accountable to no one, so sure of itself that it sees no need to consult those most likely to be affected by its decisions, the MMRDA’s projects have cost Mumbaikars dear, and not in terms of money alone.

The just-completed motorists’ delight, the Eastern Freeway, built by the MMRDA, ends in a traffic nightmare at  its southern end. Among the many structures blocking the cars which will zoom off it as soon as a big enough VIP inaugurates it, is a public urinal. Those using the urinal form a category of Mumbaikars very different from those who will use the Freeway. No wonder  the MMRDA chief dismissed the problem saying, “The urinal can always be shifted.’’

The urinal’s demolition will undoubtedly be swift. How long will its reconstruction take? Will its users be consulted on its new location? And who will rebuild it? Public urinals are the responsibility of the BMC. The BMC hates the MMRDA. Ultimately, will the local slum dwellers, bus and truck drivers and other passers by who use the urinal, be left without one? The slums may well be demolished to clear the road for motorists. As for the rest, why, they are used to going without public toilets.

It is strange that the MMRDA didn’t see what lay in wait at the end of its prestigious Rs722 crore project. Traffic experts had warned about the bottleneck on P D’Mello Road, one of our oldest roads that caters mainly to heavy vehicles. But for the MMRDA, traffic experts come into the picture only after they have planned their projects. The Freeway has no CCTV cameras to monitor traffic violations, nor do its builders plan any. Let an accident take place, then we’ll see , said the MMRDA commissioner last month.

Residents of Andheri’s Veera Desai Road got a first-hand experience of the MMRDA’s high-handedness back in 2005, when the legendary T Chandrashekar was its chief. Having decided to widen the quiet, leafy residential road so as to enable traffic from Dahisar to zip across to Bandra, without so much as a word to its residents, the MMRDA was all set to cut 121 trees on the road to achieve their goal.

The residents’ opposition to this decimation of their forest  (the number of trees on that small stretch categorises it as an urban forest) amazed the agency’s officials. “We are giving you a brand new  road,’’ they said, “you should be grateful.’’ It hadn’t occurred to them that no resident had asked for it, and that the road was used more by pedestrians than the cars which would benefit by its widening. Eventually, an intense campaign involving tree-lovers across the city and architects who came up with an alternate plan which allowed road widening without cutting any trees, saved the residents.

At that time, residents had pleaded that the additional lane created by retaining the trees be used as a cyclists’ lane. “No one cycles in Mumbai,’’ MMRDA officials had laughed.

Now, the agency has decided to revive the already defunct cyclists’ lane it set up just two years back in the Bandra Kurla Complex, where its office is located, and keep cycles for hire! Who will rent those cycles? The executives who work there or the couriers who deliver their mail? Whom is the MMRDA fooling with this gesture?

The author is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist.