In big brother’s bad footsteps

The planned city on the other side of Thane creek may boast superior railway stations, wide roads and numerous green spaces, but it has a dark side, one that is getting increasingly darker — and similar in shade to that which, in many ways, defines its big-brother neighbour.

For Navi Mumbai, rapid growth, an ever-increasing population and urbanisation have been accompanied, on the sly, by traffic gridlock, a rising crime graph, environmental degradation and a growth in slums.

Vikas Khare, a Vashi resident, moved to the satellite city from Sion 10 years ago because he wanted to live in a greener environment. Now he finds Mumbai’s problems have chased him down. “The roads are getting smaller, gutters are overflowing and potholes are everywhere,” he says. “Roads, railways and slums — it is here that action is most needed.”

Pollution, earlier limited to the industrial belt, has also spread, but slums seem to be the biggest issue. There are an estimated 41,000 slums across Navi Mumbai, with the highest concentration in the Thane-Belapur industrial belt. The number could easily treble with displaced villagers and migrant labourers entering the city as part of the workforce.

Extensive construction is breeding rampant environmental damage, with wetlands and mangroves suffering the most. “The authorities claim they are compensating for this by planting trees and creating gardens, but what they’re doing is far from enough,” says naturalist and photographer Sunjay Monga, who has been leading a movement to change the route of the proposed Sewri-Nhava Sheva trans-harbour link. “Mumbai is paying a heavy price for neglecting this for all these years.”

Says Chandrashekhar Prabhu, editor of Economic Digest and a former member of Cidco: “Growth has to be reined in. Of course, there will be environmental damage, but growth has to be balanced with capacity. There needs to be foresight and understanding of what Navi Mumbai will be 20 years from now. The city needs to approach the future keeping in mind the mistakes Mumbai made.”

A city is born

• In 1958, the Maharashtra government appointed a study group comprising engineers, architects and urban planners to evaluate the congestion problems facing Bombay and suggest alternatives.
• The group recommended linking the island city of Bombay to peninsular Bombay across the Thane creek. The seeds were sown for a new metro-centre to be developed to accommodate a population of around 20 lakh.
• The City and Industrial Deve-lopment Corporation of Maha-rashtra (Cidco) was formed in March 1970 to develop Navi Mumbai. A strip of marshy land between Dighe village in Thane district and Kalundre village in Raigad district was chosen as the site for the new city. 
• It was proposed that all major government offices and public sector units would shift offices to Navi Mumbai, thereby easing the population density of, and attendant pressures on rapidly overcrowding Mumbai.
• That did not happen because there never was any political will to make the shift, and because the political and bureaucratic class had a vested interest in staying put, especially with the emergence of Nariman Point — from the sea, literally — as a business district.
• The 1980s saw a moderate rate of infrastructure and real estate growth in Navi Mumbai, but the lack of bureaucratic and political backing undermined the overall effort to make it an attractive enough destination for business and individuals.
• Despite all this, Navi Mumbai grew steadily, if not spectacularly, right through the 1990s — in terms of population, infrastructure and overall development.
• The turn of the millennium signalled the beginning of Navi Mumbai’s fast-growth phase. A host of housing projects and big infrastructure plans have fuelled the development agenda like never before, transforming this into the world’s largest fully planned new city.