ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION IN HERITAGE MUMBAI
Vidyadhar Date
[Eight of world’s ten most polluted major cities are in India. The distorted model of urban development that has prevailed in India over the last few decades due to the corrupt nexus between the builder lobby, politicians, and the bureaucracy is especially pronounced in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India’s financial capital, where environmental issues are frequently trumped by the power of money.
The article below is by a veteran journalist who reported for the major daily, Times of India, for over 30 years. The article below cobbled together from his numerous Facebook postings document how the heritage of Bombay is being destroyed by this model of “development.” – Eds.]
Economically and culturally better off sections of society in Mumbai are now protesting against a false model of development being imposed on the city by vested interests.
The poor are suffering far more but they have little voice, they are too subdued as they are struggling to lead a bare existence.
Rich residents of (downtown Mumbai’s) Marine Drive area and the (suburban) Bandra west area last week asked the city corporation to shut up, and stop concretizing their good roads. Instead of providing basic amenities, the municipal civic body, Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC), in spending funds on superfluous projects in league with contractors.
A presentation by the BMC to South Mumbai residents on refurbishing the already beautified Marine Drive promenade met with stiff opposition earlier as the civic body had plans to build a performance circle and a cafe, along with a laser show on the roof of the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) at Nariman Point.
The Nariman Point Churchgate Citizens’ Association (NPCCA), the Federation of Churchgate Residents (FCR) and the Marine Drive Residents’ Association (MDRA) had sent a letter to former assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar on this. Atul Kumar, president, NPCCA, stated in the letter, “The Marine Drive endpoint at NCPA is a dead-end road with no exit except to take a U-turn to connect back to Marine Drive. The area is already extremely congested with limited movement for vehicles, pedestrians and visitors to the promenade area.”
Huge funds have been spent on so called redevelopment of heritage gardens and in the process they have destroyed most of the greenery.
Besides, there is a big problem of a false aesthetic sense, so colonial-era buildings are being beautified but no effort is made to clean the filth around them.
The historic, beautifully built suburban Bandra station, after its recent restoration, stands out like a newly bloomed lotus within a swampy pond. Shiny pictures of the station shared on social media only tell half the story of what used to be once called the Queen of Suburbs – they gloss over the squalor around the precinct. There’s a reason behind this incongruity — elite Bandra-ites no longer visit this area as they do not travel by train.
This raises serious questions about our whole approach to aesthetics and cleanliness. We must remember that modern London emerged from the era of the stink of the Thames, with sanitary reforms led by the likes of Charles Dickens. John Ruskin, the Victorian thinker of art who influenced Mahatma Gandhi, famously said that a clean sewer is far nobler than the most beautiful painting of Madonna.
This is relevant for Bandra today, as a dirty sewer flows right behind the station on the east side, and alongside people stand in a queue for buses that take them to the fancy corporate district of Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC). No area around a suburban station in Mumbai suffers from so much squalor, stink and noise from endless honking by hordes of auto rickshaw drivers shouting at the top of their voices to fetch customers. Officers of the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), the planning body for the whole area, live in absolute splendor a little distance away. They have cleaned a part of the Mithi river in front of their residential building and enjoy exclusive access to a public garden spread over a couple of acres to which the public is now denied entry.
Speaking about aesthetics, MMRDA’s own building should raise serious questions — a glass box type of a structure which violates basics civic norms, the ramp for cars completely disrupts the footpath; it is so stark and visible.
The municipal corporation is organizing a colorful flower show in the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale, Ranicha Baug, in Mumbai from 31 January to Feb 2 to be followed by a workshop from February 7 to 9 in the same premises, in an auditorium, on nurturing gardens while charging a fee of Rs 1000.
Though BMC has a big gardening department with a long tradition, the workshop will be conducted mainly by experts from outside.
These are good events but the question to be posed to the BMC authorities is why in practice they are actually damaging if not killing existing gardens even as they conduct an annual workshop on gardening. Is there not a terrible contradiction here?
The corporation’s record in renovating excellent gardens is nothing but disastrous. Specifically, one can mention the Horniman Circle garden and the Bandra fort garden.
After the heritage Bandra fort garden, the authorities have damaged the heritage Horniman Circle garden in the heart of Mumbai. All the greenery has been uprooted in this garden beyond recognition, this is unbelievable. Looks like the work of a sadist.
Mr J.R.D. Tata himself used to take interest in this garden and had supported its maintenance for many years.
Mercifully the trees are not uprooted but they are pruned so badly that all we are left with are tall trunks, all the foliage is gone there is no shade at all.
So, we are left with a very barren sort of landscape, the very negation of a garden. What on earth have they done with an unbelievably high budget of Rs 12 crore (120 million rupees) and closing the garden for more than two years?
The only little greenery we now see is the grass and planting it seems to have begun only about a week or so ago. It is in such a primary stage.
I saw the damage yesterday on my way to the Asiatic library for the release of the book Gujaratis by Salil Tripathi.
I have been going through the garden for decades to the library and rested here for a while under the shade on way to the library. Now even that relief has gone for many.
The only work that is visible is repairing the artistic iron fence.
In the Bandra Fort they had at least built something, though it was so inappropriate for a heritage area. In Horniman garden they have absolutely nothing to show.
The garden has such a wonderful backdrop of the imposing Town Hall and Asiatic library monument built with inspiration from Greek Roman architecture.
Any ordinary Mali, gardener, would have done a hundred times better job given a span of more than two years. We should have had a thriving lush green, landscape after the recent monsoon. What on earth were these people doing all these years behind the barriers built all around the garden? This calls for a serious inquiry.
Surprising this happens in a city full of architects and landscape designers who are capable of doing good work with private commissions. If the PWD public works department had done such a shoddy job in a government building, bungalows of bureaucrats or ministers, the person would have been immediately suspended.
Matters are getting worse. Citizens have seen the devastation inflicted by corrupt elements in the administration in gardens like Joggers Park and Almeida Park in Bandra. One can understand the corruption but why on earth spoil the environment for the citizens. If you cannot do good, at least do not inflict damage.
So after more than two years there are no visible creepers, climbers, grown plants, grasses, herbs, flowers, butterflies, birds, shrubs. Nothing, a sterile, barren landscape is all we have. As an Urdu poet has said: “Barbad gulistan karne ko, bas ek hi ulloo kafi tha, har shakh pe ulloo baitha hai anjam-e-gulistan kya hoga?” (One bird of ill omen was enough to destroy a garden, when ill-omened birds are perched on every branch what will the garden’s future be?)
Replace the imagery of the bird with corrupt elements, we might say.
A bit of mercy is that they have not put the atrocious cement concrete flooring all over as in the Bandra fort garden which has made it unbearably hot during the day even in winter.
One would suspect that hideous design was indeed intended here as well but was probably given up following the furor from citizens about the Bandra fort garden.
How can this take place in such a prime area so near the Bombay Natural History Society BNHS and the Museum with its lush green garden?
He would have been horrified by destruction of greenery and rampant use of steel, cement, and ugly design in some of the gardens in the suburb and elsewhere. Mercifully such vandalism was prevented from occurring in the historic Jijamata Udyan , Victoria garden, because of the alertness of activists.
We used to have good botanists associated with civic gardens in the past. Mr. Raphael Almeida, after whom the Almeida Garden in Bandra is named, was a professor of botany and author of books on the subject. He donated land for the garden and was chairperson of the municipal standing committee.
He would have been horrified by destruction of greenery and rampant use of steel, cement, and ugly design in some of the gardens in the suburb and elsewhere.
The heritage character is heavily tampered with, the old fort wall is completely plastered over so the whole character of the fort is gone. How on earth did the heritage authorities allow this? The authorities have much to answer for.
Can one imagine the walls of Raigad fort or any other fort in Maharashtra plastered in cream color as is done here in the Bandra fort?
I saw the shocking sight this morning, the so-called renovated area was thrown open, inaugurated last evening after the hush hush closure in the last two years. People in the neighborhood were distressed, much of the greenery is gone and now there is so little chance to bring it back unless the whole hideous concretization is dug up and normalcy is restored.
This is no less shocking than the controversial make over of the Parliament precinct or of historic Varanasi though this is in a smaller area.
Much worse than that, the whole garden is destroyed, much of the grass is gone, most of it is paved over with cement and concrete. An absolute environmental disaster, what were the municipal authorities doing ?
It was such a cool, pleasant, shaded place, now it is utterly hot, a monument to the cement , concrete and construction lobby.
Also shocking is the fact that the garden will close at 6 p.m, why on earth were then those very expensive lights put up there. Plants and trees are best left to darkness at night. There is reason to suspect that once the gates are closed in the evening, the area will be thrown open exclusively to residents of the adjoining Taj Land’s End luxury hotel or handed over to the rich for their private celebrations.
No place could be more public but this is clearly is in a sense a privatization of public space, denial of access to ordinary people. Access is restricted only in the morning hours and in the afternoon from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. when it will be very hot indeed particularly this month.
Closer to the amphitheatre there were good comfortable benches, they are gone along with good benches the shady trees under which one could sit.
Crores(tens of millions) of rupees will be charged on the public exchequer but there is not the courtesy to provide basic amenities to sit down and relax, there are a few steel benches ,badly , very badly designed, the seats are too large in size for comfort, one cannot reach the backrest without causing pain to oneself.
A jogging track is created but even this is asphalted, such tracks by their nature are supposed to be of natural earth. The whole construction seems to be a conspiracy against Nature, to deny people as much access to Nature as possible.
Bhupendra Deshmukh, a film and theatre professional from Bandra east, said the whole development was very distressing, see how well such historic areas are looked after in Scotland and elsewhere.
The immediate concern of our citizenry and heritage lovers is to intervene in the work on the historic Horniman Circle garden and check the work there, if it is being paved over and destroyed, there will be some scope now to undo the damage that is likely to have been caused during its closure in the last two years for so called renovation.
How can a public amenity used by thousands be closed for years? Some citizens say let the authorities make money, we can understand your thirst for corruption, but at least do not damage our greenery, give us our shade, our last resort under the heat islands being created.
The whole work culture of the BMC garden department and others needs immediate supervision, and correction.
I remember former municipal commissioner Sharad Kale used to express concern over the concretization of the natural earth area in buildings as that leads to flooding, the water is not absorbed under the earth. The BMC is now itself acting against the interests of the city and its citizens in the name of beautification.
The damage done to the Bandra fort garden has to be seen to be believed. Needlessly, big stone-face walls are built. The whole exercise seems to be in the interest of building contractors.
The new municipal commissioner Bhushan Gagrani seems to have some awareness of environment, he has expressed concern over the strain the current building spree with redevelopment will impose on basic infrastructure. He needs to intervene before the city suffers more damage.
Earlier, one could see the fort wall from the entrance, now much of it is clearly damaged and plastered beyond recognition. Fortunately, there are enough old photographs of the old fort so one can clearly see the havoc the makeover has caused. The plaque of the old fort is there but now it looks so incongruous amidst the plaster.
Formerly the garden was jealously guarded by a few people like veteran heritage enthusiast Arup Sarbadhikary who lives in the neighborhood, they fought against the hotel’s attempted encroachments for years. Now, they seem to be completely overpowered.
Besides, multiple other questions arise and need to be asked. Also involved here is the directorate of archaeology of the state government. Its director, a history scholar of some standing, was absconding for several days following a bribery case and he now stands suspended. His assistant asked for a bribe from a person for permission for construction in the vicinity of a comparatively minor heritage site. She was caught red handed and his links with her were established. How did the department give permission for major changes here?
Apparently, an effort is being made to erase history related to the Portuguese, so this plastering of the fort walls completely removes the historical connection. We have a very poor sense of history; the Portuguese were comparatively far more recent. If one takes a walk behind the fort from the Kadeshwari temple down below one finds a very striking rock formation, a huge rock, luckily deeply embedded in the hill on the right, facing the sea link. It gives an idea that it must be millions of years old.
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