The Hindu Business Line : The virtues of having a river

SOME TIME around 8000 B.C. it is said that a small settlement came up in the Jordan river valley over 10 acres — it came to be known as Jericho. Move down history lane another 4,000 years and consider the Sumerians. Between 4000 B.C. and 3000 B.C., they put up the first cities of the world on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers — the present location of Iraq.

Closer home, the Indus Valley civilization came up around two rivers, the Indus and the Ganga in the 2500-1500 B.C. period. Nearby, the Chinese civilisation could not be separated from the 6,300-km course of the Yangtze river, and the joint venture is still going strong, after a good 3,000 years.

Cut to modern day Mumbai: It took Francis Almeida, the Portuguese sailor, to drop anchor in the island in 1508 before his countrymen christened it Bom Bahaia (the Good Bay) or Bombay. Thereafter, it took some 500 years to travel the distance from Bombay to Mumbai.

Bombay or Mumbai, the city seems to have been on a mission for a while now, trying to reengineer itself along the lines of some of the great cities such as Paris or London, or at least Shanghai. Paris is built along the Sienne, London, on the Thames, and Shanghai too has its own river, the Huanpu.

When it was decided that Mumbai would fashion itself after Shanghai, the Indian city was found to fall short on many counts. Among the commonly heard ones were world-class roads, flyovers and airports. But unheard was the absence of a river of its own.

Till July 26, that is. The rains brought home to everyone that Mumbai would not be denied of this one element too — it did have a river called the Mithi. The July deluge taught Mumbaites a bit of history, and some geography.

The foremost lesson was about a dirty stream that cascaded down the hills of Borivili to the Mahim creek via some suburbs. It took some learning to admit that it was not a gutter that had grown out of proportion but a river that had shrunk beyond recognition.

The city has been trying to come to grips with the reality of a river suddenly coming alive furiously almost overnight. Having been told by all and sundry that it had no business to let a real river be degraded into a gutter, those who run Mumbai decided to make it their business to develop the river. The Maharashtra Government took "serious" note of the obstructions caused to the natural flow of the river and decided to take corrective measures. It also decided to study whether encroachments along the river banks had resulted in the blockage of flow and take appropriate measures.

While not much can be done about two of the major obstructions to the natural flow of the river — the Mumbai airport runway and the financial hub called the Bandra-Kurla complex — the city municipal corporation (BMC) has struck in no uncertain terms.

Backed by the Bombay High Court, the BMC has issued closure orders to 44 commercial units for polluting the river. It has issued notices to 768 more units.

The next proactive move on this front, against those who have encroached the river banks by building shanties by the hundreds, may not be as easy. That is, if the State government tries to do anything on its own. Instead, it could allow real-estate developers to replace the slums with high-rise residential towers.

According to reports, such efforts are already underway and cries of foul play have begun rending the polluted river banks.

The plan is pretty straightforward. Instead of trying to evict the slum-dwellers, a move always fraught with risk, take the help of private real-estate developers to buy out these encroachers`. The land thus acquired, with the tacit understanding of the government, will see a joint venture unfold. Development will go at two levels simultaneously — real-estate and river.

Mumbai has tried time and again to force the issue of illegal slum-dwellers but these attempts have been far from successful. This time around, things could be different as slum clearance has been sanitised by involving both the private sector and the Mithi river.

At one go, Mumbai will rid itself of` obstructions to its new-found river. And develop a posh residential district with a `river-view' in the midst of nowhere.

Mumbai developed the business district of Nariman Point many years back inland reclaimed from sea. So, why not a residential district that can come up on land reclaimed from the river?

And, perhaps, also an assessment whether the river is navigable once properly dredged, thus adding another dimension to intra-city travel.

Not bad for a city that did not know it had a river till the July 26 rains.

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