The Hindu Business Line : Mumbai's suffocation

The lopsided perspectives of Mumbai's so-called civic ministries which trot out weak-kneed excuses for breaking the law are reasons why Mumbaikars are being suffocated, both literally and morally.

IT MAY seem difficult to believe, but Mumbai's floods of July had a silver lining. The city got a second chance to rethink its unplanned development and bring some quality back into its urban life. But with a track-record of initiatives that miss the woods for the trees, it looks unlikely that the city fathers will seize the fragile moment.

There has been much song and dance, for instance, over banning bar-girls in Maharashtra. It would have been heart-warming had the ban been to protect the dancing girls and their young clientele from becoming `morally corrupt'.

Strangely, though, these authorities are not outraged when young girls are forced into the flesh-trade. Mumbai's famous red-light areas do roaring business, with little intervention to protect the exploited. Regulating red-light areas would stir a hornet's nest. The authorities do not even seem to baulk when groups of street-children crowd around cars at traffic-signals, begging for food or money.

Neither are too many hairs ruffled when Mumbaikars have to put up with loud music or fire-crackers at the dead of night in the name of some celebration, the Supreme Court's order on noise pollution notwithstanding. Instead, weak-kneed reasons are trotted out on why the apex court's directive cannot be implemented.

Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister takes the issue one bizarre step further by questioning the `noise pollution' of aeroplanes flying after 10 p.m.!

This lop-sided perspective is evident in the State's response to the recent floods too. Much water has flowed down the Mithi since Mumbai's heaviest rains in 95 years. So much so, it should have turned the tide in favour of protecting green spaces and rivers in the city. The authorities responded by banning plastic.

Though it would have been more satisfying to hear that someone was sacked for not doing a good job of checking the drains before the rains! Yes, plastic packets clog drains. But nip that by sorting out garbage, starting from our own homes.

Regulate use of plastic using re-cycleable varieties. Put the brakes instead on unplanned development of mill-land and curb the rampant concretisation of open-spaces.

Greens, who had fought lone battles against encroachments by land-sharks into the Sanjay Gandhi National Park(a luscious green habitat for leopards on the outer-fringes of Mumbai), seem to be finding support among residents.

Albeit a little late, crusaders are now protesting encroachments on the fringes of the Mithi river.

The river, once no more than a nullah, was one of the villains in July's flooding. Residents had to contend with the fury of a polluted river, whose outlet into the sea had been blocked by encroachments.

But when no less than the State's Minister strategises to sell Mumbai's open-spaces to fill government coffers, reality bites. It certainly is not his worry that Mumbaikars are being suffocated for want of oxygen, literally or morally.

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