Market business....

Finally, it happened. Crawford Market, once (and perhaps still) the heart of Mumbai’s shopping needs, where generations of Mumbaikars would trek to buy the precious mangoes of summer and the sweet grapes of winter, will go under the scalpel of the developer. While it is true that something needed to be done to salvage the Market from the morass it had fallen into, my worry is whether this was what the doctor had in mind?

Crawford Market and its precincts isn’t some far-flung suburban area, which could be played around with (and this is a rather strong usage here…) and then forgotten. Why, I say, such cavalier behaviour should not be tolerable for any area.

Imagine, the ‘honourable’ corporator proposing the redevelopment had no idea of the proposal. His excuse: The market’s name, post-independence, is Mahatma Jotirao Phule Market, and he respects the Mahatma a lot, hence his support for the proposal. One could hand him a decree, under similar conditions, sentencing the entire Corporation to death, and the chap would probably announce it with equal aplomb and glee.

The Mayor of the Corporation refused to permit any debate on the proposal, stating that the Corporation had debated the same ‘last’ year and doing so again would be a ‘wastage’ of public time and money. I say, madam, how considerate of you! I couldn’t have imagined that politicians gave a damn about saving public resources; I always was under the impression that politicians are like leeches, sucking away at the health of the people. But just a query from a naïve layman: wouldn’t a debate at this juncture assist the Corporation in evaluating the proposal with a fresh perspective? Maybe, a better scheme could have been thrashed out. But then, you are the ‘best’ judge of how things ‘should’ be done.

It is reported that the bureaucracy was keen on redevelopment, but not along the lines of the current proposal. It seems they wanted the precinct to be redeveloped as a heritage quarter, sort of like the Leadenhall Market in London. I say, aren’t bureaucrats a thick bunch? Do they really think the ‘people’ of Mumbai really give a damn about heritage? Hell, demolish all the fine buildings in South Mumbai and make towering skyscrapers! After all, we aren’t modelling our city on cities like London, Prague, Paris, Vienna, San Francisco, or even New York; we have Shanghai to catch up with. Who cares about history anyways?

What? You say that I am too harsh on the people of Mumbai? Well, if I am wrong in analysing my people, let me see some strong reactions from someplace, and not just reactions which seek to caution, but reactions which change the course of events. Then, I will take back my casks of vinegar; till then, suffer its acidic taste in the mouth!

Will the people stand for this....?

Politics makes strange bedfellows, or so the adage goes. And perhaps no nation’s systems so very exemplify this maxim as India’s. Political outfits which swear by the inimical nature of their interactions at one moment, become the best of buddies in the very next. Sometimes, this change of heart is prompted by ‘national’ interest, sometime by ‘self’ interest, and sometimes because coming together will benefit everyone in the system. It is very rare for the political class to come together for something that will really go to work for the ‘people’, and therefore when they come together, it only bodes ill.

Just a day after the ‘executive’ President of the Shiv Sena, Uddhav Thackeray made a pronouncement that the Congress was the Sena’s enemy number one, the Sena, in a majority in the local Municipal Corporation, managed to get the Congress to join hands and pass through a resolution modifying the status of a huge plot of land from no-development to residential. The plot of land falls under the strict CRZ norms and hence development till now had been hampered by the environmental norms prevalent under the CRZ regime.

Politics and environmental concerns rarely go hand-in-hand, at least not in India. One reason for this could be that there isn’t much awareness about to what extent the environment affects us. And in a place wherein such an issue gets such low importance, it tends to be bartered away for trivial benefits. The benefits per se may not seem trivial, but in the context of what one is giving away, certainly comes out to be very trivial.

The BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) has decided to de-reserve the aforesaid plot and re-designate it as a residential plot, in lieu of which the developer will construct, as ‘compensation’, primary and secondary schools, playground, a maternity home, a library, and a market. These all may seem good, but are we being bribed here? Are the people being told, “Sure, I am destroying the environment, but am I not building these facilities for you at the same time?”

Mangroves are the natural drains for Mumbai. After the cataclysmic deluge of 27 June 2005, their importance is perhaps even more emphasized, and yet it would seem that neither the State nor private enterprise is neither keen to appreciate this, nor are they ready to do something to ensure that environmental concerns are given a fair hearing before they are haggled away to satisfy developmental requirements. This deal is perhaps yet another breach of trust committed by those who claim to enjoy the mandate of the people, who claim to represent the will of the people. Given a choice between slower development and better safety during such adverse climatic conditions, I am certain that the people of Mumbai would be more in favour of better safety. Any initiative hindering or hampering such a need is clearly against the ‘will’ of the people.

That there were voices of protest against this move is still a good thing, a sign that there are still some representatives who feel for their constituents, for the ‘tired and toiling masses’. It Is only my hope and prayer that this minority become a more vocal and most powerful majority, so as to ensure that at least at the local level, our democracy can truly become ‘by the people, of the people, and for the people’.

Money matters...

I read in the newspapers and watched on the television about how everyone wants to make Mumbai a global financial hub, about how they envisage Mumbai could rival New York and London as a destination for investment banking. Of course, this would require tremendous infrastructure upgradation and development, which would require equally tremendous amounts of capital investment.

While the investment and the necessary infrastructure could be created using grants from the Union Government, it is apt time that we start to evaluate as to whether we can make the city self-financing. Every March 30^th, we hear of how the Mumbai region alone contributes around 33 percent of the total tax revenues of the country. Nice. So, we pay so much tax. Now why isn’t all that tax money being seen to do any good for the people who pay it?

Tax, in my view, is akin to a service charge. The State provides services like roads, electricity, water supply, education infrastructure, healthcare facilities et al, and in return asks people to pay for having used them. A fair deal, if you ask me. The only flaw in the whole affair is that the State is not really seen to be doing a good job at providing these services. So what do we do? Privatise them? Hardly so. Privatisation of all and sundry services is hardly the panacea to our problems. It may be easy in the short term, but in the long run, matters could turn out to be quite different.

One argument put forward for the poor state of affairs is that there is too much centralization of responsibility. Ok, so make the local self-governments responsible for these services. But then, the local SGs would complain about the paucity of money. That’s where the tax revenues could come in.

Say, a particular region, as per the IT department’s classification, generates an optimistic figure of Rs. 1000 crores as central tax revenues. Rather than diverting 100 percent of these monies to the Union Government and then redirecting a part of it back to the said region, why can’t we at the very onset demarcate a rough 10 percent of the monies for the region, an additional 10 percent for the state in which the region lies, and send the rest to the Union Government? That way, the Union Government gets 800 crores in its kitty, and the region gets around 100 crores for its own use.

Now, the point I am trying to make here is that a performing region would have a higher quantity of demarcated funds as opposed to a non-performing region. Consequently, the system is to be seen to reward performance. You perform well, you get rewarded accordingly. The non-performer would feel the pinch and would try to use the funds demarcated for the current financial to improve its chances at a higher demarcation next year. Of course, one cannot be permitted to increase one's tax revenues by increasing the tax rates, so that is one objection nullified.

This system should ideally cause a competition for higher demarcation akin to the one seen now, only unlike the current system wherein politics often has a lot to play; this system would look at performance and certain other factors when considering demarcation.

What do I mean by “certain other factors”? A region like Orissa cannot be expected to be able to match the performance of Mumbai in a span of five years. Keeping factors such as the median income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, literacy levels (both academic and functional) etc. in mind, a higher rate of demarcation could be envisaged, as in Orissa could merit a demarcation of 40 pc instead of 10 pc as in the case of Mumbai. The point of course is that Mumbai, being such a high performer, would find even the 10 percent allocation to be worthwhile.

Of course, this system reads too much into the tax revenues generated from a particular region, which may not be truly indicative of real performance. But, it must be comprehended that other than this, there exists no clear-cut source of indication as to how exactly a certain section is growing. I am poor at statistics, but then I am sure that statisticians can come up with some formulation that would be able to define how much should be demarcated for a region on the basis of its tax revenues for the previous financial year and any other factor that may be deemed valid.

I may be too small a fish for my idea to matter, but to my simpleton mind, this seems like a winner. Mr. PC, would you approve?

Right to do one's duty or one's duty to do right...?

Of late, one hears a lot about how the focus is shifting from a strict emphasis on citizen's rights to a middle path approach looking at both rights as also the responsibilities of citizens. And very rightly so. I mean, it is ridiculous for a populace to keep harping on what is due to them, and never ponder over what they are due to do. JFK perhaps put it in the most succinct manner possible: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

The rights of a people, those granted by their government as also those inherent to them by virtue of their being citizens of a nation, are inalienable and irrevocable. Any assault on them, any attempt to reduce them, or to reduce their efficacy in the face of tyranny, would be tantamount to assaulting the very foundations of society.

And yet they are not infinite, because even they are not infallible. And that is where the duties and responsibilities of the citizenry play an important role. The citizenry is obligated to ensure that it uses the rights it enjoys in a responsible manner, befitting a civilized society. Just because these rights are near sacrosanct doesn't imply that these rights can be used to justify any deed sine prejudicio. The people are bound by their affiliation to a State to maintain due respect for its laws, so long as they are just and fair. The right to liberty is not a license for anarchism.

The decision of the BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) to resort to the means of community service to penalize individuals breaking cleanliness rules is a welcome sign. I mean, this would make a man more likely to follow the rule than merely paying a fine. True, a fine is also rather heavy for the offender, but the embarrassment in this case more than ever ensures that the chap will never repeat the offence again. Moreover, this step uses the local populace to monitor the situation, an extension of the Area Local Management (ALM) scheme, which in turn is a step forward in empowering the citizenry. Maybe, down the lane, we could see community service becoming an important means of punishing petty offenders.

It remains to be seen how successful the scheme will ultimately turn out to be, given that we generally have a problem with implementation. But, I feel that this is a step in the right direction, a direction that we should have taken a long time back, but nonetheless, better late than never.

Post-floods analysis

Over the last one week, having seen all the news on TV, and read the same in the newspapers, I have, rather the city of Mumbai has made a very important discovery. There actually exists a river in the midst of our city! Come to think of it, our city now can be termed complete, at least in the geological sense. No really, we have hills, we have the ocean, we have lakes, we have marshy lands, we have the city itself made up of islands, and now we have a river. And yet, how this fact remained hidden for so long is not really surprising.

Mumbai has always been a city which has really been unconcerned with its environment. Yes, we have people like the BNHS, and the WWF-Mumbai, who are always making comments about how the environment in the city has been steadily degraded, and how it would eventually harm us. But no, we wouldn't listen to them, and why should we? Caring for the environment was for the rich and the famous, not for the middle class and the lower classes. After all, who else has the time and energy to devote to such causes when one has a army of mouths to feed every month? So, we continued to dump our garbage in the open nullahs, silently encouraged the construction explosion that has wracked the city, and in the process, weakened those forces which actually protected us.
Not many of us are aware of the existence of a unique ecosystem at the very edges of our city, where the ocean meets the islands. The marshy mangroves, traditionally, and very rightly associated with the stink of a sewer, actually are amongst the most diverse and most useful ecosystems in the world. These mangroves function as the filters of our filth, the sickening sludge that we send into the ocean, and in the process maintain some semblance of cleanliness. Very recently, it was proven that in those areas of Tamil Nadu where the mangroves were not destroyed, the tsunami's force had a nearly 40% diminished intensity, and to say the least, the casualties in such areas also were minimal.
But then, who the hell cares about some stinky mangroves? Fine, let's look at the Mithi river now. Originating from Virar lake, this rivulet snakes through most of the western suburbs, and finally empties itself in the Mahim bay. Most of the city's major drains flow into this natural drainage stream. However, over the years, rapacious building activity on either side of the river has narrowed the river's width, and has transformed the once-massive river into a pale shadow of its former self. When the Bandra-Worli Sea Link was being constructed, or rather when the process started, 4.7 hectares of land was deemed necessary to be reclaimed for structural integrity purposes. The Government reclaimed 47 hectares of land, and in the process nearly blocked the river's path to the ocean.

And this has now caused the havoc that we are all seeing in the western suburbs. The rains have caused the source of the Mithi, the Virar lake, to overflow, causing a cascade of water to gush towards the sea. The narrow banks of the river cannot hold this quanta, and overflow as expected, flooding the adjoining areas. The city's drains find themselves blocked, and hence the waters that ought to be drawn away from the affected areas are pushed back towards the same areas. And then the river being deprived of an outlet to the sea, can only push against the reclaimed land, but to no avail. So the waters again flow back towards the source, and the result is there for all to see. The flooded Kalina and Andheri areas now have borne the brunt of the fury of the desecrated river.

Many have postulated that what this city needs is a good drainage system. Unfortunately, that's only half of the solution. Unless the government improves the efficiency of the existing system, any additions to it will be money thrown down the drain. Also, there is need to stop the destruction of the mangroves, which in the end, can prevent flooding by drawing the waters into the marshy lands. And last but not the least, there is need to restore the Mithi river to normalcy, maybe not to its fullest, as that remains an impossible dream, but maybe to a level wherein the river can execute its natural functions effectively and to everyone's benefit.

Ours is to not reason why, ours is to do and die

Just last month, the city was exultant in its glee whence the rains poured down upon it, banishing the scorching heat of the summer to its fiery prison for another year. And now, when one queries those who have lost so much to these very rains in the deluge of Wednesday, one cannot but help being surprised by the complete lack of any rancour for the heavens. No one, in their grief, ever stops from blaming the Gods for having caused them so much pain, and yet in the end, it is in this faith that the aggrieved rest their weary heads and sleep a slumber uneasy.

For the agriculturists, the wet spell is a blessing, and truly so, for this means a good harvest, a good produce, and slightly better incomes for the coming year. For the people in the cities, those whose homes have been washed away by the waters, this spell is the worst joke that the Gods could have played on them, and yet they do not blame Them as much as one would expect. Maybe, because the Indian people are so attuned into the cycles of karma and destiny, that they associate even with such disasters a sense of karmic belief. Having borne disasters such as communal riots, bureaucratic ineptitude, and political chicanery, the people now have become so resilient to such natural catastrophes that they almost seem zombie-like.

Speaking of bureaucratic ineptitude, I just read in the newspaper today that prior to Wednesday, the state Government's Disaster Management Committee had many meetings wherein rather than focusing on the need of the hour, i.e. making sure that the state was prepared to handle the vagaries of the monsoon, our leaders were more keen on doling out aid to those who have suffered in the droughts of summer. No offense to those who have suffered, yet, I do feel its too little, too late. The city of Mumbai is a showcase of how the bureaucracy has messed up.

This city, touted as the economic capital of India, was brought to a standstill within five hours of the rains pouring down. Of course, full-blooded Mumbaikars know that this is a regular phenomenon, and there is no new thing about this. And yet, Wednesday was different. Because unlike every year, the waters didn't just cause transport to grind to a halt, they virtually choked the city. Waters rose to nearly 4-5 feet in some areas, inundating vehicles and homes alike. People reached their homes nearly 24-36 hours after they had left from their offices. Some never quite made it, as the landslides in suburban Mumbai have well illustrated. And yet, Mumbai survived, the people of Mumbai have lived to tell the tale.

The credit for this goes not to our government officials, but to the people themselves. Scores of people, who really ought to have been sheltering themselves in cosy homes, drinking hot tea, and having hot bhajiyas (onion fries), came out on the roads to help their comrades to reach home safely. When the situation appeared really desolate, these Samaritans provided the stranded souls with biscuits, wafers, hot tea, clean drinking water, and any other assistance that could be given at such short notice. The radio stations continuously blared out messages to stranded people from their family members, imploring them to stay put, and wait for the situation to improve. Social service organisations came out on the roads to try to clear the roads, and assist pedestrian traffic.

Perhaps, when Lord Tennyson wrote the lines 'Ours not to reason why, ours is to do and die', he may not have imagined that the Mumbaikar had made it his/her anthem. For, not for a moment, did the Mumbaikar reason as to why he ought to do what he did that day, he simply plunged to his comrade's rescue, to assist and provide complete strangers succour, when they needed it the most, maybe with the thought that someday when they should need help, some stranger will extend the same hand forward, and complete the circle of humanity, the circle of magnanimity.

The rains have come!

Change is good, especially when it's with respect to the weather. The weather for the last few days has been extremely unbearable, and the absence of the rains didn't make things any better. But, now there are no complaints. The life-giving waters have arrived, and the world, at least Mumbai, has plenty reasons to rejoice.

As I write this, I can see beautiful scenes of an exultant Nature. Magpie robins, bulbuls, and birds of myraid colours, all frolicking in tiny pools of water, are shrieking in delight. Everything appears so clean, so fresh, that one cannot resist going out and getting wet. This is the season when the cobs of roasted corn by Chowpatty tastes the best. When coffee and tea in the balcony seems like the ambrosia of heaven. When the sea seems like a beautiful maiden, dancing in her best attire. When the skies tell the sun and the moon, "Shine less brightly for a few days, for you deserve the rest."

This is when we can reasonably expect to get some rain holidays. Maybe that's why we term the monsoon, as the mon"soon", as if telling it, "Mon, come soon". Because, everything that it brings alongwith it is so very enjoyable, so very delightful.