By IPS Correspondents
MUMBAI, Apr 5 2006 (IPS)

Urban planners and environmental activists are aghast that less than nine months after this port city was inundated by floods caused by runaway construction activity, a court ruling has thrown open 600 acres of disputed mill land for unbridled building.

Mumbai already suffers from the lowest people-to-open space ratio in the world. Compared to New York’s 5.53 acres per thousand people, Mumbai has a mere 0.03 acres and concrete monstrosities relentlessly clog up the streets and drains.

Those who dreamt that some 600 acres of prime land, leased out by long-dysfunctional textile mills, would be returned to the government and put to planned, people-friendly use were shocked by a Mar. 7 ruling by the country’s supreme court that went in favour of mill owners and land developers.

Environmentalists, unemployed mill workers and activists had pinned their hopes on an October 2005 ruling by the high court in Mumbai which set aside two-thirds of the land for cheap housing and public greens.

”We should not forget the duty of the present generation towards posterity and the principle of inter-generational equity,” the high court judges had said awarding 400 acres of land for open spaces and low-cost public housing.

The high court was, in fact, upholding a 1991 regulation which said that only one-third of mill land could be sold for commercial development. One-third had to be surrendered to the municipal corporation for public utilities and open spaces, and the rest to Maharashtra state for housing.

But, curiously, the apex court thought fit to deem the high court’s decision ”manifestly erroneous” and favour mill owners and developers who had acquired land from them at astronomical prices, including powerful politicians.

Trade unions and other civil society organisations from all over the city have since been holding meetings and rallies against the supreme court ruling outside the landmark Bharat Mata cinema – which itself is due to be replaced by a shopping mall.

”The supreme court judgement has set the interests of commerce above those of the people and the environment,” said architect Neera Adarkar of the Mumbai People’s Action Committee (MPAC) which is leading the demonstrations.

Most of the mill land was leased to mill owners to develop the textile industry and should now be rightfully returned to the city, now that the textile industry has folded up, demonstrators argue. But the mill owners say the leases were made out more than a century ago and did not specify land use.

”The supreme court judgement is bad for the city as a whole – not just for the workers,” said Datta Ishwalkar, secretary of the Girni Kamgar Sangarsh Samiti, a trade union. ”The construction of expensive high-rises in this middle-class locality will increase traffic congestion and put pressure on services. Mill workers rendered jobless by the mill closures in the 1980s will now lose even their right to housing.”

Leading environmentalists such as Darryl D’Monte fear that the judgment will encourage more disasters along the lines of the July 2005 floods which were linked to the destruction of wetlands and diversion of a river to build a new business district in the low-lying Bandra-Kurla area.

”The apex court verdict has opened the floodgates, as it were, for uncontrolled urban growth,” says D’Monte whose book ‘Ripping the fabric: the decline of Mumbai and its Mills’, argues that mill land should be shared by all the stakeholders – workers, mill owners and the public.

”Planning has been ignored by a state government which is hand-in-glove with the builders,” D’Monte told IPS. ”Without adequate infrastructure this area may go down in history as a classic example of urban folly”.

Protestors note that in another case, the state government brought in legislation to overrule a high court judgement ordering the demolition of widespread illegal constructions in the prosperous north Mumbai township of Ulhasnagar.

”The vote bank of middle-class Ulhasnagar is evidently more powerful than that of the dying working class on the mill lands where new housing is coming up for the rich,” said Vinod Shetty, a prominent lawyer who has been fighting cases on behalf of the mill workers and their unions.

The Mumbai People’s Action Committee (MPAC), formed of intellectuals and prominent citizens, has asked the government to enact legislation similar to the Ulhasnagar ordinance, overruling the supreme court judgement. But that is unlikely to happen because many politicians are close to the builders or are land developers themselves.

Manohar Joshi, who has served as chief minister of Maharashtra and as speaker in India’s parliament, teamed up with another politician Raj Thackery to buy up a 4.8 acre piece of mill land in July, forking out as much as 100 million US dollars. Evidently, they were not worried about the outcome of the supreme court judgement.

A world away from the big deals, half of Mumbai’s 18 million people lives in slums and shanties. Three-fourths, if dilapidated ‘chawls’ or one-room tenements are included, writes town planner Darshini Mahadevia, faculty of the School of Town Planning, Ahmedabad, in a paper on urban infrastructure.

By refusing to generate low-cost housing in the country’s commercial capital, the government forces the middle class and the poor to depend on informal and illegal housing.

At the same time, government policies have contributed to the haphazard and congested construction activity in the city. Using the facility of transfer of development rights, builders have constructed massive buildings, regardless of carrying capacity.

Under the garb of ‘repairing’ dilapidated buildings, developers have constructed skyscrapers in congested localities, putting pressure on the traffic, water supply and other basic services. Activists believe that government policies have encouraged the growth of luxury housing and offices by a construction industry that is linked to the underworld.

”There is no comprehensive policy based on urban planning principles for the use of textile mill land,” said Adarkar who is also part of a committee to document heritage structures on mill land for preservation.

The realtors’ lobby has long been eyeing the mill land for its real estate value. Several heritage structures have already been demolished to make way for night clubs, shopping plazas and sky scrapers.

”Mill land is sold in the name of paying workers’ dues but if 115 workers of the Jalan Dyeing Mills finally received a settlement of about Rs 200,000 ( 5,000 dollars) each, many more had given up the struggle earlier and opted for lower settlements earlier,” says Shetty. ”The owner used physical force to pressurise nearly 700 workers to resign for amounts ranging from 750-3,000 dollars. Seven acres of mill land were then sold to a builder for close to ten million dollars about a year ago.”

One of India’s best known town planners, Charles Correa has suggested that, instead of allowing the mill owners to develop their land as they saw fit, the whole of the mill land could be treated as one single large area so as to allow proper planning for offices, residential flats, parks, schools and recreation. But, respected as he is, Correa stands no chance against the builders.

Rising anger among prominent citizens compelled Vilasrao Deshmukh, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, to hold a meeting on Mar. 28 where he promised to find ways by which more land could be set apart for open spaces and public use.

Deshmukh promised to ensure that mill workers received their dues and that a second meeting would be held in the first week of May where all stakeholders would be given a chance to present their case and a consensus evolved.

But Deshmukh stopped short of saying that his government would resort to the most obvious and effective solution – legislation that would overrule the supreme court in favour of people’s rights as happened with the regularisation of illegal construction in the Ulhasnagar township.

”When it is convenient, the government will follow the court’s order, where the court’s order goes against vested interests, they will pass an ordinance against it,” said lawyer Shetty.

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