Mumbai has been repeatedly betrayed by its administrators

The rot is visible everywhere but more starkly in the Bandra Kurla complex, a supposed icon of corporate and business culture.
A pedestrian overbridge collapsed in Mumbai on March 14, killing six people and injuring more than 25. | Express
A pedestrian overbridge collapsed in Mumbai on March 14, killing six people and injuring more than 25. | Express

Far from being a smart and world class city, Mumbai is deteriorating due to distorted policies. The rot is visible everywhere but more starkly in the Bandra Kurla complex (BKC), a supposed icon of corporate and business culture.

The terminus of the monumentally expensive bullet train is being built here and a helipad is also proposed. But bridges are collapsing in different parts of the metropolis to remind us of the harsh reality.
Now, it is more hazardous to reach this area for ordinary people as the skywalk to Bandra suburban station is closed fearing another disastrous collapse. The area near the station is utterly shabby and overcrowded, showing a complete failure of urban governance.

The “high level of tolerance” of Mumbai’s residents has allowed the city’s municipal corporation to ignore their comfort and even safety. That’s what Bombay High Court Chief Justice Naresh Patil observed earlier this month, as he heard a clutch of petitions on the rising number of accidents and deaths of motorists due to pothole-ridden roads.

The next day, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation offered an even more gruesome demonstration of inefficiency and callousness. On March 14, a pedestrian bridge leading to the Chhhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus (CST) collapsed, killing six people and injuring  more than 25.

The Bombay High Court has repeatedly warned the municipal corporation about the shoddy quality of road construction. The municipality’s disregard even for the high court shows the deep rot that has set in. Hours after the collapse, Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta, whose office is literally next door to the bridge, had not yet faced the media.

The bridge collapse is like the latest in a series of calamities heaped on ordinary Mumbaikars, for whom just walking in their neighbourhoods or commuting to work is a terrible ordeal. Few things illustrate the brutal disregard for residents better than the systematic manner in which the state government and municipality have undermined Mumbai’s lifeline, the BEST bus service. As the authorities build infrastructure that encourages residents to travel by private vehicles, traffic jams have got much worse. This has made BEST less dependable and cuts into its revenues. But Mehta insists that if BEST is to get more funds, it must become more efficient. It’s a vicious cycle.

On the other hand, the private motor car culture is becoming more dominant and ruinous for the city with serious problems of congestion and parking. Yet, the Western India Automobile Association, an organisation of car owners, celebrated its centenary in February with a high-decibel show and parade of sleek cars and “super bikes” in BKC. Ironically, ordinary people trying to use public transport to get there don’t have it easy at all.

Despite being located between the suburban railway stations of Kurla on the Central Railway and Bandra on Western line, bus connectivity is poor.  At the Bandra end, for instance, the buses are terminated more than half a kilometre from the station, forcing commuters to trudge to their trains on a narrow, congested road. It’s almost as if authorities are deliberately mocking them.

Now, as a gaudy testimony to their desire to pander to the elite, the authorities have swung into action to build a `12,000 crore coastal road that will run 29.2 kilometres along the city’s western shore. The project will cater to a mere 1.25 per cent of the city’s population — those residents on the city’s western edge who own cars. In addition to the outrageous economic cost, there is an ugly aesthetic price: Mumbai will lose its uninterrupted view of the Arabian Sea.

The pedestrian bridge that collapsed is located right outside the stone building of the Times of India, where I worked for 36 years from 1968. Without doubt, one of the reasons I stayed there for so long was its easy accessibility by public transport: once you got to CST, you just had to cross the road.
When I got into the Harbour Line train, I frequently found myself in the company of my editor, Darryl D’Monte, an environmental journalist and an ardent advocate for public transport who passed away last week. There was no bridge then nor the hot and stuffy underpass that was built later. When first proposed, the bridge had been opposed by activists concerned it would ruin the façade of the heritage station. Besides, it would make pedestrians trudge up a high flight of steps and then down, just so motorists could travel quicker.

The authorities had forgotten the lesson they had been taught only two decades earlier. A pedestrian bridge built outside Churchgate station, Mumbai’s other major train terminus, had to be demolished after pedestrians opposed it for being so inconvenient.

Mumbai has been repeatedly betrayed by its administrators. As the media have reported, merely six months ago, professionals who carried out a structural audit of the bridge that collapsed on Friday declared that it was safe and needed only minor repairs.

(Views expressed are personal)

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