#MumbaiMirrored: ‘Went around for 5 years peddling New Bombay plan’

Shirish Patel, Architect & Civil Engineer
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INTERVIEW
Shirish Patel, Urban Planner

Shirish Patel, one of the men who envisaged what is now Navi Mumbai, on the struggle to get the city built, and why ‘builder’ has become an unpleasant word in Mumbai.

The renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma has just performed in Mumbai when we meet Shirish Patel at his office in Kala Ghoda. Not unexpectedly, the space is beautifully utilitarian: high ceiling and large windows allow for an interplay of space and light.

Patel, 87, may be foremost a structural engineer who built India’s first flyover at the Kemp’s Corner and who envisaged New Bombay along with Charles Correa and Pravina Mehta, but he is also, among his many avatars, a music connoisseur. So, it is with music that we open the conversation:

♦ Meenal Baghel: It occurred to me while listening to Yo-Yo Ma at the concert last evening that architecture is rather like music. It’s about finding balance and harmony. Do you, as an engineer, then see your role primarily as someone who interprets the architect’s notes?
Shirish Patel: That’s a very complicated question. In earlier times, building design and construction was a single discipline. Two hundred years ago, there were no architects and engineers. It was one profession. The person who designed the ancient temples, for example, was both architect and engineer. He understood not only aesthetics but also structure. He was a person who understood everything including construction. What happened with the advent of science was that the humanities split away. They couldn’t understand science at all. C P Snow had that famous lecture on the Two Cultures (Rede Lecture, 1959) suggesting the term intellectual was adopted by the humanities people, as if the scientists were not intellectuals. It was understood (in the Western culture) that an individual could be either a humanities person or a science person. He couldn’t possibly be both and that was a terrible mistake for the building profession, because we straddle both streams. This breakaway of architecture from engineering has been damaging to both professions.

Photos: Mirroring the city of dreams through Mumbai Mirror's new campaign

Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi
Ensuring the news is delivered fresh
Gateway to the city
In the driver's seat
Mumbai Mirrored - Reflection of the seven islands
Dabbawalas join the curiosity
Powering Mumbai's lifeline
Jay Bhanushali
Different copies, different image
Familiarise yourself with the city
Chef Ranveer Brar
Michael Manuel Raj extends his support

Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi

Born and brought up in Mumbai, Ramakant Mishra got his license to drive a taxi in the 1980s. He's seen the city go through some of it's most life-altering changes, whether it was the terror attacks or the riots. He also remembers a time when passengers treated taxi drivers with respect and when the roads were a treat to drive on (unlike the many potholed roads that dot the city today). During Diwali, he remembers delivering gifts to corporate offices and he would also get a gift in lieu of making those deliveries. Photo by Ramesh Sable/ TIL

Ensuring the news is delivered fresh

Vinay Kumar Sharma has been selling newspapers outside CSMT station from the 1980s. He initially started out by helping out his friend who was the vendor and stepped into his shoes after his friend passed away. He remembers that Indira Gandhi was in power when he started vending newspapers. He also remembers the time, when, in the absence of mobiles, people found out about Indira Gandhi's assassination. "I remember it felt like a curfew situation. There was uncertainty. People were anxious and running around helter-skelter for more information. The newspaper sales were through the roof the next morning. I recollect not having enough copies to sell even though there were customers waiting." Sharma also says that as a vendor he has seen some good days, particularly during the pre-mobile days, when people lined up to buy newspapers even at 10 in the night. Photo by Ramesh Sable/ TIL

Gateway to the city

AC Pandey came to Mumbai in the 1970s but took up the camera only in 1995. Ever since, he's been a regular feature at the Gateway of India. Though people were happy to smile for the camera decades ago, things have now changed completely, with the advent of the mobile phone. Selfies rule the roost and it has put many photographers out of a job. He remembers the time there was a car park at the Gateway of India. But terrorists used the same parking lot to plant a bomb in a taxi in 2003 and many lives were lost in the twin blasts of August 25. He's also seen the time the city was literally brought to its knees during the 60 hour siege during 26/11. Photo by Ramesh Sable/ TIL

In the driver's seat

Shyam Yadav has been a resident of Mumbai for the last 40 years. He came to Mumbai from Uttar Pradesh in the 1980s, just as his father and grandfather did before him. Like them, he too started work at a textile mill in Central Mumbai. In just three months, working as a security guard there, he quit, and took up another job at a private firm. Yadav, though, wanted to be his own boss. That's when the thought of driving a taxi first hit home. He got his permit in 1982 and enjoyed the freedom of being in the driver's seat. He remembers a time in Mumbai when petrol cost less than Rs 3 per litre and Siddhivinayak temple was just a small, insignificant structure unlike the massive, imposing multi-storeyed building it is today. Photo by Vinay Arote/ TIL

Mumbai Mirrored - Reflection of the seven islands

Local trains, Bollywood stars, caves from the past, nightlife, iconic monuments, tramps and vada pav all belong to the city of dreams.

At the centre of this campaign, five stalwarts, urban planner Shirish Patel, former police commissioner Julio Ribeiro, social activist Pushpa Bhave, advertising guru Gerson da Cunha, and Dalit activist J V Pawar, who take you on a nostalgic trip through their interviews.

Dabbawalas join the curiosity

Efficiently delivering food to the city's residents, Mumbai dabbawalas are synonymous with the city that never sleeps. A service that has, for 125 years, stayed true to its on-time devliery, come rain or deluge, Mumbai's dabbawalas seen here with their edition of Mumbai Mirror.

Powering Mumbai's lifeline

‘Mumbai Mirrored’ is an attempt to look at our present with the perspective that the past provides.

Central Railway motormen, Vilas M Bhosle and Sikander Khan pose with Wednesday's edition of Mumbai Mirror. Along side Mumbai's pride and the defining feature of this city, the Mumbai Local.

Jay Bhanushali

Currently, the host of Superstar Singer- kids singing reality show Jay Bhanushali posed with the Wednesday's edition of Mumbai Mirror.

Different copies, different image

A Twitter user shared a copy of Gateway of India and wrote, "Hey #Mumbaikars Did you check the front page of Mumbai Mirror today? I received this image while my sister living at Mohamed Ali Road got a different image. How cool is that! #MumbaiMirrored
@MumbaiMirror." In all, there are seven different, iconic images on the cover of the Mumbai Mirror. Seven different photos for the seven islands that form the original city of Mumbai. Photo courtesy: Twitter/@foodietweeter

Familiarise yourself with the city

Five visionaries share their reflections and take us through the spectacular journey of Bombay to Mumbai in this Mumbai Mirrored series.

Sharing the excitement, one user shared her photo with Wednesday's edition of Mumbai Mirror.


"Fellas!!! Did you see the Mumbai Mirror edition today? What an amazing way to familiarize Mumbaikars with the city and it’s history. Just check out today's edition #MumbaiMirrored @MumbaiMirror," the user wrote. Photo courtesy: Twitter/@snehalataj

Chef Ranveer Brar

Masterchef India Judge Ranveer Brar posing with a Mumbai Mirror copy.

Michael Manuel Raj extends his support

Michael Manuel Raj, Chief Public Relations Inspector of Central Railway, supported the #MumbaiMirrored campaign. He posed with the Wednesday edition of Mumbai Mirror with a picture of the iconic Gateway of India on its cover.



♦ MB: What were your formative influences?
SP:
Well, my father was in civil service so I changed seven schools and because they had to be in a common language they were all convent schools. But no one ever proselytized me, though you do absorb certain values from your teachers. But really I am without a religion.

♦ MB: Are you agnostic?
SP:
A chap came to see me during one of the first post-Independence census, and while filling the form he asked for my religion, and I said, ‘I have no religion’. He said, ‘I can’t put a blank there. I have to put in something’. So I said, ‘Well, I’m agnostic’. ‘That doesn’t work either,’ he said. I thought about it and decided that if I had to choose a religion, it would be, on account of my reading and I said to him, ‘I am a Buddhist,’ and he said, ‘No, sir! Why are you talking like this?’

♦ MB: That’s so telling! Your growing up years were spent in Karachi, Bombay, Poona, Satara, Calcutta, Delhi, Woodstock at Mussoorie and then Cambridge. What was Bombay like when you finally returned to the city in 1956?
SP:
It was comfortable to live in. We lived in the municipal commissioner’s bungalow as my father had been the MC from 1946 to 1952 — it was a nice precinct to live in, the traffic was easy. When I came back in ’56, I lived on Warden Road and got to my work at Chembur by bus.

♦ MB: So, the BEST in those days was a robust service?
SP:
Yes, it was always dependable and a well-used service.

Transport

A bullock cart
Haji Ali road
Man carrying a hand cart
Lala Rajpat Rai Marg
​Trams
​Flora fountain
Trams in Mumbai in 1968

A bullock cart

A man carries passengers on his carriage, keeping a tight grip on the reigns of the bulls.

Haji Ali road

Cars meander through the roads at Haji Ali in 1976 in this aesthetic old shot.

Man carrying a hand cart

A man diligently carries his hand cart filled with wares across the streets of Bombay.

Lala Rajpat Rai Marg

Old road of Lala Rajpat Rai Marg during Bombay days.

​Trams

Trams - After horse drawn tram services, electric trams were introduced in the city in 1907 followed by double decker trams in 1920.

​Flora fountain

Flora fountain - The structure cost Rs 47000 for the construction. It was built at the exact place the Church Gate stood before it was broken down. People and taxis fill the streets near Flora Fountain in 1964.

Trams in Mumbai in 1968

Trams travel across the streets of Bombay, surrounded by little traffic and a lot of greenery in 1968.



♦ MB: And what kind of buildings were there?
SP:
The suburbs hardly existed. I think during my father’s term, they extended the island of Mumbai into the suburbs, the boundary moved increasingly step-by-step further and further north and became Greater Bombay. I think it was my father who started one of those schemes at Juhu, Vile Parle – the JVPD Scheme. We had a plot there but the area was mostly empty at that time.

♦ MB: At what point did the word ‘builder’ become an unpleasant word in Bombay’s dictionary?
SP:
It really started when the Urban Land Ceiling Act came in. Under this Act, everybody’s excess land was taken away to build low-income housing, but which was subverted when builders began amassing parcels of land. These builders got people to sell plots to them saying, ‘Well, look your plot is useless. You can’t build for poor people, so please sell it to us.’ They aggregated land and then developed schemes which were in fact not low income housing, but they couldn’t be stopped after that.

♦ MB: In your many decades of working in Mumbai, how would you assess your relationship with the bureaucracy… how has it changed over the years?
SP:
I remember a dear friend of ours, V Srinivasan, who was a bureaucrat, who was in fact instrumental in the setting up of New Bombay. In those days as bureaucrats they did not work in silos as they seem to do now. There was much greater interaction between professionals and bureaucrats that has vanished today.

Shirish Patel

Shirish Patel


♦ MB: It’s interesting you should say that because I was reading about how Navi Mumbai came to be, and it was almost like a gathering of like-minded people, who were also concerned about the city, that came together and said, ‘Let’s do something.’ Such a thing would be impossible in this day and age.
SP:
This is what happened: When the municipality published its first Development Plan in 1964, it showed the map of Greater Bombay, coloured in blue for commercial, purple for industrial, yellow for residential, green for green space, etc. It was a detailed pattern across the whole Greater Bombay, which stopped dead at the boundary. When some of us professionals - Charles Correa and I - asked, what happens beyond the boundary, they said, ‘That’s not our problem. We are the Municipality of Greater Mumbai, and what happens beyond is immaterial.’ Charles then said, ‘How can it be immaterial? It affects the city tremendously.’ So, we published an article in Marg in 1965, suggesting that New Bombay be taken up as a planned development. Whether one liked it or not, the city was going to develop eastwards. We said if you make it a planned development, it would be better and it could be self-financing. We went around for the next five years peddling this plan to anyone who would listen. We called every bureaucrat, every politician we would get hold of, but there was no response.

♦ MB: They were not interested or…?
SP:
I think we were too young. They looked at us - we were in our 30s — and thought how could they take us seriously. But we kept talking to our bureaucrat friends, Srinivasan was among them. I remember one day when we were at the swimming pool with our children playing around, and Charles suddenly told Srinivasan, ‘Look, if you fellows don’t do anything about New Bombay, how is it going to happen?’ And Srinivasan suddenly took it into his head to see this through. He was then in charge of SIICOM (State Industrial Investment Corporation of Maharashtra) and doing a very good job about developing industries all over the state. He was a remarkable person, very systematic, thoughtful, creative even wildly so. For example, he was a serious diabetic and he said to us one day: ‘My doctor has told me that I must walk and exercise, so I have given it a good deal of thought and decided that instead of going out physically and walking I would do it mentally. So I took a walk mentally and after five minutes I was exhausted. I was sweating and since that’s the whole point of the exercise, why not do it mentally?’ (laughs) The point here being that beyond the buffoonery there is a quality of imagination…When he found out that the chief minister of the day was travelling to Nagpur, he ensured that he got onto the same train and met him for two uninterrupted hours during which he convinced the chief minister why the New Bombay project must happen. That’s why he was allowed to set up CIDCO as a subsidiary of SIICOM, and the acquisition of 350 square kilometers of land was sanctioned. JB D’Souza was appointed its Managing Director and he asked me, if I would take charge of the planning work and I said, fine, and that’s how New Bombay started. So, it was really not as we imagine a group of individuals who got together and did something. It was one bureaucrat.

♦ MB: I was reading that now there are slums in New Bombay?
SP:
Yeah, because CIDCO has turned itself into a developer. It takes it that one of its functions is to monetise land, this is rubbish. Land is public property, it’s held in trust for the public. Monetize it, if the conditions permit, but without encroaching on land needed for housing for lower income groups.

♦ MB: I had heard you quit CIDCO in a huff. True?
SP:
Oh, it’s very complicated why I quit CIDCO in ’75. There were several reasons, the most important being a study CIDCO had commissioned us - to scout for industrial locations in Maharashtra. This was beyond our limit but we thought it was relevant. Our proposal was to locate industries in such a way that the overall costs were minimised and to efficiently distribute industries across Maharashtra given that there was too much concentration in the Bombay-Pune region. This study, carried out by Nitin Desai of Tata Economic Consultancy Services, showed that industries are actually clustered into four groups and while there was a lot of movement of goods within each group, it wasn’t the case across groups. The four groups were chemical industries, textile, power and engineering industries. The proposal was that chemical industry should be along the western coast because that’s where you get the water supply and disposal into the sea, the power intensive industries should be near Nagpur, which is where coal is available and power is generated. So no transmission losses. The textile industry should be in the cotton growing areas of Maharashtra which is Marathwada, and the engineering industries could be anywhere in the state. The idea was to encourage industries to move to such locations and give them massive incentives until that particular center has built up to a population of five lakhs. If government did that, then the only industry that needed to be in Mumbai was ship breaking. By doing so you could decongest Bombay by up to two million people. The government not only turned it down, they started implementing the policy of attracting more and more industries to Bombay because they were terrified that these industries would go to Gujarat. This denial of this possibility was one of the chief reasons for my leaving CIDCO. Other than that, I had felt that if I was serious about continuing in CIDCO I needed to move to New Bombay, because it’s hypocritical to expect people to move to New Bombay, and not move yourself. Our chairman discouraged me from doing so. He said there are political uncertainties. The Emergency had just been imposed and that was like entering a dark tunnel. I thought it would never end. It was a terrifying time.

♦ MB: Could you say what that was like because you were right at the centre of dealing with bureaucrats and government. Something is just about to sort of take off, and then the Emergency happens. How did it affect your day-to-day working?
SP:
It darkened it enormously. One didn’t know what the future held because all kinds of people were being put in jail for all sorts of things, and the danger of centralization and misuse of power was very apparent and strong.


♦ MB: Is there one thing you would change if you could live your life all over again?
SP:
What I would certainly do is master an Indian language. I am not able to communicate effectively in any language other than English and that is a serious disadvantage living in this country, especially if you are interested in public affairs and want to influence thinking in public affairs. You need to know either Hindi or the local language in which you can reach larger numbers of people.

Photo by Prashant Godbole

Photo by Prashant Godbole


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Five stalwarts on the making of Mumbai. Urban planner Shirish Patel, former police commissioner Julio Ribeiro, social activist Pushpa Bhave, advertising guru Gerson da Cunha and Dalit activist J V Pawar.

What is #MumbaiMirrored all about - click here to find out

#MumbaiMirrored: From Bombay to Mumbai, through a series of landmark reflections
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#MumbaiMirrored: From Bombay to Mumbai, through a series of landmark reflections
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In Video: Shirish Patel, Architect & Civil Engineer