City on the edge

Land, water, people: three crucial elements which define Mumbai, now and in the past. Excerpts from a new book on the growth of the megalopolis.

They call it the ‘city of dreams’, but Mumbai is a city forever on the edge — on the edge of the water, on the edge of communal violence or global terror, on the verge of becoming a global financial mecca... and, no less, a city on the edge of collapsing in on itself. The July 2005 deluge that brought life to a standstill for several days and the 26/11 terrorist holdups in 2008 were wake-up calls for the city — they showed the extreme fragility of the idea of Mumbai. They have led to a greater appreciation among the people for their city, and also lent weight to studies of the city’s evolution such as this book by Mariam Dossal.

 

Many books have been written on Bombay/Mumbai — fiction and non-fiction. One of the most seminal was Bombay: The Cities Within (1995), a comprehensive history of the city’s development, told through the many people who settled here and the institutions they built. Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary (2009) is another important book, using old and new maps to chart Mumbai’s ‘elusive terrain’, the shifting boundaries of land and sea, river, pond and creek.

Land — changing use and administrative mechanisms — concern Dossal, too. She traces the waves of land reclamation, surveys and urban development plans that changed the city from a minor agrarian settlement to the megalopolis of today. Land is a central concern in Mumbai, so this story has contemporary relevance.

EXCERPTS

COCONUT PALMS AND RICE FIELDS

The most striking feature of Bombay’s physical appearance at this time [around 1660] were its many thousands of coconut, brab, and date palms. The trade in coconut constituted the island’s main item of commerce. Coarse rice was cultivated on recently reclaimed lands and ‘sweer batty’ or better quality rice grown on better drained lands. Lands on the eastern foreshore were used as salt pans and koli fisherfolk lived in thatched huts in the koliwadas on the eastern and western foreshores...

[John] Fryer estimated the population of Bombay in the 1670s to be approximately 10,000 persons, mainly kolis or fisherfolk, kunbis or farmers, agris or salt pan workers, and bhandaris or toddy tappers. There were also a few Portuguese fazendars or landholders, Jesuit priests, some Pathare Prabhus, and Konkani Muslims.

Governor Humphrey Cooke was criticized for having accepted the island’s transfer on terms that severely compromised the King’s interests. Cooke’s detractors, led by his colleague Henry Gary, claimed that he had signed the ‘Convention’ without first ascertaining the Crown’s rights in the land and the revenues due to the King. He had also conceded to the Portuguese demand that Bombay island alone had been ceded and renounced British claims to the others. Cooke, they said, reduced the Company’s revenues by permitting those Portuguese to receive incomes from patrimonial or Portuguese Crown lands held in Bombay....

In 1665, the main H-shaped island of Bombay belonged to Dona Ignez de Miranda de Castro, widow of Dom Rodrigo de Moncanto and its sole proprietress. The cacabe of Bombay contained coconut gardens, rice fields, and had the right to bandrastal, a tax on the distilling og spirit from palm juice. Other fazendars controlled estates in Sion, Dharavi, Wadala, Mazagaon, Parel and Worli....

A major obstacle to governance was the difficulty in estimating the amount of annual land revenue which would accrue to the British, for nine different land tenures coexisted on the seven islets. These dated back to Portuguese rule, to the rule of the Sultan of Gujarat and to the Satvahana, Chalukya, Rashtrakuta, and Shilhara dynasties, the earliest being operative for over a millennium...

FRERE TOWN — BOMBAY’S NEW COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CENTRE

The most impressive of urban development projects undertaken in the nineteenth century, Frere Town, in the erstwhile Fort of South Bombay was to serve the commercial and political needs of the British... Begun in the early 1860s, it took more than two decades to be completed...

The actual work of demolishing the fort walls, ramparts, ravelins and town gates, was entrusted to a special committee known as the Ramparts Removal Committee set up in November 1862. The Committee was also responsible for planning the new business district. Buildings which were to be constructed in the planned precinct had to conform to strict regulations. These specified the size of plots, the height of the buildings, the nature and quality of construction materials to be used, the width of the arcades for a continuous and protected street frontage, and provisions for drainage and sewerage. An important clause inserted in the agreement between the Bombay government and the lessee required the building work to be completed within three years from the date of the sale of land. In case of default, a stiff penalty was to be imposed and in case of further delay, the land forfeited...

At the first public auction on 26 August 1864, forty plots on the Esplanade were put up for sale. The sale of these plots and that of the Power Words or ammunition depot brought in Rs 60 lakhs which were assigned for development projects in Bombay city. But a severe recession followed the economic boom. The American civil war (1861-5) ended on 31 July 1865 [and] demand for Indian cotton on the international market declined. A number of investors went insolvent and there was widespread economic dislocation. The ripple effect saw land and share prices plummet....Some of the purchasers of lands on the Esplanade found it difficult to meet their financial and building commitments...

EYEING SALT PANS AND MANGROVES

By 2016, a large number of salt pan leases will expire, making these lands also available for renewal and reuse. Salt pans are spread over the eastern suburbs such as Ghatkopar, Chembur, Mandale, Turbhe, Bhandup and Mulund, and Dahisar, Mira-Bhayander and Virar in the west. As may be expected, the salt pans have invited considerable attention of builders and developers. Many are unfazed by the fact that these brackish lands which have been waterlogged for decades pose a serious challenge to the construction of sturdy buildings. Builders and civic officials keen to profit from such building projects maintain that new building materials and improved building technology will ensure the construction of safe buildings. Their arguments have not persuaded many local communities and environmentalists who fear that large-scale construction will have serious ecological implications...The prospect of acquiring the vast area of 2,177 hectares is much too attractive for them to be daunted by disasters in the future.

The right to develop salt pans lands by the Maharashtra Government has itself been rejected by critics who point out that control of these lands is in the hands of the Central Government. Coastal Zone regulations also prevent the conversion of salt pan lands into housing colonies or other forms of construction. This claim is disputed by the Maharashtra Government which asserts its right to develop salt pans and provide housing for more than 80,000 slum dwellers....Journalist Nauzer Bharucha points out that open space in Mumbai is: “a miserable 0.03 acres for every 1,000 people — the lowest in the world... Salt pans are the last tracts of open space left. The salt pans and mangroves serve as organic bulwarks to protect the city from nature’s fury. They are natural holding ponds for rainwater and also serve as dissipation spaces, allowing the accumulated water to drain into the sea.”

MUMBAI: THEATRE FOR CONFLICT, CITY OF HOPE
1660 TO PRESENT TIMES
Author: Mariam Dossal
Publisher: OUP
Pages: 252
Price: Rs 2,450