Infrastructure

In 2018, 30,000 slum dwellers from the Tansa pipeline area and those affected due to the Brihanmumbai Stormwater Disposal System project were moved to Mahul, an industrially polluted area in the east of Mumbai. After uninterrupted citizen protests from August 2018 to September 2019, the High Court ordered the Maharashtra Government to rehabilitate residents or pay them Rs 15,000 monthly rent and Rs 45,000 deposit to find accommodation elsewhere. For a city known for incomplete or uninhabitable slum-redevelopment projects, this sounded like an interesting move. If implemented, it wouldn’t have been different from the model of “housing choice vouchers” where…

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report of 2019 indicates that every day, 35 people die due to fire accidents in India, with over half being home fires. Fires in high rises are not very common, but they almost always make it to the media headlines because of the damage they cause. Fire safety in apartment complexes is usually not on the list of priorities of either the builder or the flat owners. This is because fire safety systems do not impact our day-to-day lives, unlike water pipes, lifts, lighting, landscaping, garbage, drainage, etc. When a fire breaks out beyond…

Waterlogging in Mumbai is an annual affair, met with cynicism and apathy. The city’s insufficient drainage system, unsustainable urbanisation, reduction of green cover and natural barriers are enlisted among the top reasons for the floods.  But this information is often too dense or inadequate to understand why citizens can’t spend one monsoon without wading through (and living in) murky rainwater mixed with sewage and solid waste. Citizen Matters explains:   Let’s begin with the topography of the city. Welded together through land reclamation, the city is shaped like a saucer. It has low lines of hills on either sides: Malabar Hill…

Having set a four-year time-frame to achieve the target of 25 per cent electrification of new vehicle fleet in Delhi, the Arvind Kejriwal government may have just bitten off more than it can chew. Despite the slew of incentives offered -- waiver of registration fee and road tax and subsidy of Rs 1.5 lakh for new electric cars and up to Rs 30,000 for electric two-wheelers, e-rickshaws and freight vehicles, widespread public acceptance of electric vehicles is uncertain. Though the e-vehicle policy announcement on August 7th, based on wide-ranging consultations with experts from across the country and study of EV policies…

This is the fourth story in a multi-part series on the pandemic and its impact on people in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, YUVA, a non-profit organisation, attempts to understand the challenges they face in accessing relief and assesses the rights-based approach to benefits. Rajit, a 57-year-old construction worker is finding it hard to make ends meet after the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown hit. "I have not been able to work for a day since the March lockdown," he says. The official figures on the number of construction workers in Mumbai are pegged to around 6 lakhs, making them 2%…

In the many years that I have lived in Mumbai, I have perfected a method of walking from the Western Express Highway metro station in Andheri East to my apartment, a kilometre away.  First, I sprint to cross the road. Then I use the momentum to jump onto a footpath. A little ahead, 90% of the footpath is encroached by a shop. So I turn to my right, extend my arms, and maintain balance as if the footpath were a surfing board. Then I leap over a variety of automobile parts displayed by the shopkeepers in the shopfront. Like me,…

By end the of May, Rehana Shaikh, 39, a Naik with Mumbai police, developed a fever. Shaikh had been overseeing bandobast across Mumbai from Dadar's Naigaon police station. Every day, from the beginning of the nationwide lockdown on March 24, she was allocating duties to 278 policewomen across the city's emerging hotspots, arterial roads, hospitals, and check nakas. When COVID-19 symptoms manifested, Shaikh rushed to Metropolis Labs, a private diagnostic centre, for a test. But the result was delayed. "My symptoms were worsening but without a test result, no hospital or a COVID health care centre would admit me," she…

Both the Western and Eastern coastlines of Mumbai are in for a sea change. While a Rs 14,000 crore Coastal Road Project is being implemented on the Western coastline, different groups are proposing vastly varied ideas for the 21-km Eastern side that stretches from the Bombay Dockyard to Wadala. What Mumbai Port Trust wants to do The Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), which oversees the planning for the Eastern Waterfront project has decided to commercially develop 25.63% of land, another 23.26% will be used for ecotourism and 10.76 % to rehouse local slum-dwellers. By ecotourism they mean cruises, a marina, promenades,…

When temperatures soar, Delhiites pray for rain. But when it pours, even just for a few hours, tragedy strikes. As happened on July 19th. Severe waterlogging submerged many parts of the city creating huge traffic jams. One house collapsed when a drain near it collapsed, and four people died from the flooding in different parts of the city. Among the major casualties on the same day was the central dome of Delhi's iconic Mubarak Begum mosque -- built in 1823 and a prominent visitor attraction -- which collapsed in the torrential rain. Such monsoon mayhem has become an annual feature…

Even when the howling wind and torrential rain brought by Cyclone Amphan was causing havoc around her on May 20, Sabita Sardar was not afraid. “We are used to dealing with bad weather. I wasn’t feeling scared. In fact, those who live in concrete homes were more scared,” she said. For 40 years now, Sabita has been living on the streets of Gariahat, a popular market area in south Kolkata. That day, when the super cyclonic storm passed through West Bengal’s capital city, Sabita and a few other homeless women sat huddled together in her tricycle cart under the Gariahat…