Magic at Nasik

I had a very momentous trip to Nashik on 17th July 2009. Shantaram Shenai (Shantu) was the gracious host and the purpose was to showcase to Dr. Rebello and myself the ‘immense’ progress made in treating the sewage of Nashik city by using the Biosanitizer technology. [within the same link do read about the US patent that the product has got, which is a proud achievement]

We were joined by Yogesh Bhardwaj, resident of Nashik, who has actually implemented the application of the Biosanitizer process and Dhimant Joshi from Mumbai who is a friend of Shantu and a brilliant engineer who has himself followed the biosanitizer over the years and is skilled at understanding and deploying it.

The trip became even more interesting in the background of the recent climate change talks at the MEF G8 summit at L’Aquila, where confusion reigned on the 2 degree limit above pre-industrial levels of temperature and the apparent lack of a road map to achive the same. What I saw at the Nashik STPs clearly has the potential for revolutionary change and providing a very objective and measurable road map to contribute to cutting GHG emmissions.

I have known Shantu since 1993-94 when as a teen still in college I followed his appeals to segregation and experiments with decentralised waste management at Andheri(W). I contacted him around 1995 and literature from the Green Cross Society was among my first building blocks in my deep interest in decentralised waste management. So here I was again with my Guru on a trip to another of his projects.

I had been hearing a lot of praise about the work being carried out at the Nashik Sewage Treatment plants since 2 years. Virat Singh from Westside Plus had covered the experiment extensively (Andheri Innovation a success in Nashik).  Last year in May 2008, I also had the opportunity to visit the work being done by Shantu for the golf course at the US Golf course where sewage water was being treated and used for watering the golf course. In the process the Biosanitizer effects had permeated the surrounding ecology and we had witnessed fresh water in the middle of the golf course which is surrounded by the sea.

And on 17th I finally got to be in Nashik to see the efforts.

The first plant I visited was the Tapovan plant which treats 78 mld [million liters per day] of sewage from Nashik before releasing it into the Godavari. The second facility was Morvadi [4.5 mld] and the third was Panchak. It is important to remember that this is the stuff generated in our toilets and in our bathrooms and kitchens – excreta and urine – the bath water, washing of clothes and utensils. All of it travels via a network of pipes and aggregates at such facilities.

At Tapovan the largest of the facilities the sewage treatment has been split into two streams. One stream is treated using the conventional method of huge aerators churning the turbid sewage and in the process creating a whirlpool which throws the sewage upto two feet above the surface, exposes it to oxygen and corrects the BOD levels.

In the second stream the treatment primarily comprises of letting the sewage be exposed to a correct quantity of the Biosanitizer, which is placed in pouches in various parts of the holding ponds. As the sewage is continuously exposed to the biosanitizer a large amount of oxygen is released from the biosanitizer thus correcting the BOD levels. The pictures below indicate what is happening. We began the trip by seeing the large holding ponds which were using the biosanitizer and ended with seeing the ponds treated with the conventional aeration technology. And the results can be called nothing short of phenomenal.

The sewage treated by the conventional method even after treatment and in the final holding pond before being discharged into the Godavari was extremely alkaline and corrosive. Froth was being whipped up as the wind created wave action. The froth was then flying away from the ponds and was completely burning away all the neighbouring vegetation, metal fences and anything else in the way.

Previously in the holding ponds holding the sewage treated with the bio sanitizer we could see thousands of small fishes, some of us dipped their feet into the water, all of us held the water in our hands and smelt it and Shantu even applied some in his eyes to show us that there was nothing to worry. It is important to remember that this is the outcome from what is sewage in the first stage.

At the holding pond being treated with Biosanitizer

Froth from treated sewage

Toxic sewage – visible results

Three Musketeers

Godavari

Sugar Mill

The Guru leads the way

Yogesh, who has been involved hands on with the implementation

No wine tasting here! Only treated sewage, while other connoisseurs look happily

Testing the treated sewage water on the eyes

After visiting the Tapovan plant we travelled 6 kms downstream to see what can only be called magic. The purpose was to see first hand the quality of water downstream.

We reached the destination and along the way also passed a sugar factory whose effluents are released into the Godavari.

At the designated spot we had a very beautiful view of the Godavari and did a tasting of the water. It was a most refreshing taste. We were told that almost 300 mld of drinking water is being observed available as a result of the bio sanitizer properties which have been introduced into the water. Once the treated sewage water is introduced upstream it is also impacting other effluents which join the stream. A missing piece of data was the amount of effluent being discharged by the sugar plant, which if not treated well would most certainly be very toxic and we were down stream of the same. But that apart the visible and the felt effects were most pleasantly surprising.

We left exhilarated from the site to visit even more magic at the Morvadi plant.

At the Morvadi plant 4.5 mld of sewage is treated only through the biosanitizer method. No aerators are used and only the sewage is pumped to  a height from where by gravity the sewage flows through a series of tanks containing the biosanitizer. The plant must have once been the outskirts but is now surrounded by urbanisation. Even at the primary inlet chamber of the plant where the sewage is allowed to enter there is faint smell of the dark turbid liquid being sewage (the exposure to biosanitizer starts here itself.) As we came to the first pond we were greeted with a dense mass of vegetation, which had formed a green carpet over the sewage. Underneath, the sewage was continuously being worked upon and flowing into the secondary and tertiary ponds. Instead of any offensive smell of sewage the place had a feeling of freshness to itself and a number of vegetables were seen growing. The lack of any smell indicated that no CO2 or methane, very important GHG gases were being produced. The lack of any mechanical aerator clearly leads to enormous savings in electricity bills and consequent emissions from power plants. The whole combination is more than win-win.

We finally came back to our hotel room for a break. We still had to meet Satish Magre the Chief Engineer who took the initative and the risk two years ago to use the bio sanitizer. Thankfully around 6:45 pm he indicated he was free and we were quickly into the car and off to Panchak STP which Mr. Magare wanted to show us. Panchak is the latest STP set up by the NMC. It was great being with the eco-hero himself. Mr. Magare had taken a big risk in going for a technology which eliminates capital expenditure in the current form and makes the requirement for certain kinds of human resource redundant. Being a mechanical engineer himself he had to face the wrath of peers for using method which made mechanical engineering less important.

At Panchak, which a new plant we could see numerous improvements in design and the same marvelous results with the added benefit of a passionate guided tour by the man himself.

I have previously seen the effects and working of the bio sanitizer in Dec 2005 where Dr. Bhawalkar himself had come to apply a dose to the Lokhandwala Lake which I have been involved in saving since a decade. Around that time the lake had a very bad bloom of red algae as a result of the persistent washing of clothes on one of its sides. Over a period of six months we had seen the red algae disappear completely.

As I understood better on this trip the Bio sanitizer crystals (four come in one pouch) are in effect a whole rain forest in themselves. Just as in a forest you dont get any offensive smells even though a lot of death and decay is taking place, the bio sanitizer has in effect powerfully packed the properties of one whole forest in itself and releases need based oxygen, which is an important ingredient for correcting a number of situations. Those tiny, silent, life less crystals doing so much is nothing short of amazing.

While more tests and assessments are certainly required along with peer review, it is quite clear that the bio sanitizer represents a quantum leap in our understanding of handling numerous environmental problems and places at our disposal a corrective means, which clearly removes excuses for inaction.

[There is some more data which I need to collect and will keep adding to this link.]

1. Even as we approach COP15 one of the most important data sets will be the accurate estimates on the GHG  emissions resulting from the complete life cycle of the sewage treatment process. Also what are the changes if any in the emissions arsing from the mechanical process vis-a-vis the bio sanitizer process.

Thoughts on the Bandra Worli Sealink

Even as there has been a lot of drama, adulation, sense of pride and hype over the opening of the Bandra Worli Sea Link, I have found myself going through a confusing set of emotions, all of which have been tossing around in my salad bowl of a mind.

Yes I certainly feel proud of the link. At all such instances I get reminded of a childhood essay I wrote long back in 1986 for which I received a proud second prize. The essay was about my ambition to become an engineer and make awe inspiring symbols of civil engineering like the  Sears Towers and Expressways like they are found in the US and the Europe and Japan. Machines, buildings, civil engineering processes fascinated me as much as nature if not more since childhood.

Some where along the way the more normative side in me overtook the scientific and I gradually started paying more attention to the problems which were difficult to be solved by engineering.

And in the sea link it was again the normative which has been over riding the engineering interest in how much of concrete was poured and how many times the steel cables can circle the earth. Is this how things ought to be?

I use the public transport in Mumbai quite frequently and even more now in the hype surrounding the sealink I found myself noticing that every bus stop that I passed in a journey from my house near home in Oshiwara to Juhu had a huge puddle of muddy water in front of it. So people would be standing in their bus stop and when the bus came those who were getting out and those who were trying to get in were jostling with each other and negotiating the puddle of muddy water as well.

At each bus stop my mind went through a violent commentary of abuses and remarks on society and the state of things even as my outward self refused to look away and kept gazing lifelessly into the chaos at each stop – a sadistic enjoyment even, thrusting a hot iron rod somewhere near my eyes but not within and enjoying the pain. School children, women in sarees, old men all went through enormous difficulty. Some of the more agile youth took it as a nice acrobatic challenge being able to leap from the dry patch directly into the bus. This is where our sports prowess stops – we dont long jump longer than this.

And then my mind started having images of the kind of banners and newspaper advertisement I would like to see in the papers this week. Would somebody calculate the number of such puddles of water in the city? There must be a good million I suppose?

Can we have a full page advertisement which proudly proclaims that our city has

1,00,7512 puddles in front of bus stops in the city,

1,33,214 instances of missing manholes in other wise normal footpaths because of which people still prefer to travel on the road,

23,732 instances where footpaths have been dug up for some utility work and have been such since more than two weeks,

34,237 instances of hawkers completely having taken over footpaths.

Why cant we feel proud of these numbers? Aren’t these also significant achievements of the great Indian intelligence that we like to tom-tom about from here to New York and beyond?

Then the banners -

Cant solve small puddles of water

Will become world class city (Bombay First and CAG )

Cant solve small puddles of water

Will feel proud of Sealink (this is aimed at the hordes which decided to take the first ride)

Cant solve small puddles of water

Will rush to name sealink after Veer Savarkar (yes this is to the Shiv Sena)

* I dont have the money but sponsors for the banners are welcome – if I cant do a turnkey job of putting up a bridge from scratch, atleast I can take up this contract. Maybe I can monetise the eyeballs also with some kind of an infra red toll machine which tracks the eye balls.

Another of the salad bowl image was a hallucination of an alternate to the opening ceremony. I imagined a scenario, where each of the senior leaders present for the opening ceremony were similarly taking pride in being photographed with Sonia-ji in front of the biggest puddle in the city contest. A nice polygon of muddy water, whose depth one would hesitate to test with ones own feet.

Before that there would have been a mad scramble with all the leaders having pulled Madam in different directions. Madam-Madam see my puddle..please-please..madam..this is not fair, you are spending too much time admiring Kripashankarji’s puddle..please see mine also..then some leader deciding to splash in his puddle like I would have done in the same sixth standard I wrote the essay in..all in joy with a glee..splashing muddy water on his spotless white kurta pyjama and those around him..Madam..smiling elegantly teeth to teeth..so happy with the work of her boy…another leader who had a chottu puddle would decide to pose with another leader with a big one and get pushed away with a “get your own puddle” line.

And then there would be a red ribbon the size of the diameter of the big award winning puddle to cut which all the dignitaries would wade half way through and after cutting the ribbon everybody would do an impromptu filmi jig! Madam the lead heroine and all the others the hero’s trying to woo her. They anyway have all those filmi’s under their belt.

And then I started thinking of the hordes which rushed for the first day first show and some of whose adulation for the link was covered in the papers. These would mostly also be the people who are most unconcerned about any dialogue at comprehensive transport and traffic management in the city. The types who will enrich the sealink makers with their 50 rupees, but not the numerous poor NGOs and initiatives – a number of which I have been part of – where cutting edge thinking about a holistic solution to the city keeps leading a still born existence for lack of nutrition.

I found myself cursing them with a full realisation that in the times we live in the curse would eventually rebound on me leading to more misery to my existence.

And then the mustard. Sharad Pawar did what should land him the top three if not the top position in the Maratha Hall of Shame. In the midst of the enormous allegations of corruption and impropriety I have always had a considerable amount of awe and admiration about the ease with which the man juggles agriculture and cricket and enormous influence of land politics and god alone knows how many other interests. He disappointed so much with his – Madam madam lets name the bridge after Rajiv-ji thing. I could imagine myself part of a heist, which whisks him away only to send him overboard mid-way of the link.

Of course he will have the last laugh. A decade or two down the line we will have his daughter as the Speaker of the house – much like Jagjeevan Ram’s daughter got rewarded. The Congress are good to sycophants.

The Shiv Sena would do better at aiming to name the bridge after one of their Standing Committee Chairmans in the past few terms who has made the most money. I would most certainly second such a proposal. Their bogey of doing good for the Marathi manoos and Marathi asmita is all too jaded now. Veer Savarkar could do best without them.

Feeling proud of the bridge between Sweden and Denmark or the ones in China or the Golden Gate bridge comes not out of the bridges themselves but simultaneously for cities and administrations which have a manic fascination for improving each and every small and big aspect of their cities and lives of the commonest of people, not just 50 buck toll payers.

Feeling proud comes when you are proud of being a city which is good to millions of its pedestrians, not so ruthlessly indifferent and cruel. Not so heavily skewed in favour of only those who will travel in air conditioned vehicles.

Out here bridge innaugarations and pride over them become and extension of the cheap, ostentatious, me too existense of what seems a cursed land.

Hindus and Hinduism in a Hindu Heartland

My latest assignment takes me to the Kalbadevi area of Mumbai. Amongst the oldest areas of the city, it could be more than two centuries old. The area was originally the only commercial business district of the city and in spite of the city growing far more in all directions and with much more business districts it still retains its status as the prima donna of trading areas. It is the bastion of members of India’s most prominent trading communities, the Gujarati’s, Marwari’s, Punjabi’s, Sindhi’s and the Jain’s.

The area (even Kalbadevi’s immediate neighbourhoods) does thousands of crores worth of turnover daily in almost every conceivable material and commodity that the country produces, exports or imports.

My assignment is about a project looking into how the area can be systematically redeveloped as per a Master Plan. My role is to engage the community in the area so to understand their views and demands from the redevelopment exercise. Besides, my key area of interest remains environmental sustainability and the project has an interest in incorporating best practices, such that the environmental impact of the new planned development is minimal.

I have a historic connect with the area since my father was born and lived most of his youth a little away from where my site office is. I too would have been born in the area but thankfully wasn’t. As a kid in the 1980’s I would visit this area during vacations or odd times and would be pretty disgusted with the crowds, the dirt, the strained urban nature and complete lack of any civic sense amongst most of the residents of the area. And to top it there would be a certain sense of pride and arrogance in the way they lived – just because they live in Kalbadevi and South Mumbai. I would wish death to most of the people then, and a great fire to the area. None happened and the area is as dirty and the people as incapable of finding a solution for their area. Though my father passed away last year.

My father was every bit the solution finder and imaginative about urban issues as I am except that all he wanted to do was to show his knowledge and impress his ideas upon people. He was no different from the average Kalbadevi-ite in being able to take initiative (at least on such issues).

When I compare my childhood memories then I feel the area has certainly improved in its civic sense and cleanliness a lot. Then I would see these really vicious people whom you couldn’t say a thing if they threw waste from their windows on the street. Or the streets were much dirtier and littering more prevalent then. I think globalisation and the exposure to the world (through TV for most) has made the area cleaner.

Now as I spend ‘quality time’ in the area (almost 12 hours a day at times) in the area I cannot once again but observe in detail the people of the area, their behaviour, their thought patterns, their levels of civility, their imagination levels and their display (or lack of it) of those more elevated levels of behaviour that humanity fervently chases.

The area is pre dominatly Hindu and Jain and I get intrigued about the role of religion and culture in the current state of the area. I live further north of the area in the suburbs in a building which has a compound space where cars can be parked and kids can play. One one side of my building there is a 5 acre garden and immediately facing my 3rd floor balcony is a small garden with palm trees. As I write this sitting in my balcony I think about how contrary the atmosphere is in Kalbadevi.

Kalbadevi reeks of sewage and rotting garbage as they mix in narrow gaps between two buildings called house gullies. These house gullies are areas where the sewage and water pipelines for the buildings pass through. Some of the individual tenements of the buildings find themselves with one window besides the house gully and people do not think twice before throwing garbage into these. Over time the garbage mixes with sewage leaking from decades old pipes and the combination stinks only to be cleaned by the Municipal authorities once in a while. Rats find it a very convenient home.

The people live in dingy buildings with dark and foreboding staircases. Most buildings are supported with stilts and other props which keep them from falling. Most people live in 200-400 sq. feet tenements and share common toilets. An average of 4-5 people live in tenements of this size. For most people at least a generation or two has lived like this. I wonder what kind of lives these people must be living in these units.

Businessmen have over the years carried out their trading from such places and become multimillionaires able to afford posh flats close by and travel all over the world. But the wealth has had no impact in their attitudes towards their neighbourhood.

The area doesn’t have any open spaces and playgrounds. Children play gully cricket on Sundays or sometimes go to Azad Maidan and other grounds a little bit away. While a century back most of the commercial and economic activity was limited to some of the well defined markets in the past few decades a number of the residential tenements in buildings have been converted to various commercial usages including storage of cotton yarn and other products. Labour and business visitors throng the area during the day.

When we come up with the idea of a planned redevelopment of the area I wonder how these people have anyways lived like this all these years. What kind of a culture do these people belong to which allows people to live in these kind of conditions for decades without finding solutions? Is it the same culture which proudly talks of the Mohenjo Daro civilisations, which provided for exemplary levels of drainage 5000 years back.

I have for long been a vocal critic of the jingoism that passes of for Indian culture and Hinduism and its supposed greatness over western culture and other cultures. And in Kalbadevi that supposed greatness gets not only questioned but also cremated. When a culture and people get so busy to get into one upmanship and petty rivalry and arrogance at the cost of even not being able to live in clean and decent surroundings then there is not an iota of greatness in that culture.

The jingoists present India and Hinduism as the one stop shop for solutions to all the problems of the world. We gave the world the zero, which in itself is such an over riding contribution, that the world just need not doubt us about our ability and ask for anymore proof. But still the benign and generous and most intelligent people that we are we can give you the yoga and Ayurveda to take care of all your health problems. Are intelligent techies run the wheels of the world. Our culture is unparalleled and we are a country which respects it elders and where the family is most sacrosanct unlike the defiled West.

Kalbadevi is full of super religious Hindus. I consider myself a rational Hindu – considering the Gods to my friends whom I say hi and bye to and whose counsel I seek in times of need. The Hindus of Kalbadevi are different. They are a bit too much into their gods and temples and rituals and a bit too less in loving their fellow beings. They are vicious lot who like the quote goes “mooh pe ram aur bagal mein choori” can never be trusted with what ill they may have in their minds for their fellow residents.

And when I hear of the same people talking of the problems like the Amarnath yatra and the damage Muslims are doing etc. I wonder what is stopping them from doing some good for their own selves in their own secure bastion? The Muslims or other imagined enemies are not responsible for the ridiculously bad living conditions in which these people live in a completely Hindu area. For all the talk of benevolence neither the tenants or the landlords display any of the characteristics which the thousands of spiritual gurus – which the area follows cultivates – propound. Members of castes and sects, and sub castes and sub sects are so wedded to their narrow community and dogmatic that they will not cooperate with another Hindu also.

I think it is these characteristics – which too me somewhere have become representative of Hindus- which are turning out to be the biggest enemy of Hinduism.

I cant help splitting up when I hear people talk of making the temple at Ayodhya and collecting funds for the yatra and other such things. If Ram was around he wouldn’t have come to so much as even shit in this area. If one were to believe that God exists everywhere then the wealthy and not so wealthy of Kalbadevi need to first do something about the squalor they have reduced their temple to, with absolutely no help from Babar or his tribe.

Peepal Tree Building

The pictures below show the deep neglect a number of the old and dilapidated buildings in the island city of Mumbai suffer from.

The Rent Control Act shouldn’t have deterred the people staying in the buildings from doing something to secure their own safety atleast. But the neglect is now coming to haunt them as they have to evacuate their buildings. Below are pictures from Brijwasi Building, 6 Navi Wadi, Off Chira Bazaar Road, a critical section of which collapsed on 25th July.

Undisturbed and uninterrupted the tree was allowed to grow through the years

The trees roorts have deeply and strongly clutched the building now. Any attempt at uprooting would be dangerous.

Cluster Bombing

The article

Dear Vikas,

I write these views in personal interest and not as part of any of the organisations I am a part of. I read with interest your article ‘Cluster Bombing’. I found myself agreeing with some of the things you say, disagreeing with others and at other times found myself in a dilemma considering that I had joined the Remaking of Mumbai Federation two months back with some kind of a healers and surgeons state of being, thinking of cleaning the area of all the dead and diseased tissue and restoring the flow of fresh oxygenated blood.

Most of the area in C Ward and some of the other adjoining wards in the island city are clearly composed of buildings which are in a dangerous condition to inhabit. Some of these are certainly part of some of the heritage precincts we all love. But there are two aspects to consider in your article. One covers either heritage precincts and individual heritage buildings and the other non-heritage buildings. There is another way of looking at the matter where we club everything together, the sights, the smells the heritage and non-heritage together, the narrow lanes, the low rise nature and others aspects together which are now reminiscent of another age and talk of preserving the same. I think it is the latter which you (myself certainly) think of as the heritage we would wish to preserve.

As far as I am concerned I have come to realize that I cannot have everything I wish. This effectively means that we will have to pay a price for our decades of neglect. My favourite quote holds – “in nature there are no rewards or punishments, only consequences”. And while we may feel remorseful about loosing a certain something we treasure, we have to also learn to live with the fact that the loss is a direct consequence of something which has been done or not done by us or somebody else or all collectively. (For the context my father was born in a building on Princess Street)

And this is exactly what is happening in some of old inner city areas. The 33(9) regulation is about redeveloping of areas which are now composed of a significantly high number of dangerous buildings in which people continue to live. Over the years there has been a criminal neglect of the conditions of the buildings and the various social issues like the landlord-tenant disputes, the quality of life etc. The participation of people in most matters has been so poor that the bureaucrat-builder-politician partnership has had to take decisions. There cannot be a vacuum. And if there have been irregularities why aren’t we (you and me or also the residents of the area?) doing something about that?

I am commenting not keeping just the 33(9) context in mind. Some of the points you have raised have standalone merit. I am in agreement about the bad quality of policy reflected in 33(9).

I think it is still possible to find solutions to some of the problems raised by you but those will not solved by just doing the identification of the symptoms. The underlying disease will have to understood and resolved for anything to reflect.

I am putting some comments on the points raised by you. The portions in black below are from your article and my responses are in blue. If the views express a certain unhappiness and anger it is not with you but with the general state of affairs. Thanks for initiating the discussion.

The article said – “For most people, the appeal of Mumbai’s distinct skyline comes from its variety—from the stately structures of Fort to the bustling chaos of Kalbadevi or the bazaars of Girgaum. However, all this could be a thing of the past, if the state government’s plans to implement cluster development in the island city go through.

Cluster development refers to the clubbing together of all kinds of buildings—heritage structures, government buildings and slums—to be redeveloped with a higher FSI. This plan threatens the distinct visual character of the city, by aiming to replace it with a skyline of homogenous high-rises. Moreover, the areas that will be affected by the plan form the heart of the city’s historical character. (See box)

As much we care for heritage, we (conservationists) are equally aware that the quality of life is as important if not more important than heritage. But the strategy of cluster development fails to address the root cause of the problem —why our heritage is being neglected—while advocating a blanket formula for some of the most architecturally significant parts of our city. It is like advocating a new set of dentures that will be shiny and look good to a patient, when just a root canal will do. “

This para has the biggest question which itself merits to become the sole point of discussion – “why our heritage is being neglected?” The cluster redevelopment strategy has a number of flaws but one of them cannot be not addressing that question. Addressing that question is not the job of laws alone but a whole way of thinking and being. It is how society as a whole finds appeal in the varying Mumbai skylines mentioned above, is what is important.

Beyond a few of us who would much rather be keeping our faces hanging out – like dogs in a car – enjoying each and every bit of the vistas the city offers, most of the public would much rather be listening to their I Pod. And it is the attitude and active participation or lack of it in the millions which reflects in regulations like 33(9) being drafted. And is it the responsibility of the government to make people appreciate the importance of heritage? Was it the role of the government that shaped our appreciation for heritage? Or is it that our appreciation was shaped due to other factors and now we try to shape the attitude of the government and society.

Why is it that only some of us go so mad when we see that particular piece of architecture or vista? Why is it that more often than not people who inhabit a particular precinct of heritage value themselves fail to have any appreciation for it or are not able to find solutions to preserve the heritage value. Why is it that so many of the breed which appreciates heritage is not able to deliver to its complete potential their efforts in saving heritage. The questions we face are many and the answers few. And it is only in answering some of the other questions that we find some respite from the anguish we face “while advocating a blanket formula for one of the most architecturally significant parts of our city.”

The article said – “By clubbing together our heritage precincts and the entire island city with slums for redevelopment we are degrading our historical legacy. The new development that we would get would be nothing more than another larger vertical slum soon. This is clear from the fact that many modern buildings built as recently as the 1970s and 80s are already becoming dilapidated due to lack of maintenance and are going for redevelopment in the suburbs within a span of 30 years. On the other hand, our heritage precincts —many of them a century old—are in fair or good condition due to the robust materials used.

It is only due to the lack of maintenance, overuse and misuse of these structures that problems arise. These can be dealt with by making good maintenance mandatory, which can happen by experimenting with diluting the Rent Control Act from the listed heritage buildings to begin with. This is a minuscule proportion of few hundred buildings in lakhs of tenanted buildings. It is obvious that the market value of the properties would go up which would be a win-win situation for all. This will help in preserving and maintaining our heritage rather than demolishing everything and leaving only a building or two as a relic of the past, as seen in Singapore. Mumbai is on the tourist map for its glorious heritage and not for its vertical high rises. Heritage precincts can be treated as special development areas, where more sensitive development patterns can be worked out after understanding the complex social and cultural matrix of these areas, rather than seeing it only from the economic point of view. “

Why is it that in spite of having a good idea of the solutions we fail to implement them for decades to end even as the problems continuously keep becoming bigger and bigger. Why talk of experimenting with diluting the Rent Act? The experimenting should have been done in the 60’s. The Rent Act itself is the single biggest reason for the falling apart of the Kalbadevi, Chira Bazaar, Girgaum, Bhuleshwar area. This was more than evident till 3 decades back also. If tenants are not going to pay market rent, which landlord or government authority will pay for the upkeep of their building? Forget paying market rent most people could not incorporate non-expenditure habits like not spitting on the walls or throwing garbage in house gullies. Had we only succeeded in treating our buildings and precincts with a bit of decency in our civic behaviour the precincts wouldn’t have been so run down or structurally weakened to require a redevelopment? What could have been a scenario of relatively smaller payments (market rent) being made on a regular basis leading to a regular upkeep and maintenance of the buildings has become a scenario where now even if the tenants want to make large payments nothing can be done because the buildings are damaged beyond salvage. A sinking fund for maintenance should have been maintained since day one. But everybody wanted to cut corners.

When you mention that tourists come to Mumbai not for its high rises but for its glorious heritage I am reminded of the reality as I see it on the street. I have been passing the streets of Kalbadevi more frequently now and yet to come across a tourist admiring the streetscape. Even if I go to CST or DN Road I do not see the hordes of tourists that one associated with similar areas elsewhere. In my opinion tourists only come to heritage places which are appreciated by the original inhabitants themselves. You cannot look at the heritage in isolation only. The people are an important part of the package.

We have never been a culture which has any broad based interest in history.

The article said – “The history of heritage legislation throughout the world shows that in the early 19th century, protection was extended only to monuments. This was later increased to the enclosure of the monuments and then to its immediate surrounding, which was further stretched to views and vistas. Mumbai, in contrast, seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Our heritage precincts are the grain of our urban fabric, as a result of which our city landmarks stand out. If this grain shifts to becoming high-rises (with higher FSI’s) then the neo-Gothic silhouette of our city, acclaimed by historians as the finest city in the East of Suez, will vanish. It will be a shame if UNESCO takes back the World Heritage Status Tag from CST seeing the present trends.

At the Venice Biennale exhibition of Cities of the World in 2006, one of the exhibits showed the new skyline of Girgaum area. Even without cluster development, viz a viz the density model of Mumbai city, you could see the densities of New York and Tokyo were evenly distributed and were less than half of Mumbai in some areas. It is cities like Cairo which follow the Mumbai pattern but they have at-least sorted out their traffic problems first.”

I could vouch that if I was to take a poll on Chira Bazaar road or on Kalbadevi Road or Girgaum none of the passerby’s I would encounter would know what the Venice Biennale Exhibition would be all about. Even if ten percent know about it I would consider it a super achievement. Appreciating the heritage and preserving it has become the preserve of a very few educated people in this country unfortunately. And maybe education also has nothing to do with it. Then there are the elite in our city who occupy the seats of decision making who use their interest in heritage as a Page 3 visa. They have so much time, energy and resources at their disposal but unfortunately lack the imagination and what it takes to make a difference. All these years couldn’t a few wealthy people from Malabar Hill and Cuffe Parade and Marine Drive – a lot of whom must have grown in their economic stature from the markets of Kalbadevi – have bothered to set up a trust or commission which would look into the preserving of the area for eternity? The few of these rich who care for these things would rather bother to be seen at the Venice Biennale with their mediocre contributions (or no contribution) rather than make an exemplary contribution anonymously.

The article said – “The proposed cluster development plan also raises important questions even aside from heritage, like—what happens in case of natural disasters? Where do we have open spaces where people can be evacuated temporarily? And how will our already fragile, century-old infrastructure cope with even higher pressures?”

The proposed cluster development plan is unimaginative but where are the open spaces even now in case of natural disasters? A moderate earthquake would ensure that the buildings in Kalbadevi would come down like a pack of cards.

The article said – “Such plans ignore the fact that many of our old structures are intelligent buildings—crafted with attention to our climate and culture, and excellent in their detail and ornamentation. Their form is rooted in the social and cultural life of the communities that created them. All this would be lost with cluster development, which would tempt the tenants of even a good condition heritage building to go in for redevelopment, drawn by the temptation of a higher FSI. The loss of heritage and sense of continuity would be immeasurable and irreplaceable. With the loss of the mills, heritage structures and Grade I buildings like Crawford Market waiting for redevelopment, we would have lost the Mumbai that we inherited.”

Again this needs to be felt by people at least in the thousands and those feelings then need to be converted to kinetic energy for 33(9) to reflect them. Saving the heritage or environment is a complex interplay of various disciplines. Achieving desired results would inevitably mean influencing the thoughts of un-connected disciplines.

There is a tectonic shift in society. The communities that created these buildings are now dead and extinct. The neighbourhoods evolved in all probability with the British and were maintained only till then. Since the time the areas have come into the hand of Indians the degradation has started. 33(9) is a very small contribution to that process.