Mumbai Woes --------- episode 1: the haunt of the transformation

We hear about this everyday. Every second day we read about various plans to transform Mumbai into a world class city like Shanghai or New York. But before we even think of such plans, we should consider a few issues.

First, cities like Shanghai are newly developed. This city was a small farming village some 10 years ago. It was when the Chinese felt the need to look at other avenues like industries that they decided to develop the village into a present day Shanghai. By this time, we already had the facilities and ideas for modern city planning. So Shanghai is much more organized and ready to expand easily as and when needed.

Mumbai was developed 150-200 years ago. Initially it consisted of 8 small islands and then more and more land was reclaimed. So the present day Mumbai actually consists of vast stretches of reclamation land. We have already stretched the limits. Changing it further is only going to have a negative impact on the city.

Further, we live in a democratic society. So before taking any firm decisions we have to hold various meetings and discussions. We have to take into account views and advantages of all concerned parties. This naturally takes up a lot of time. Many times the proposal is not okayed by all the parties and so we feel that the development is slow. A few examples of this are the worli-bandra sealink, the new oceanium, the various flyovers and buildings, the proposed metro trains, etc.

This is not the case in Shanghai because the government does not follow a democratic process. Some of the decisions are simply imposed upon the common public. But this is not the only reason. The people there are willing to cooperate and are much more hard-working than us. The corruption and narrow-mindedness is very less and decisions are approved much faster.

Every individual is different from another. Likewise every city is also different w.r.t. culture, goals, people, needs, etc. so things appropriate for one city need not be the same for another. This is precisely what the government of Maharashtra needs to understand. They need to understand that Mumbai doesn’t need the glossy and fake beauty but instead needs some basic solution to everyday problems. Anyways the aam junta isn’t concerned with these piped dreams at all.

Mumbai is beautiful in its own ways. We have the so many unique features that makes our city distinct from every other city in the world. We shouldn’t try to copy others, instead we should change ourselves in such a way that others try to imitate us.