Maharashtra: Laugh all you like, the joke’s on you in BMC’s Mumbai

Mumbaikars are fed up with the state of their city.

Air pollution is as bad as in New Delhi, and with colds, coughs, asthma and allergies on the rise, doctors are advising people to wear masks.

‘This is not a war-torn ravaged region,’ posted a resident of Bandra along with photos, ‘but [it’s] still completely beat by incessant redevelopment, construction and air pollution.

‘The number of projects in BKC [Bandra Kurla Complex] is giving locals breathlessness.’

Residents of Lower Parel’s Phoenix Tower sent a legal notice to the BMC and Mumbai police, asking them to halt permission for new towers in the area until existing infrastructure was upgraded.

With 50-storey towers coming up where 2- to 3-storey buildings once stood, without corresponding improvements in infrastructure, it’s a nightmare.

How can 30 ft roads which were enough for a dozen cars cope with 150?

How can thousands of residents make do with the same water supply adequate for a few hundred?

These are some of the concerns voiced by fretful residents.

In the event of medical emergencies, accidents or fire, road obstructions delay ambulances and fire engines from reaching in time.

Apartments in the residential towers cost Rs 30 crore upwards. Yet the lack of infrastructure can cost people their lives.

With very few vacant plots left in Mumbai, builders are scrambling to grab land, eyeing the slums and in fact constructing what are being called ‘vertical slums’. Erstwhile mill land, gardens and playgrounds are also being taken over.

The BMC, which holds Rs 81,000 crore in fixed deposits, is all set to auction a plot in Worli. Used by an asphalt plant that has shut down, the plot will be given out on lease, as will other pockets of land the BMC still has.

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Stand-up comic Azeem Banatwalla began a recent YouTube video with the words: “I have a sad story for you all. Last week, I was, unfortunately, in Andheri East.” He didn’t need to say more. The audience burst out laughing. Nothing, it was clear, could be sadder than being in Andheri East.

“For 20 years, they’re building stuff,” he told his cabbie, “and yet it feels like nothing has been built.”

The cabbie responded with a corrective: the road had been concretised, the Metro rail line above had been built, the bridge to the airport was done.

It was then, quipped Banatwalla, that it hit him — Andheri East was thus by design! The deliberate aesthetic of ‘Apocalypse Chic’. Debris was not debris but art installation. Potholes were a curated crater experience. It was we who were stupid to expect infrastructure instead of being grateful to receive art.

What times we live in, he deadpanned, when municipal corporations create art, stand-up comics build bridges and politicians crack jokes.

Like promising to turn Mumbai into Singapore or Bangkok, perhaps? Or claiming that air pollution would be wiped out in the next two-and-a-half years, as former chief minister Eknath Shinde had claimed?

Whatever the comedian had in mind, the joke is really on us.

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BMC commissioner-cum-administrator Bhushan Gagrani painted, with a bright smile, a bleak picture of the city at an ‘Idea Exchange’ hosted by the Indian Express. Air pollution is unlikely to go down even if public works come to a halt over the next two years, he declared.

“For the next 20 years, I do not see a slowdown of private redevelopment work. That’s the future of Mumbai,” he said frankly.

There was more ‘good news’.

“Our roads are nowhere close to international standards… not even to national standards,” he said. In other words, there was no option but to concretise 800 kilometres of road over the next two years.

Mr Gagrani — who is known to have kept himself on the right side of all six chief ministers he has worked with, went on with his truth-telling.

“Mumbai is not a very walker-friendly city. South Mumbai has a lot of footpaths and good tree cover, but elsewhere you find them in patches. With a dearth of land, a footpath gets the least priority,” he confessed —before adding reassuringly that the BMC was trying to develop small clusters for walking:

“We will pedestrianise Kala Ghoda, parts of Bandra and Andheri. The Coastal Road, when it is completed, will also have walkways. The new Marine Drive… near Worli will be a 7.5 km stretch meant for walking, jogging and cycling.”

In short, the beautiful people residing in tony areas and tourists to ‘maximum’ city will get some respite. The rest will just have to grin and bear it.

While the copycat ‘Mumbai Eye’ is being prioritised, the condition of daily commuters has become worse.

The Metro Rail has not eased the rush in local trains.

Gagrani had nothing encouraging to say about augmenting the fleet of buses either.

Yet BEST is the second-largest public transport system after the Mumbai local trains. Its fleet of about 3,000 buses serves more than 30 lakh passengers daily.

And in this year’s budget of Rs 76,000 crore, the BMC has earmarked the princely sum of Rs 800 crore for BEST buses.

Contrast this with the other allocations in the budget presented on 4 February 2025:

• Rs 5,807 crore is allocated for the Coastal Road project

• Rs 5,545 crore has been set aside for sewage treatment plants

• Rs 5,100 crore is earmarked for roads

• Rs 5,400 crore goes to support the water supply

• Rs 2,172 crore is allotted to health services

• Rs 1,980 crore is there for bridge construction

• Rs 499 crore is claimed for solid waste management

• and Rs 411 crore will be used for the repair of school buildings.

When asked when the BMC elections were to be announced, Gagrani said, “Two Special Leave Petitions (SLPs) have been filed in the Supreme Court: one is on OBC (Other Backward Classes) reservation, the second is about delimitation.

“Until there is clarity on them, nothing can be said. It depends on the Supreme Court’s final verdict.”

In other words, there is no likelihood of the election, overdue by three years, being conducted anytime soon.