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Rebuilding Mumbai – Dreams and Reality SHUBHANGI ATHALYE Convo Research & Strategy Private Limited

Mumbai is described as the city that never sleeps. Life is about strife, change, getting ahead, adapting to the city’s rhythms. People catch their daily, overcrowded trains and buses to work through the heavy downpour of the monsoon, through terrorist attacks, and taxi strikes. Amidst this is a city being rebuilt. Mumbai is one of the most expensive real-estate markets in the world. We explore different aspects of Mumbai’s rebuilding through the juxtaposition of old buildings with new swanky high rises, slum relocation and subsidized homes. We examine Mumbai’s underbelly - who really benefits? Is the city losing its soul?

As a Mumbaikar, I’m witnessing the change, the huge rebuilding activity that is transforming not only the skyline but dismantling and reweaving the social fabric and the community structures of the city. I invite you to engage with me and reflect on how radically our world is changing. (A little poem about Mumbai will be read, reflecting her contrasts – glitz and glamour and privileges of the affluent on one hand and the filth, squalor and dismal living conditions on the other.) This most populous city in India, a population that will soon equal Australia. Its significance in the success story of India is huge. It accounts for- 40% all international flights coming to India 70% capital transactions 60% India’s foreign trade 33% Income tax 60% Customs duty collection

The first cotton textile mill was set up in Mumbai in 1854. Affluent families of the city struck a bargain with the government. They were given hundreds of acres of unused land at nominal rents to set up indigenous textile mills. Soon there were 64 thriving textile mills in Central Mumbai and it started to be known as Girangaon or Mill town.

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This was the Industrialization of Mumbai. The mill owners needed people to work in their mills- they sent scouts to villages in the coastal region of the state (of Maharashtra) and got hordes of villagers to migrate. Hundreds of Chawls or residential tenements were built for these people to live in - communities lived together, in clusters by caste/ native regions. The literal meaning of the word Chawl is a ‘corridor’. These buildings would have rows of rooms with a long common corridor running across. Each floor has 4/5 shared toilets. The structure of a chawl brought about a sense of shared ownership and people spilled over, lived and slept in the long corridors, the courtyards below, even the streets outside. Though there was no privacy and poor sanitation - there was a great sense of community in the corridors – women sorted grains, men played cards, festivals were celebrated, songs sung. The native culture and social ethos was intact; there was no feeling of loneliness or urban ‘rootlessness’ often felt by people living in modern high rises.

The mills and the chawls were hotbeds of social, cultural, political activism. Workers unions gathered momentum as the mill owners failed to adapt to changing work & living conditions, culminating in 1982 with Datta Samant led strike where 300,000 workers staged a walkout. Concurrently, the commercial environment was changing with liberalization and foreign investment - Mumbai increasingly becoming the financial capital. The mill owners exploited this to their advantage in cahoots with politicians and real estate barons. Most mills were closed down.

The Mill workers lives collapsed along with their livelihood and their self-respect, their social status. They had no other skills and no means to earn.

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Many turned to alcohol. Some joined the mafia. The more enterprising started small food stalls. They had to sell their homes and relocate to distant suburbs. Their women went to work as maid servants, waking up at 4.30 in the morning, commuting 50 kilometers back to where they once lived, to serve some new masters in posh apartments for as little as 100 dollars a month. Another community of early settlers - the fisher folk – Kolis. Today their fishing villages have been pushed and squeezed into small settlements near the sea. The lure and the threat of redevelopment is endangering their community. They try to preserve their Konkani dialect, cuisine and culture, but, for how long? Along with people’s dwellings, will traditional bazaars, the buzzing street markets give way to modern retail? What will happen to the fisherwoman, the vegetable seller, the flourmill, the tailors, and the corner barber’s shop? Will they survive in a changing cityscape? This used to be Phoenix Mills, a textile mill that is now High street Phoenix, a mall and bowling alley. It is a landmark - the first mill to be transformed to a mall. With the recently announced 51% multi-brand FDI in retail -with global players like Walmart and Carrefour in the fray will our unorganized retail survive? Today .... Mumbai is one of the most expensive real estate in the world. The Ambanis have built the world’s first billion dollar home – Antilia with 400,000 sq.ft of living space, 27 stories, 3 helipads, 9 elevators etc… It’s not just the most expensive property in the world, but also a symbol of the contradiction that is Mumbai. Where, on the one hand, the business community looks up to it as an edifice to capitalism and individual success, and on the other hand there is disdain among rich and poor alike, at the vulgar

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display of wealth and statement that makes. This picture was taken 2 blocks away from Antilia. The figures are horrifying - 60% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums with no safe drinking water, open sewages & trash, dearth of good health care. 400,000 people live per sq. km here. So what are the dilemmas that the emergent skyline reveals and hides away? -The urban poor are swamped by migrants, rushing in with huge aspirations, hunger, energy, and passion to build a better life. They are the new Mumbai. They don’t care for the old – they don’t see it. As a result, notions of preservation, of heritage are challenged. -The politicians want to rebuild the city as it lines their pockets, and yet they must keep their old vote banks happy. Outrage at migrants, token efforts at preserving old structures are only adding to dilemmas. The new skyline represents the soul of the city – a city of dreams, a city on the move, a testimony to success. It is a new global culture. The towers wish that the slums vanish. The reality is that slum life and culture still exists, possibly in larger numbers than ever before, but they are pushed to the fringes and are less visible. Early settlers feel dispossessed and a frustration borne out of a sense of entitlement rooted in economic, political, religious and cultural traditions that they are beginning to realize, no longer constitutes Mumbai. Will the early settlers, rich and poor begin to feel alienated from the city? Will their cries be heard? Will they leave? In the new Mumbai, you’re either looking up, or looking down. Which side you’re on, might determine your future. What will Mumbai gain, and lose as a city?

NOTES: All images are my own or protected by creative commons licensing. I would like to thank my colleagues at Convo, Dina Mehta and Stuart Henshall for the collective ideating, collaboration and valuable inputs. This Pecha Kucha was truly a team effort and would not have been possible without their contribution.