At a talk on the challenges of Climate Change by environmentalist Sunita Narain in Mumbai, an agitated citizen from the audience threw her off gear by demanding to know whether, in the midst of all the big issues , was there any hope to stop the eclipse of the city’s largest open space – the Mahalaxmi Race course.
Quickly recovering, Narain, who was focusing on the changing weather patterns and air pollution, urged that Mumbai’s large environmentally conscious people could put an alliance together to foil the government’s dark designs.
Easier said than done. It’s going to be a tough fight. The 211-acre racecourse administered by the Royal Western India Turf Club (RWITC), has existed since 1883 and is in the heart of the island city. One can imagine the hundreds of developers eyeing this mouth-watering expanse of land!The original lease expired in 2013, and the lessee, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)now wants it back. The plan is to allow horse-racing on 91 acres, while 120 acres will be reclaimed by the municipal corporation.
It all started with the BMC crudely talking of creating a ‘theme park’ and then an ‘amusement park’. Stung by the criticism, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has now said he wants to merge the racecourse land with the open spaces created along the Coastal Road along Worli to create something in line with New York’s Central Park or London’s Hyde Park.
What Mumbaikars fear is it all starts with promises of a ‘Central Park’. Then there will be demands to build supporting shops and toilets. And hey presto! Then there will be malls. For starters, the BMC wants to construct a tunnel which will link a 175-acre green zone along the coastal road at Worl to the Racecourse’s ‘amusement park’!
For now, everything is up in the air. There seems to be no coherent plan; and the state government has ominously told the Bombay High Court that it not bound by commitments, and the final call on what to do with the land will be taken by the Maharashtra Government. Picture abhibakihai!
Quality of life
Mumbai’s is at the bottom of the heap compared to other cities. On a Sunday, its stressed populace, craving to catch a breath of fresh air, can be seen mobbing popular points like the Gateway of India, Juhu Beach or the Byculla zoo. It is painful to watch the mela-like scenes where people yearning for space, find themselves drowning in a cacophony of crowds, horns and street vendors.
Quality of life cannot only be judged by the income a person earns. His access to recreation, public spaces and gardens are also key in the urban jungle. In this regard, Mumbai, over-built and concretized, offers the ordinary citizen, living out or 200 sq feet chawl or slum tenements, a quality of life little better than a dungeon.
It could have been otherwise. Mumbai has 16 kilometers of beaches that can offer an unbridled access to the Arabian sea. Unfortunately these are giving way to construction and disuse. Few know Mumbai has 4 rivers flowing through it – the Mithi, Oshiwara, Dahisar and Poisar, which have for all practical purposes have ‘disappeared’. If rejuvenated and cleaned and freed of encroachments, these can yield 81 kms of riverfront for walking and cycling. Mumbai’s creeks and mangroves can provide 34 kms of promenade. These have been mapped in a study called ‘Open Mumbai’ by city planner and architect P.K.Das.
The reality today, is Mumbai has probably the least open space among mega cities. Compared to London’s 33 percent open space, New York’s 27 percent and Singapore’s 40 percent, Mumbai’s open space is just 2.5 percent of the city’s land area. New Delhi’s forest and green areas cover 23 percent. Put it another way: London has 31.68 square meters of open space per person, New York 26.4 square meters. In comparison, Mumbai has just 1.58 square meters of open space per person.
Air and water
The tragic irony is the municipal corporation has now redefined ‘open spaces’. It has lumped areas such as terrace gardens, traffic islands and even the divider space between roads as ‘open spaces’ and lo behold, Mumbai now stands abreast with Singapore!
Now, coming back to Sunita Narain and the connection between open spaces and controlling air pollution. Speaking at the Darryl D’Monte memorial lecture in Mumbai last Saturday, Narain said the Yamuna was virtually dead for Delhi as its oxygen level, because of the waste it has saturated, is ‘zero’. The Mithi river in Mumbai too is but a winding stream of garbage.
“While the rich can tackle the problem of polluted water with bottled water, the same can’t be said of polluted air. Air is something that cannot be bottled. Rich and poor have to breathe the same air, and it is time we clean up,” she said.
The reason why saving the Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai is so important is that it is part of the green lungs of the city. As the debate revs up, lets recall British singer-song-writer Cat Stevens’ old lines:
I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?