Resolve Mumbai’s contradictions

Last week in Mumbai, Czar, a Great Dane, bit three-year-old Sunny Grover on the face. The news made it to the front pages of all the local newspapers not for the size and beauty of the dog or the grievousness of the injury — both, as it happens, not being unworthy of comment — but because it brought to a head a long standing dispute over the use of a public space.

In this case, the site was the picture perfect Carter Road promenade in the salubrious sea-side suburb of Bandra, and the disputants: the Bandra West Residents’ Association and the (still-to-be-made-official) Bandra Dog Owners Association. Both had been at loggerheads over the use of the promenade, recently furbished by contributions from Shabana Azmi’s MP Fund and a corporate house. While the BWRA was keen to restrict the presence of pets to a specially created pet park, dog owners disagreed. Following the incident, allegations of secret conspiracies and doggie poop flew thick and fast. The issue is yet to be resolved.

If the controversy seems to belong to the land of Catmopolitan and silver pooper scoopers rather than a populous third world city then consider some other recent additions to this poor country’s commercial capital: Sleek flyovers, seven star hotels, wellness centres, glossy nightclubs, hawker free roads, sky travel, pay and use parks, glitzy malls and luxury condominiums. The ‘upmarketisation’ extends well beyond lifestyle.

Middle class citizens groups have sprung up in virtually every locality with a mandate to look into cleanliness, security and related issues for their area; some even bring out newsletters for members. The phenomenon has spilled over into the hitherto undesirable field of politics. The run up to last Sunday’s civic elections in the city, for instance, saw a heightened and unprecedented involvement on the part of the middle class. In my locality, shopkeepers took out a morcha to exhort ‘educated people’ to come out and vote. A group of middle class citizens in Thane canvassed for candidates and foiled a plan to rig booths by miscreants. And AGNI, a network committed to the cause of good governance fanned out all over the city holding meetings with candidates and working to update electoral rolls.

Citizens’ groups of a similar socio-economic profile have been active on other fronts too such as the fight against pollution. And next week the city will witness the annual Kala Ghoda fair, an explosion of art exhibitions, music performances and cultural exhibits all set in and around the busy triangle adjacent to the central business district that has come to be kno-wn as the art district of Mumbai.

Not everybody is happy with the bourgeois invasion of public spaces and public life, a phenomenon that has seen considerable activism on issues that could be perceived as being fairly elitist: the preservation of two rain trees, the ban on plastic, the clearance of hawkers from public spaces, the building of a flyover in the affluent Peddar Road area (residents including the revered Lata Mangeshkar objected) and restoring the facades of ancient buildings in the business district. Far more prominence has been given to these issues in recent times than even to basic civic problems such as water shortage, for instance. And yet, it is also true that the phenomenon, apart from drawing the notoriously apolitical elite into public life has revitalised city life and offered hope of preserving a certain degree of health and sanitation in rapidly deteriorating circumstances.

Which brings one to the latest controversy on the state of the city. Recently in a cover story, the newsmagazine, Outlook, pronounced Mumbai dead. Strained infrastructure, proliferating slums, unemployment, parochial tendencies and an increasingly hard life had caused the death of a great city, the weekly claimed. Mumbai existed, but the ‘‘liberal, economically vibrant, multicultural’’ metropolis was no more. The article provoked a strong reaction. Angry readers wrote in pooh-poohing the claims in the piece and listing the city’s merits. A prominent local tabloid insisted that the city was still very much alive and had no equal in terms of the opportunities it offered for social and economic advancement.

An old fight. And one that, apparently, needs must be fought every few years or so. I wonder why. Few would deny that Mumbai is a city with a special aura about it. It is a city where anybody can find a job, where women are safe, where different communities mingle, where rules are observed and where there is always a sense of life and fun. Few would also deny that all these attributes have come under severe attack over the last decade or more. Mumbai has always been a city of contradictions. Perhaps it is time to start resolving them.

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