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Both
sides of Mumbai’s coin
DID
you know that domestic consumers in Mumbai pay less for water than
in other places in the country? Apparently Mumbaikars pay Rs 3 per
1000 litres versus Rs 17 in Kerala, Rs 50 in Chennai and Rs 55 in
Andhra Pradesh. At 35 paise plus 50 per cent sewerage charges, Delhi
dips low while at a flat rate of Rs 65 a month, Bangalore is the
costliest of all.
Despite
the high price, accordingto K R Narayana Iyengar, chief engineer
(maintenance) of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board,
98 per cent of Bangloreans pay their water bills before the deadline,
which is also the highest recovery rate in the country.
I gleaned
this piece of information from the latest issue of the Bangalore
Weekly, the newspaper that keeps an eye on happenings in the garden
city. For a while, probably in the earlier part of the last decade,
the media had gone on and on about the new pubs opening in Bangalore,
the number of companies relocating there and how Bangalore would
soon emerge as a hip rival to Mumbai.
A quick
glance through the paper though reveals how misplaced that expectation
was. The gap between the two cities is still clear and wide. Bangalore
is a city where you can, even now, talk about the local library
and expect everybody to be familiar with it. Where a shop on the
prominent Brigade road is actually fined for littering and in three
days as many as sixty people are arrested for jaywalking (in case
you were wondering — jaywalkers are defined as people who ‘criss-cross
the road with scant regard to road rules’). The list of useful
telephone numbers includes one for ‘monkey catching’ and
‘snake catching’ respectively.
Which
is not to say that we in Mumbai do not have our own common experiences
and shared memories. Among the traditions that many Mumbaikars would
identify with the one I miss is the MRF rain day. Am I mistaken
or has the company dropped it from its advertising strategy? I no
longer see ads predicting a date for the onset of the monsoons.
They never did get it right but that was part of the fun —
counting the number of days by which it was off. Perhaps jokes aren’t
a great way to sell tyres but in our current plight (freak showers/early
monsoon?) itwould have given us something to talk about.
These
days though Mumbaikars have places (spaces?) to talk to each other.
On the radio the other day I heard youngsters sound off on pollution,
problems at airports and beggars.
On
the net the discussion is much livelier. On a city-focused bulletin
board I found messages going back and forth on the dirt (so bad
that it would put off ‘even a dog from the West’ to which
someone had responded that foreigners who visited Mumbai were dirty
hippies and a foreigner who identified himself as not a ‘hippie’
observed that people with beautiful homes in Mumbai thought nothing
of turning their backyards into rubbish dumps).
One
gentleman had a long complaint against the BEST. The staff, he claimed,
was rude, the service unpunctual and the air conditioned buses recently
launched were crowded even though no standees were supposed to be
permitted. His note provoked a flurry of angry responses. Someone
pointed out that public transportation in the city had been stretched
too far, it was time for private intervention. Someone else told
the complainant to stop cribbing and take state transport buses.
And a lady who had moved abroad from Mumbai felt citizens should
be getting up and doing something about the city’s problems
instead of merely grumbling.
Apart
from the more combative participants there were others who were
merely seeking information: on when the flyovers would be completed,
on accommodation in Malabar Hill, on sightseeing. A couple of more
exacting souls wanted to know about places for romantic dining and
places to buy sherwanis. Any suggestions?
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