The High Court has ordered a report to be submitted on the state of affairs of
the pavements on the road running parallel to the Bombay Docks.
First of all let met apologize for using names that people are familiar with.
The encroachments on Frere Road often cover the entire pavement. Part of the
road and the space between parked trucks is used as additional living space. A
good video film would help to illustrate the situation here.
To clear this area there is a need for
(a) A political will
(b) Public support
(c) Willingness of the squatters.
The political will always depends on the mood of the people, in general and the
voter in particular.
Where people in general keep aloof and voters in particular can be bought by
promises, politicians are free to waste tax payer’s money and use public
property for their own ends.
Example: People in my area have looked the other side when the government built
a bridge over a perfectly good road to settle squatters below. This is truly a
national shame when it happens on Nepean Sea Road.
The government may tell you the bridge was meant for the traffic that will
flow that way when Malabar Hill is tunneled and we go home satisfied with
the answer. Fine, but what about the squatters? They were there from the day the
bridge was built and have quite recently legally put a first floor
on their ground floor hutments. No questions, no comments, nothing mentioned in
our newspapers.
The political will takes direction from the public and as long as we show only
acceptance and indifference, the government will not be able to clear Dock Yard
Road pavements and keep them clear. The latter is as important as the
former. From time to time we see the government making a show to clear areas,
only to see them taken over again (presumably for a price).
So it boils down to the willingness of the squatters.
They alone can pressurize the government into a sensible act of rehabilitation.
Not possible? Well, wait a minute. There are vast areas of wasteland across the
harbor between Uran, Pen and Panvel. These areas are very close to Bombay and
can be accessed by an (almost)
all weather ferry from the docks that already
have a roll on facility both sides.
A roll-on facility means you can drive your vehicle
(or even a train) onto a ship, get yourself ferried across the waters, and drive
off on the other side. Such a facility can conveniently be used from Frere Road
to Nava Sheva, and from there to Panvel, Pen, New Bombay and the highways to
Pune and Goa and the vast areas of wasteland in between.
Why this roll-on facility was built and why it was discarded, after a short use,
even though it was pleaded that trucks going South could save a lot of time and
fuel if “the public” (other than ONGC employees) were allowed to use this
facility, has never been publicly discussed.
With a Court Order to clear slums from the pavement of Dockyard Road in
particular and the city in general, the Government of India together with the
City of Metropolitan Bombay might be motivated to do today what the German
government and the City of Berlin did 80 years ago, namely converting wasteland
outside city limits into affordable plots of land so that people who wish to
have their own house and garden in the suburbs can do so.
Let me tell you my story.
In the late nineteen-twenties, the city of Berlin developed wasteland on the
outskirts of Berlin between the villages of Rudow, Britz, Treptow and Gross and
Klein Ziethen. The villages remained untouched and the fields were retained as
they existed. The wasteland was surveyed and made into 1000 square meter
(quarter acre) plots. Metalled kutcha roads provided access to individual plots
interlinking each other every ten plots or so.
In the year I was born (1929) my father bought a quarter acre of land in Berlin-Rudow.
What he got was the use of the approach road and four corner stones. The rest
was up to him. The cost of fencing was shared with the neighbors. Dad built a
shack, dug a well, put in a hand-pump took a housing loan and started
construction. To save money by not paying rent in the city we moved into the
shack in the summer a few months before the house was completed. I loved the
freedom and remember a smoky kerosene lamp, Mother drawing water from a
hand-pump and I finding a nest full of eggs that a hen had hidden.
The upper storey of our modest two-family house was still being finished when we
moved in, which we did as soon as the house qualified for electric connection.
When my brother was born (1933) we lived on the ground of our own house.
My father made a small lawn and a few flower beds facing the road, planted fruit
trees at the back of the house, four forest trees at the side and a weeping
willow near the gate. For some years we had a stork’s nest on the roof. The top
floor was rented out.
In summer, there were cherries, and plums and apricots and apples and pears and
berries and rhubarb and strawberries and every kind of vegetable to be picked
from the garden. There was enough to preserve fruit and vegetables in tins and
glasses, to pickle cucumber and cabbage and store potatoes and carrots. There
were radishes and lettuce, and cauliflower and cabbage, and capsicum and
tomatoes and onions and lots of herbs.We even had an almond tree. It had lovely
pink flowers, but of course never gave fruits in the Berlin climate.
And of course there were flowers. The loveliest ones were the snow drops peeking
out of the earth when the snow started to melt. In my childhood a banana was a
very special treat – because that did not grow at home!
The garden certainly helped us get through the war, and the rent saved us when
our father (who was neither a Nazi nor a soldier but an officer in the fire
department) was taken to Russia as prisoner of war.
This is a solid German middle class story and much of the European wealth comes
from the house-and-garden culture.
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