Mumbai Fire: Sins of Real Estate Robber Barons

A restaurant fire tragically killed 14 persons in the Kamala Mills Compound on 28 December causing much hang wringing and gnashing of teeth. Undoubtedly, fire safety regulations had been thrown out of the window in the popular restaurant, as in 34 others located in the tiny envelope of land in central Mumbai. And, undoubtedly, bureaucratic corruption and complicity was to blame. But the real story lies in how this area, once the hub of textile mills and workers’ colonies/chawls, came to symbolize the Maximum City’s takeover by a nexus of politicians, land mafia and real estate developers. And how textile mill owners – some of the best known industrialists of India – made super profits by selling off nearly 600 acres of prime land bypassing regulations to deploy at least two-thirds of it for public purposes like parks and workers’ housing.

In short, it is the story of real estate driven profit boom, seen in all parts of the country that grew out of the liberalized regime since the 1990s and thrived upon naked appropriation of public lands through pliant policy makers, violent enforcers and cash rich developers. It is the robber model of land development – robbing public land, ‘developing’ and selling it for super profits, and creating unsustainable densification for elite living or work. 

One example of this ‘boom’ can be seen in the Bombay Dyeing Compound.  Grade A office space in the area zoomed up from just 2.5 million sq. feet in 2005 to 13.5 million sq. feet in 2017, according to estimates by property consultants. Hundreds of service sector firms – banks, property dealers, financial services, related ancillaries, and restaurants, etc. – mushroomed in the spaces. The thousands who worked in these firms and shops mostly commuted from distant residential colonies.

It is not surprising that the ghastly Elphinstone Road tragedy on 29 September that killed 22 persons rushing with thousands others over a narrow railway foot over-bridge took place just minutes walking distance from the Bombay Dyeing complex. Those hurrying over the doomed over-bridge were mostly going to work in that and similar other compounds nearby.

Mumbai used to have 56 textile mills spread over 600 acres and employing about 2.5 lakh workers. Cotton textile manufacturing began winding down in the 1980s and although the workers fought valiantly for years, the sunset industry ultimately closed doors. What was to be done with the invaluable land?

Under pressure from workers unions and other citizens groups, including one led by Charles Correa the architect, the state govt. agreed to a formula of land use: one third low-cost housing to be developed by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), one third to be developed for civic amenities like schools, educational and cultural institutions, housing infrastructure and open spaces, by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), and the last third was reserved for development by the mill owner. Thus, two-thirds (about 400 acres) would have remained for use of people of Mumbai. However, the Development Control Rules (DCR) had another option – mill owners be allowed to redevelop the land and provide for regeneration of employment and revival of production. This is what the mill owners preferred as it gave them a hold over the land.

But in 2001, the then Congress govt. openly came out in favour of the land sharks by changing the DCR further and making it clear that the three way division applied only to free or open spaces not to built up area. In one stroke of the pen so to speak, almost 90% of the land went back to the mill owners.

After that there was no stopping the mill owners and the land mafia led by people like Arun Gawli and his nephew Sachin Ahir. The ganglords had earlier been used to violently throw out workers, burn down mills and workers’ chawls and pave the way for clearing the land. They now operated to build the new star spangled city of dreams, something international consultants like McKinsey had recommended in their report "Vision Mumbai - Transforming Mumbai into a world-class city" in 2003. In short order, multi-storeyed residential complexes, with swimming pools and luxury malls, and of course, huge service sector hubs, a la McKinsey, sprung up.

The army of service providers and employees was shunted out to peripheries or slums from where they commuted in local trains or buses. The beneficiaries of this transformation needed places of leisure and entertainment – hence the restaurants and pubs that fill up the area. And, in keeping with the Wild West spirit, building and fire regulations were flouted with impunity, in connivance with Municipal authorities largely controlled by Shiv Sena or lately, the BJP. Hence, Elphinstone Road and Kamala Mills.

This model of ‘development’ is not seen in Mumbai alone, although it is probably the most extreme. Delhi’s neighbor Gurgaon or Bangalore have similar neoliberal cancerous growths that displace people, suck out water and electricity from the public pool and live dangerously on the brink of collapse. Even the capital city’s land owner Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has given up its mandate of providing affordanle housing and shifted over to ‘commercialisation’ of land, that is, handing it over to private builders for commercial and elite use.

A TOI report pointed out that between 2002-03 and 2006-07, its spending on construction of flats and shops declined from about 5% to a measly 1% of its total annual expenditure. Its income from sale of land has shot up from about 7% to 18% of its total income. It spent about Rs 1,500 cr on construction of houses and shops, and raked in over Rs 2,289 crore from their sale. But, it bought up land for Rs 2,616 cr and netted over Rs 10,155 crore by selling it off to various private building agencies.

Both Mumbai and Delhi have master plans or development plans that now explicitly call for conversion of existing developed or undeveloped lands into commercial spaces through private developers. It is a model of ‘development’ that encapsulates revulsion towards the so called ‘economically weaker sections’ and their housing or other needs and mercilessly drives towards handover of public spaces to corporate life. Kamala Mills or Elphinstone Bridge are just collateral damage.