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Mumbai struggles to catch up with
Shanghai
By Siddharth
Srivastava
NEW DELHI - The one difference
between development - the way it is happening in
China and India - is the encumbrance of politics,
which becomes inevitable in a vibrant democracy
such as India. One of the most recent fallouts has
been what is termed here as the "Mumbai-Shanghai
plan" - an ambitious aim to convert India's
commercial capital into an approximation of
Shanghai as India tries to catch up with its giant
Asian neighbor that has made fervent economic
progress.
But as a reminder that matters
in India cannot progress the way they do in China,
given the different political structures in the
two countries, the plan has stuttered even before
it has begun - the problem being the exigencies of
power and vote-bank politics.
Mumbai is in
no way an approximation of what Shanghai is today.
Pollution, encroachment, traffic congestion and
unplanned urbanization have taken their toll on
India's commercial capital, but the worst has been
the sea of slum dwellers who have taken root in
Mumbai and who are encouraged and protected by
political parties of every hue as they provide a
huge catchment area for votes.
The rows
and rows of slums that adjoin Mumbai airport do
not provide a very palatable first glimpse of the
city for international travelers as their plane
heads in for landing. Many refer to Mumbai as a
"giant ghetto". On the other hand, Pudong airport
in Shanghai is as international as any can get,
with Mumbai airport a pale comparison; the Maglev
- Magnetic Levitation Train - is the fastest rail
system in the world, ferrying passengers across
Shanghai within minutes, compared to a two-hour
journey for similar distances in Mumbai, if one is
lucky not to be caught in a traffic jam; Shanghai
is a city of high rises and buildings, which have
yet to take firm root in Mumbai.
The
Shanghai-Mumbai bugle was first sounded by
reformist Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said
in October 2004 as a build-up to the state
elections: "When we talk of a resurgent Asia,
people think of the great changes that have come
about in Shanghai. I share this aspiration to
transform Mumbai in the next five years in such a
manner that people would forget about Shanghai and
Mumbai will become a talking point," the prime
minister said. "I have a dream that we can do it.
I believe we can become number one through
modernization, expansion and development and make
Mumbai the number one city in our country," he
added.
Post state elections, a
Congress-led government was formed, and in keeping
with their electoral promise, the Maharashtra
(with Mumbai the state capital) government
unveiled a US$6.5 billion plan to refurbish Mumbai
into an international city like Shanghai. The
national government of Delhi, headed by Manmohan,
offered $2 billion over the next five years to
turn the city around. The transformation plans
include a Mumbai-metro rail link; a trans-harbor
project; a ring railway plan and the Wadala truck
terminus project; removal of encroachments;
beautification of the international airport at
Mumbai; urban infrastructural development; and the
upgradation of King Edward Memorial Hospital.
The chief minister of Maharashtra,
Vilasrao Deshmukh, has been spearheading the plan,
urging New Delhi to earmark more funds. The one
ramification has been slum demolitions in Mumbai
that have left over 200,000 people displaced as
the government tries to free up extremely valuable
space for development. According to reports, over
50,000 shanties have been demolished in a few
weeks as the administration has bulldozed 200
acres (81 hectares) of illegally occupied
government land, with plans to eventually evacuate
2,000 hectares. As per the agreed formula, slums
that have taken seed after 1995 were to be
demolished, with the inhabitants, who occupy some
of the prime locations in Mumbai, relocated into
government-provided housing outside the precincts
of the city area. This step was also in agreement
with a government statute in 2002 that made slum
construction post-1995 a cognizable offense.
However, the big arm of politics and the
exigencies of retaining vote banks have caught up
with Deshmukh. In a clear reminder that
development and governance can often be at a
cross-roads with political compulsions, Congress
Party president Sonia Gandhi, who controls the
reigns of the Congress government, including the
prime minister, summoned Deshmukh to Delhi last
month for a dressing down. The final word was that
the slum demolitions were contrary to the Congress
Party's pro-poor image, thus the cutoff date for
slum demolition has been amended so that shanties
built after the year 2000 are destroyed - instead
of 1995 - which pretty much retains the status quo
of an overpopulated and congested Mumbai.
A much subdued Deshmukh, post his meeting
with Gandhi, said his government would focus on
the human side of development while carrying out
all-round development of the city to improve the
quality of life; he said the action program would
be for the rehabilitation of those slums which
were erected before 2000.
While it is true
that any development should incorporate a human
face, hard decisions sometimes need to be taken
when matters come to a cross. It is perhaps a
pitfall as well as a success of democracy that the
voice of the most common man or woman has to be
incorporated before hard economic decisions based
on data and statistics are taken. According to a
comment in The Hindustan Times: "Clearing a city
of slums is about economics. Shantytowns are
choking Mumbai's infrastructure development. But
it is also about politics. People lose homes and
they have votes. The way to take care of the
politics is to offer, as it were, a concrete proof
of the government's commitment to those affected
by demolition ... Mr Deshmukh was brave to start
the drive. He will be braver if he can start off,
again, differently."
It has become a
fashionable concept in government circles in New
Delhi to quote China's success as the model to
speed up the Indian economy. A recent note by the
Commerce Ministry said that India's foreign
investment policy is "no longer a major
constraint" and appears to call for "islands of
excellence with world class infrastructure" in the
port and electricity sectors, and a more "flexible
labor market". The Manmohan government has managed
to push through reform measures in airlines,
telecom and electricity regulation despite
opposition from the doctrinaire left parties, a
key coalition partner on whose support the
Congress government survives.
Indeed,
Manmohan's dream to turn Mumbai into Shanghai will
undoubtedly happen, but perhaps not at the pace it
took place in Shanghai. As is often mentioned
here, democracy means that one has to take the
staircase to economic success, not the elevator,
as in China. The sacrifice is worth it.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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