[Urbanstudy] DNA Editorial

[sebastian Rodrigues]

6th August 2005

Hello Shekhar!

Here is my response to your interesting anylysis on Bombay floods.
S.R.

ON RESEARCH INSTITUTES IN BOMBAY

Shekhar has hit the nail on head. Indeed there is deep rooted cancerous 
situation which has ultimately led to the floods in Bombay.  I am in 
particular agreement with him when he raises a daring figure at the top 
world famous research institutes in Bombay that remained mute in the face of 
the calamity which possibly they had forecasted in not supervised. I am 
reminded of similar criticism waged against the scientists by Ilya Prigogine 
in his book 'Order out of Chaos' that science has become cancerous growth on 
society. And there is remarkable absence of dialogue between Science and 
Society.  There is one man crusader at Goa University against this trend in 
the person of Dr. Bikram Dasgupta at the department of Chemistry, Goa 
University, Goa that has done tremendous work in this regard for the past 10 
years but it is yet to be recognised by the society.

It is indeed unfortunate that scientists and research institutes are 
increasingly pandering towards the dictatorial model of development with its 
muted consent or through some signatures in classified files.  In the case 
of floods in Panjim, the Capital of Goa, the National Institute of 
Oceanography vocally granted its approval after some drama that led 
ultimately to the massive and rapid changes in a manner that was totally 
totalitarian.  Of course the tragedy in scale is not comparable to the one 
in Bombay nor do I wish anything like that to happen to Panjim.

ON ENVIRONMENTALIST OF BOMBAY
Yes. Environmentalists do take the positions like the ones taken in case of 
Bombay.  In a sense I observed that this breed functions also with 
dictatorial style. Barring few exceptions they refrain from mixing up with 
people and tackling things jointly. Too often they come across as hostile to 
people in the process of 'defending environment'. I may site the latest 
example of the kind of positions taken by the Environment groups with regard 
to The Schedule Tribe and Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Bill, 
2005.  The historical script that Shekhar speaks about is a routine neglect. 
For many of them it is a conscious ideological option.  While others are 
victims of atomisation in Academics that promotes a viewpoint that 'I am a 
Botanist why should I bother about what happened in history?'  In this sense 
Shekhar's pointers are so deeply meaningful.

Disaster is not just to the landscape of Bombay. The disaster is in thoughts 
too. Just the way Shekhar has pointed out about the massive changes in the 
1890's so also we need the massive change not necessarily from the point of 
view of the elites but from the point of the underdogs of the society that 
contribute towards maintainance and prosperity of the city. Changes in 
thoughts and the intitutions specializing in thoughts are what is called 
for.


Sebastian Rodrigues
Centre for Latin American Studies,
Goa University,
Goa



>From: Shekhar Krishnan <shekhar at crit.org.in>
>To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, crit at lists.crit.org.in
>CC: Sundar Burra <sundarburra at hotmail.com>, Radhika Bordia 
><radhikab at ndtv.com>,Sheela Patel <mithila at bom3.vsnl.net.in>,Nina Martyris 
><nina.martyris at timesgroup.com>,Celine D’Cruz <celine at vsnl.com>,Rama 
>Bijapurkar <rama at bijapurkar.com>, Namita Devidayal 
><namu at hotmail.com>,Sreenivasan Jain <vasu at ndtv.com>,Naresh Fernandes 
><naresh at timeoutmumbai.net>
>Subject: [Urbanstudy] DNA Editorial
>Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:32:52 +0530
>
>Dear All:
>
>Here is a brief rant I did for the editorial page of DNA (Daily News  and 
>Analysis), the new Mumbai daily. It is meant to offend and  provoke, so 
>please send your comments.
>
>Best,
>
>
>S.K.
>______
>
>BOMBAY'S BLAME GAME
>by Shekhar Krishnan
>for DNA: Daily News and Analysis
>Thursday 4 August 2005
>
>Who is really to blame for the floods and chaos in Mumbai this week?  The 
>monsoon downpour last week was not strictly a natural disaster.  It was a 
>man-made crisis, and the public have spent the past week  searching for 
>explanations and solutions to this human disaster. The  answers provided 
>have ranged from the opportunistic to misinformed,  and almost all are 
>lacking in a longer term perspective on  institutions, particularly those 
>concerned with urban infrastructure  in Mumbai.
>
>The latest assertion, by environmentalists and activists opposed to  the 
>Bandra-Worli Sea Link, is that the overflowing of the polluted  Mithi River 
>can be solely blamed on reclamations for the Sea Link and  the Bandra-Kurla 
>Complex. While this is plausible, the claim is being  made without any 
>scientific or ecological evidence to substantiate  their arguments about 
>the effects of reclamation. But then where are  the real experts? In a city 
>which boasts some of the nation's finest  institutes of technology — 
>insular enclaves of global expertise which  rarely interact with the city's 
>public problems — very few academics  or qualified engineers are to be 
>found raising their voices.
>
>What of politicians and bureaucrats? Disaster relief is a golden  
>opportunity for political leaders to shore up their reputations, to  play 
>politics while appearing above it. Consider Rudy Giuliani's live  calls to 
>the media from the New York Mayor's Office hours after 9/11,  and his 
>constant and reassuring presence on television in the days  and weeks 
>afterwards, constantly answering questions and providing  information. 
>However in Mumbai, the average person's desire for  symbols and faces to 
>assuage their grief and address their complaints  were conspicuously 
>absent. On Torrential Tuesday, the BMC shut its  offices early, and its 
>engineers and officers swam home, while  politicians didn't emerge into the 
>limelight until days after the  calamity. So for lack of faces, the papers 
>featured two very  different men on their front pages, both tottering on 
>inflatable  boats amidst the waterlogged lanes of Kalina — Police 
>Commissioner  A.N. Roy and Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray — one on 
>evacuation,  the other on a rescue mission.
>
>With officials absent and information scant, the media let loose many  wild 
>myths in place of hard facts, such as that the city's drainage  system was 
>built by the British a hundred years ago and has not been  upgraded since. 
>This claim, repeated over and over on a national news  channel last week, 
>is baseless. The most serious flooding happened in  the suburbs — which 
>were either sparsely populated hinterlands or  unreclaimed swamps and scrub 
>in colonial times. Since suburbanisation  began in the late sixties, storm 
>water drains and infrastructure have  indeed been developed north of Bandra 
>and Sion — however clogged,  encroached, and dysfunctional they are today 
>(and to the credit of  Victorian engineering, the post-colonial Island 
>City, with its large  underground pipes, drained more efficiently than the 
>suburbs). Unable  to source information under the pressures of covering the 
>crisis, the  media often resorted to commonplace myths about the city 
>rather than  getting the story straight. For instance, not a single 
>newspaper or  channel has yet covered in detail the Brihanmumbai Storm 
>Water  Drainage Project (BRIMSTOWAD), a major infrastructure investment  
>which has been stalled for more than a decade because of the state's  
>inability to satisfy World Bank loan conditions.
>
>For the public of the city, the monsoon flooding has provided an  impetus 
>to action, which could result in much wider changes in  governance and our 
>everyday life. It is not often in history that a  natural or human disaster 
>prompts wide-ranging institutional reforms.  But often the most sweeping 
>changes happen almost by accident. The  plague epidemic in Bombay in the 
>1890s, which prompted an exodus of  half the city's population and the 
>demolition of most of the inner  city, gave birth to the Bombay Improvement 
>Trust (BIT) at the turn of  the century. The BIT acquired lands, built 
>roads, parcelled out  plots, and laid the foundations for land and housing 
>markets on which  the modern city operates. The origin of such wide-ranging 
>reforms,  and the political will to achieve them, was not in some lofty 
>vision  plan, or in the public spirit of Bombay's prominent citizens. The 
>BIT  originated in the paranoid fear of the city's elites of pestilence  
>and disease spreading to their bungalows from poorly ventilated and  
>overcrowded slums in the inner city. After ruthless demolitions of  
>tenements and seizure of lands in the name of public health, the BIT  
>planned and developed most of what we still recognise as the Island  City. 
>Crisis gave birth to change, and transformed the city in the  decades that 
>followed.
>
>Long-term responses to disasters are often improvised, unaware of the  
>historical script they may be following. In addition to the colonial  
>legacy of roads, pipes and sewers laid down by the British, we have  also 
>inherited and are replaying a century-old drama of authoritarian  responses 
>to urban crises initiated by the BIT. The political  responses also follow 
>a familiar script. Earlier this week, Fali  Nariman made an eloquent plea 
>in the Rajya Sabha for a constitutional  amendment to make Mumbai into a 
>Union Territory. This predictably  stirred the pot of urban-rural, 
>rich-poor, and English-Marathi  divisions in the house, quickly seized on 
>by Pramod Mahajan. Both of  these positions belong in history's dustbin. 
>Centralising authority  in a new Union Territory Government, which would 
>presumably replace  the present administration by the BMC and Maharashtra 
>Government,  will not bring about any serious changes.
>
>Better implementation of existing laws already on the books, of which  most 
>people remain unaware, is a more practical and effective  solution. The 
>Development Control Rules (DCR) which monitor and steer  local planning and 
>development are routinely violated and overriden  by builders and 
>politicians, through dereserving plots earmarked for  open space or 
>infrastructure. The abstract numbers game of floor  space indices (FSI) and 
>transferable development rights (TDR) which  regulate construction across 
>the city are calculated without regard  to local infrastructure, 
>environment, and densities.
>
>The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments on local self-governance  and 
>decentralisation have not been implemented in Mumbai or most  cities, and 
>municipal corporators and political parties have actively  prevented the 
>formation of non-party ward committees in the past five  years in Mumbai. 
>Ward committees would have been a much more  effective mechanism for 
>immediate relief during the floods, and a  persistent watchdog on the local 
>corporators and ward officers before  and after the disaster. The media 
>does not usually cover such longer- term issues of laws and institutions 
>that govern our everday lives.  Rather than pleading with government to 
>take more control of our  lives through creating a new City State or Union 
>Territory  bureaucracy, there are many more small but sweeping changes 
>which we  must ask for at the local level. Otherwise we are all sunk.
>
>
>SHEKHAR KRISHNAN is a social scientist and independent researcher who  
>lives and works between India and the U.S.A. He is an Executive  Member of 
>CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai and is  pursuing his 
>doctorate in the Program in Science, Technology and  Society at the 
>Masschusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge.
>
>_____
>
>Shekhar Krishnan
>9, Supriya, 2nd Floor
>Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4
>Dadar, Mumbai 400014
>India
>
>http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar
>
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