TOI: Streets Paved with Gold to be for Pedestrians: Mumbai 07, 2008

   At the entrance to Sheikh Memon Street from the Jumma Masjid side, the BMC has ambitiously put up a banner that reads: “Same traders. Same office owners. Same Mumbaikars. But in a world class C Ward.’’ Alongside this text are two pictures—one of the existing bazaar and another sharply contrasting image of a European-looking stone-paved road lined with similar-looking one-storey stone buildings.

   Though the European dream seems distant, the Zaveri Bazaar area has already improved considerably. Gone are the yelling hawkers and the filth that collected around them. Not only footpaths, but even roads have been paved with red-and-yellow blocks.

   Over the past nine months the C-Ward’s licence department has removed 960 hawkers in sustained and repeated eviction drives. Every hawker had to be evicted 20 times before they left the place permanently, officials said. “Initially, they would return the moment we turned our backs,’’ said senior licence inspector Krishnaji Patil. Even the famous Khau Galli (Agiary Lanes 1 and 2) is startlingly devoid of any hawkers.

   “Foreigners, rich businessmen and mid-level traders used to rub shoulders there, eating all kinds of food. But the place was filthy as hell,’’ Patil said.

   However, the buildings are still lined haphazardly, while some high-profile jewellery stores jut out onto the road. Uniformity is a concept not known to the area. 

   Assistant municipal commissioner of C-ward Sharad Dalvi will try to bring a semblance of consistency to the chaotic arrangement of buildings. “All shopkeepers will have to paint their buildings in a similar colour throughout. We are looking at ways to organise the lining of the road,’’ said Dalvi.

   The bullion association will be providing lamp posts and street furniture. The lamp posts, however, seem like an eyesore. It’s an ordinary bulb put on a garish yellow pole erected every few feet. A board on each pole will carry the sponsor’s name, which might lead to the place being cluttered with yellow poles. 

   “This is what happens if there is no design input,’’ said Vidyadhar K Phatak, urban planning and management consultant. “Such a project should be designed right at the planning level for the correct street lighting, furniture and kind of trees to be planted. The colour, the placement and the distance should all work out on paper first. Once the plan is on paper, one can look for sponsors. Otherwise, it will look completely hotch-potch,’’ said the former chief planner of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority.

   The shopkeepers are happy with the plans, though. Ramesh Pahlajani, of Bherumal Shamandas jewellery store, said shop owners had been asking for such a plan for a long time. “The most difficult job of removing hawkers is over. So everything else should fall into place,’’ he hoped. He won’t be affected with the daytime ban on handcart pullers as jewellery is never transported by them. 

   Currently, the cars of shopkeepers are kept in the space left vacant by the hawkers. However, a parking tower coming up behind Mumbadevi Temple in nearby Kalbadevi will accommodate around 300 cars, freeing the roads for street furniture. The pedestrian plaza should be ready in about four months.

BUSINESS INTERRUPTED BY BOMBS

1.    The area called Zaveri Bazaar, with its main spine Sheikh Memon Street, became a hub when jewellers started trading there in the late 19th century after Crawford Market was built. There are more than 50 jewellery stores there, including big names like Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri, which was set up in 1864.
2.  The thriving business area has invited terror attacks. It was one of the spots to be bombed in March 1993, when 13 blasts shook Mumbai. In 2003, a bomb placed in a taxi exploded in the area as part of a twin blasts attack, the other bomb going off at Gateway.
3.   The temple of Goddess Mumbadevi, from which Mumbai gets its name, is near Zaveri Bazaar. TNN

NO CARS ALLOWED

1. BMC will declare Zaveri Bazaar a Pedestrian Plaza

2. Plaza is expected to open within 4 months

3. No hawkers will be allowed on 8 roads in the area, including the main Sheikh Memon Street

4. No cars, motorbikes, taxis, cycles, handcarts or buses will be allowed on those roads from 9am to 9pm

5. 960 hawkers have already been driven out

6. Buildings will get uniform paint

7. Street furniture and lamp posts will be installed

8. 300-car parking tower will come up in nearby Kalbadevi