A Walk on the Wild Side
Crowded, narrowing and, in some places, missing altogether. Suparna Thombare
and Divya Subramaniam report on how our footpaths are being driven into extinction
Kushroo Munshi loves his evening walks. Though there is bright sunlight, the
leafy banyan trees planted along the pavement offer enough shade to the
63-year-old Five Gardens resident. “There are vehicles, but they don’t get
in our way. Thanks to the pavements here, people can walk about and sit and
chat with their friends,” he says.
This delightful picture painted by Munshi is however fast facing extinction
in Mumbai’s scramble for space. It is the exception in a bustling city where
the norm is the scene at Chembur’s Sahakar Junction, where senior citizen R
Krishnan was knocked down by an auto rickshaw during his morning walk. Dealt
severe head injuries and bruises, Krishnan had been walking on the road,
because there was no space on the pavement.
Hawkers, car parks, building projects and poor planning are starving the
city of crucial pavement space, turning the city into a living hell for
pedestrians. “I have to walk on the road as the pavements are always full of
cars and two-wheelers,” says Shikha Sen, 63, a resident of Bandra
Reclamation, who ended up with a scraped knee because of a passing auto
rickshaw. “Things get so bad that I can’t even walk to the grocery store.”
As visions of turning Mumbai into Shanghai all look upward at skyscrapers
and flyovers, the pavements beneath us have been completely ignored. The
McKinsey report, Vision Mumbai, which outlines ways to make Mumbai a
world-class city, does not even mention pedestrians.
Mumbai’s pavements are not merely a space for pedestrians to walk on; they
enrich the life of the surrounding community. The pavement booksellers, who
have been selling second-hand books for decades, are a familiar and
comforting sight for the residents of King’s Circle. Ruia College students
have special memories too, formed on the ‘katta’ (the long low wall outside
Matunga Gymkhana) and the pavement opposite their college. “My father spent
all his college years hanging out on the sidewalks here,” laughs Rupa
Vishwanathan, a student of Ruia College. “This isn’t just a pavement for
us.”
While inhabitants of Matunga and Five Gardens are lucky to still have the
luxury of pavements, Bandra’s Hill Road is not as blessed. Fed up with the
stress he endures every time he walks down the road, resident Manav Khedkar
says, “Public bodies need to think like a pedestrian to find a solution.”
Too many of Mumbai’s pavements are too narrow, making pedestrianism almost
impossible. KV Krishna Rao of the Standing Technical Advisory Committee, who
has been appointed by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) for
advice on road construction, designing, maintenance and development, says
the minimum and average size for a pavement in the city is 1.5m and 2m,
respectively. “But this needs to be altered according to pedestrian volume
which is often neglected.”
The few areas that still have wide pavements are finding them gradually
being turned into parking lots. “Pavements in the city are being made for
cars not pedestrians,” says Prasad Shetty, executive-member, Collective
Research Initiatives Trust, a Mumbai-based research organisation. “Rather
than acting as a space for pedestrians, they are being used as a means to
keep people and other things off the roads.”
“Another big problem is shabby repair work. The BMC is supposed to follow
certain guidelines while doing repair work,” says Bhaskar Prabhu, an
activist who has also filed numerous RTI (right to information) applications
about the conditions of roads.
So what is it that hapless pedestrians and residents can do to save
pavements from being eaten up by the city? GR Vohra, secretary of the Flank
Road Citizens Forum in Matunga, says constant pressure on the authorities is
the key. “Relentless vigilance by residents is the reason the Five Gardens
area still has pavements,” he says. Neera Punj of CitiSpace, an NGO fighting
for the retention of spaces for pedestrians in the city, says, “It’s because
of citizens’ apathy that encroachments have become such a problem.” Adds
activist Bhaskar Prabhu, “Citizens should network with the Citizen’s Road
Committee, who can then check on the state of the pavements and question the
authorities.”
The authorities too seem to recognise the problem and the need for
solutions. Rao says that for Mumbai to become a truly liveable city, it
needs good pavements. “The Central government has said that all future
funding for road projects will depend on how pedestrian-friendly they are,
so MCGM’s future plans will have to consider the rights of pedestrians,” he
says.
Municipal commissioner Johny Joseph says, “We have allotted Rs25.9 crore
this year for the construction and improvement of footpaths in Greater
Mumbai.” According to additional commissioner Shrikant Singh, the BMC is
trying to map storm-water drains, pipelines and utility lines so that
pavements do not lie dug up indefinitely.
But until these plans fall into place, it appears that pedestrians in the
city just have to steel themselves for a walk on the wild side.