In Maximum City, People Wait for College and Speciality Hospital
As Netas Gear Up For The Fight Over BMC And Its Riches, TOI Focuses On
Issues That Are Uppermost On Voters’ Mind
Viju B | TNN
The two neighbouring boroughs of R North and R Central span the twin
suburbs of Dahisar and Borivli. Residents say they are privileged to be
living so close to nature – they have the biggest green belt in the city,
the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, as their neighbour – but add that they
would not have minded having a few urban amenities like speciality hospitals
and professional colleges.
The whole Borivli-Dahisar belt does not have a single speciality hospital.
So residents actually have to travel south, all the way to Bandra or
Andheri, if they are in need of good tertiary medical care.
The Bhagwati Municipal Hospital is there but it is an option that
most residents would not use if they had a choice. The reason: the hospital
has to cope with the rush of patients from areas like Mira Road, Vasai and
Virar.
The need for a better hospital was acutely felt one evening last year as
victim after bloodied victim of the serial blasts on trains last July poured
into the hospital. “We had to shift many of the injured to the nearby
private Karuna Hospital as there were not enough beds to accommodate all the
injured,” a senior medical officer of the hospital said on Tuesday.
Another need that most residents, especially those from the middle class
who have increasingly made this part of town their home, feel acutely is the
want of a professional college. “There is not a single good professional
college in the entire area,” Suman Shah says. His son, Praveen, studies
engineering and has to go all the way to Navi Mumbai to study.
All these problems, say residents, is ironic for an area where a square
foot of real estate has started commanding rates ranging between Rs 3000 and
Rs 4000. I C Colony, with its leafy streets and church feasts, is one of the
most-sought-after addresses but has now started feeling the pinch of
congestion. It now accommodates
more people than it can – resulting in water problems – and is trying to
grow bigger; a section of real estate brokers, for instance, has started
calling adjoining Kandarpada in Dahisar “I C Colony Extension”. “Many
old-timers have become real estate consultants and builders,”
property broker Subhas Mehta said. Roads, too, are in a bad shape,
showing their true state as soon as you get off arterial roads like Western
Express Highway; Kulupwadi residents, for instance, complain that they have
stopped hoping for a repair job on the road that leads to Devipada. Even
some of the arterial roads, too, are in a mess. “Roads in I C Colony and
Ashok Van are full of huge craters. We have been asking the local
corporators to repair them for quite some time,” an exasperated resident
said.
But the place is not without its charms. The more-than-100-year-old
Mandapeshwar Caves are here, so is the I C Church that local historians say
was built on the ruins of a 500-year-old Portuguese monastery.
There is also the 500-year-old Bavdevi Temple, made famous three decades
back when Amitabh Bachchan shot here for Manmohan Desai’s Suhaag. Head
priest Chandrakant Taru has seen the green, leafy neighbourhood
metamorphosise to a concrete jungle.
Gujartis and Maharashtrians form 80 per cent of the population but there
is a fair sprinkling of Goans, Malayalis and people from other parts of
south India and north India. The Goans were the earliest settlers here,
constructing quaint old villas in areas like I C Colony. “This place
actually felt like another Goa when I was a kid. People used to come from
faroff suburbs like Vasai and Palghar for the annual fair at the I C Church,”
D D Kosambi, a Goan who made Borivli his home, said.
The future, too, is bright, MLA Gopal Shetty says. There are plans in
place for a speciality hospital and a professional college and near Borivli
station will be widened.
WHAT PEOPLE WANT
The area lacks a speciality hospital that can provide good tertiary care,
say residents; Bhagwati Municipal Hospital has to take the load of patients
from as far as Virar
There is not a single professional college in the area
Arterial roads in I C Colony and Ashok Van are in a bad shape
The plans to develop the area around Borivli railway station remain on paper
The area lacks a big mall
WHAT A MESS: Narrow roads lead to choked traffic near Borivli station
(above); residents want a speciality hospital to supplement Borivli’s only
civic health-care set-up (right)