Articles by Sabah Virani

Homes in Siddharth Nagar, a slum in Andheri West, might soon get water connections after a 9-year long struggle. Members of Pani Haq Samiti, an organisation fighting for universal access to water, held a ‘Jal adhikari satyagraha' on November 15th, after which the Assistant Commissioner of the K West ward promised to write to the Municipal Commissioner (MC) for the connection. The approval of Iqbal Chahal, the Municipal Commissioner, is imminent. 2 million people in Mumbai are denied a legal water connection. This dates back to a policy by the Maharashtra Urban Development Department (UDD) in 1996 that cut off…

55% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums, and is routinely excluded from urban planning. Dr Lalitha Kamath, an urban planning expert, has found that it is precisely by design that this structure is created and maintained. The State does not treat all residents of the city equally, and this is just another form of violence. Its instruments are the seemingly technical project and development plans. Lalitha is an associate professor at the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Her work includes Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban Governance (2013) and the forthcoming…

Located south of Mumbai is Panje, one of four neighbouring villages, Panje, Funde, Dongri and Bokadvira spanning 289 hectares of wetland. Every winter, 1,50,000 migratory birds of over 50 species return to roost here. Of them, the Indian skimmer was recently upgraded from vulnerable to endangered. To some, however, this land is prime location to acquire for constructions, due to its close proximity to all forms of transport, including the upcoming Navi Mumbai airport. In 2019, Reliance Industries (RIL) sub-leased 4000 acres, including Panje, from the Navi Mumbai Special Economic Zone (NMSEZ) to develop the area into a "Global Economic…

Mumbai is reported to have only 1.24 sqm open space per person. This includes gymkhanas, cemeteries, storm water drains, sewage treatment plans, etc, so even that paltry number is exaggerated. The areas coloured green in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)’s Development Plan 2034 to signify ‘open spaces’ are misleading, since many have buildings and slums in their place. According to a study done as part of the ‘Harita: The Green Footprint’ fellowship, the real figure is only around 1 sqm per person. The fellowship mapped and graded 500 parks in the city. The report concluded that only 18% of the…

The next election for Mumbai's civic body will be held in February 2022. The Brihanmumbai Mumbai Corporation (BMC) plans to conduct special drives to encourage registration in every ward, particularly targetting first time voters, women and sex workers between 13th and 28th November. The final list of voters will be published on 5 January, 2020. The local elections are to appoint corporators of the 24 wards in Mumbai, amounting to 236 seats. The corporator is the closest elected official to the citizen, responsible for overseeing the essential services in their area, allocating budgets and answering citizens’ grievances. In 2019, voter…

On an average in a year, around 2000 house break-ins and thefts (HBT) take place in Mumbai. A high concentration of these crimes occur in North Central Mumbai, according to a report on the state of law and order in Mumbai in 2020 by the Praja Foundation. Detection for these is below 50%. Cases have seen a 30% decrease since 2015, but reporting of these cases has also seen a drop. Here are the steps you can take to report a home burglary: Immediate Steps On discovering a burglary, the first step is to inform the police. This can be…

In May 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, 14,857 people died in Mumbai. This was over twice the number of deaths that occurred in May of the previous year. Official COVID-19 deaths, however, accounted for barely 15% of them - 1,075 out of 8,014. The number of deaths increased in comparison to 2019 till October 2020. Over the year, they added up to 20,719 more deaths over 2019’s toll, but only around half, 11,116, were officially due to COVID-19. The rest are unexplained. A spike in the number of deaths was seen again with the second wave…

Juned Shaikh’s Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor traces the history of Bombay, from the plague epidemic and rise of the textile mills to their dissolution. Assembled together from government archives, poetry, fiction, and translated Marxist literature, the book chronicles Dalit lives, identity, culture and politics in the city. The book challenges the notion that Bombay is devoid of caste, and instead, reveals that it is the orchestrating force facilitating the city’s industries, landscape and culture. Juned is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Below is an…

Everyday from 12 am to 3 pm, Mayank* works for Tokree, a grocery delivery app. He then switches to the ubiquitous black-and-orange Swiggy t-shirt, and from 3 pm to 12 am delivers food from restaurants to homes. “For every Tokree delivery, I get paid Rs 35. But with Swiggy, I only get a minimum of Rs 20 per trip,” he says. Mayank is one of the 3+ lakh strong workforce in the country suffering the brunt of low wages and poor working conditions in the food delivery and e-commerce industries. Unable to make ends meet, many of them are switching…

The Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) is due to be implemented by the end of this year. A joint effort of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the Government of Maharashtra and WRI India, the draft version will be showcased at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in November. The general public was invited to give  feedback and suggestions till September 20th. The plan is to work in two ways. The first - mitigation - will concentrate on the sectors of energy and buildings, sustainable mobility and waste management, chosen for their significant contribution to greenhouse…