City: Mumbai

Blessings come in many forms. For the citizens of IC Colony, Borivali West, it is the chirping of birds, waking up to their melody, watching their daily routine and witnessing different species inhabiting amidst them. Before the lockdown, only crows, pigeons, and a few other birds were visible, but lockdown brought a welcome change. Lockdown restricted human movement and this encouraged birds to come out from their hidden spots, fly freely and enjoy the pollution-free environment. “Due to the lockdown, I could spend more time watching the birds around. It helped me remain calm. Bulbuls and mynahs frequently come to…

In August, two workers died when a suspended scaffolding they were standing on fell. They were at an under construction building in Vikhroli. Accidental falls from high rise buildings can happen not just during construction, but also during renovation and maintenance. When people work along the walls of buildings (like Spiderman) at heights of some 200 feet above the ground (for cleaning, painting, water proofing, netting or any other reason), it is expected that there would be something tied to them (such as a rope) and/ or something put below them (such as a net) that will save them if…

India’s richest Municipal Corporation was once a paradigm of a financially independent urban local body. The Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, mandates that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) never show a deficit budget. It never needed to, as a high inflow of cash through real estate premiums and octroi, a tax levied on the entry of goods in the city, was sufficient.  But in the past few years, the real estate sector has slowed and octroi is abolished. For its ₹33,441-crore budget of 2020-21, the municipal corporation had to dip into its Rs 78,669 crore reserves. These reserves or Fixed…

India's richest municipal corporation has found itself in a logjam. The pandemic has impaired its ability to meet expenses, even though its budget remains unspent year after year. In this series of articles, we will explore the Mumbai civic body’s financial might, the governance and procedural challenges in raising or spending money, and ways to finance expenditure due to the pandemic and the slowing economy. For the past few weeks, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has been reporting a severe cash crunch. It has slashed its capital expenditure by Rs 2,500 crore, imposed a 20% cut on its revenue expenditure, and…

Tanvi Desai, a 25-year-old resident of Borivali, who was protesting against Hathras gang rape admitted she was ignorant earlier when it came to caste based violence but, she can’t do that anymore. She was fuming with anger, along with a sense of responsibility to put an end to injustice against women and minorities in India. “We need to give it a platform. It is also for our future generations like my two-year-old niece to make our country safe for women,” she said. Wary of the media and their little no attention to social causes, Tanvi  doesn’t want the incident to…

In my 3rd floor apartment water gushed out of the bathroom floor drain, much like what happens on the roads on one of those manic Mumbai monsoon days. There surely was a blockage in the drain pipe somewhere, resulting in back flow. “Get the drain plunger,” shouted my wife, but little did we realise that a drain plunger would be an insignificant piece of equipment in the scheme of things. Quickly, my adrenaline-laden blood recalled an evening walk conversation with my friend who lived on the 19th floor. He had had a similar experience just the other day, and when…

In the past three months, two buildings collapsed in Mumbai. At least 12 people died. These buildings were deemed unsafe for habitation. We wrote here about why tenants refuse to vacate crumbling buildings.  About 300 persons died and 1146 injured in the seven years between 2013-19 in building collapses across the city, as per information received through RTI by activist Shakeel Sheikh.   On September 21, about 40 people died, including 18 children, due to a building collapse in the neighbouring town of Bhiwandi. Thereafter the Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation disconnected electricity of three dilapidated buildings to force residents to vacate those…

Any athlete who is used to training in a stadium environment would panic at the prospect of being stopped from running. So you can well imagine what has happened to the hundreds of amateur and professional athletes, budding children and veterans included, who used to train at the different stadiums across Mumbai, over the last 6 months. It’s been 6 months since stadiums were shut due to the corona virus outbreak, and with the daily rise in cases, there doesn’t seem to be any hope in sight for them. At age 64, I’m not the conventional athlete. Before lockdown, my…

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), like other places across the world, was forced to hit pause in late-March 2020 with the onset of COVID-19, putting a complete halt to life as it was. The lockdown caught people off-guard, with no food or income to fall back on for millions of the region’s poorest. With governmental support kicking in only weeks later and still leaving many people outside its ambit, uncertainty was high.  Looking back at those weeks, what stands out is how the city came together to support its own. While the pandemic unleashed a massive humanitarian crisis, it also…

Property prices in Mumbai—one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world—have remained constant since 2014. But home ownership has increased only marginally. Many aspire to buy homes in the city but they're forced to navigate the vast formal and informal rental market for housing. As high as 87% of respondents in a survey conducted by Noborker.com, a broker-free real estate portal, wanted to buy a house for end use, but prices, despite the stagnation, have remained forbidding. This is part two of the series where we try to explain why, despite the many unsold flats, prices don't…