The Supreme Court’s recent verdict on the sale of mill lands in Mumbai has implications for the future development of all cities in India, and the redevelopment of derelict industrial lands in other cities
Why should a Supreme Court verdict removing the legal stay on the sale of land belonging to cotton mills in Mumbai be at all relevant to other cities? Mumbai is unique in that there have never been such a large number of workers -- 250,000 at the peak, in the 1970s -- in one industry in a single city. It is for this reason that Mumbai was called (along with Ahmedabad) the Manchester of the East.
As it happens, the court verdict is important because it redefines many important facets of the environment, which will set a precedent in cases elsewhere. This concerns not only the potential redevelopment of derelict industrial land in other cities -- like the Binny’s factory in Bangalore and Ahmedabad’s cotton mills -- but the entire concept of what constitutes environmental concerns itself. These industrial graveyards occupy prime real estate in city centres, and their development is crucial to future urban growth.
The court genuflects before Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution regarding the fundamental right to life and to a ‘decent’ environment. However, it then elaborates the scope of a public interest litigation in the case of mill land. It asserts that it had to ascertain whether public interest was being served and had to strike a balance between several competing interests. These were “consideration of ecology,” the rights of workers, the claims of public sector institutions, including banks, owners’ rights, rehabilitation of sick industries and schemes approved by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) and, finally, “advancement of public interest in general and not only a particular aspect of public interest”.
It goes on to state: “Public interest litigations, thus, have been entertained more frequently where a question of violation of the provisions of the statutes governing the environment or ecology of the country has been brought to its notice in the matter of depletion of forest areas and/ or when the executive while exercising its administrative functions or making subordinate legislations has interfered with the ecological balance with impunity. The High Court of Bombay, therefore, cannot be faulted for entertaining the writ petition as a public interest litigation.”
In 1991, the Maharashtra government introduced the Development Control Rules (DCR), under which a mill owner was permitted to sell or redevelop his land, provided one-third was surrendered to the municipal corporation for public amenities and another third to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) for low-cost housing. The remaining third was the owner’s. Ten years later, it surreptitiously amended this clause to make it apply only to vacant land -- as distinct from the entire footprint of the mill. Since mills, characteristically, occupy a huge footprint -- each worker has about 32 sq metres of space in a shed -- the amendment fraudulently deprived Mumbai of several hundred acres of space at one stroke.
As the apex court notes: “DCR 58 was made to revive and resurrect neighbourhoods, foster development, regenerate lands which had become sterile, encourage the shifting of textile mills (thereby reducing the attendant strain that industrial activity places on civil amenities) and pay off chronic arrears and dues of workers, banks, institutions, statutory dues, etc. In its operation and implementation new DCR 58 would also unlock large real estate and make it available to residents.”
The public interest implicit in this amendment is apparent: it begins with the need to revive neighbourhoods. The entire Girangaon, or mill district, comprising 600 valuable acres or 280 hectares in mid-town Mumbai, is in decline with the closure of the mills since the late-1970s. The final blow was the 18-month-long strike in 1982-83, led by Dr Datta Samant, which was the world’s longest strike involving the largest number of workers. Dr Samant himself was murdered over another union dispute, the following decade. Many workers, rendered jobless, have sold their chawls and migrated to the northern suburbs where they eke out a livelihood as casual labourers.
While questioning whether the 2001 amendment substantially reduces the amount of land available to the public, the court has taken a very restricted view of what constitutes the “environment” in this case. By its own calculation, under the 1991 rules, Matulya Mill (owned by the Mafatlals), which was the first to adopt the original formula, would have surrendered 5,641 sq m for open space and 4,616 sq m to MHADA. Under the revised rules, the court shows that these areas would be 474 sq m and 388 sq m respectively. In the case of Modern Mills, the corresponding figures are 8,626 versus 1,163 sq m as open space, and 7,058 sq m versus nothing for housing.
The court has resorted to some sleight of hand of its own in lumping what it terms “private greens” with what is to be surrendered to the public, and thus deciding that the total open area remains a third of the total land available. As it says: “From what has thus been noticed hereinbefore, it is difficult to agree with the contentions of the writ petitioners that there had been substantial reduction in green area… It is contended on behalf of the Appellants that out of the total area of 2,430,000 sq m, the lands which would be available to MCGM as public green is 11.53% and the private greens works out to be 20.87%, thus, totalling 32.43%.” How this private space within office and residential complexes can be lumped together with public space defeats logic. By their very nature, these private areas are not open to the public.
It is worth recalling a precedent of a kind in Mumbai. When the first mall, Crossroads, opened several years ago at Mahalaxmi, there was a huge rush due to the sheer novelty of the concept. However, as Indians are characteristically astute shoppers and are more conscious -- for the most part! -- of price rather than brands, they visited the gleaming new attraction but did not buy very much. The owners wanted to deter crowds from visiting the complex and tried to restrict entry to those who owned a credit card or a mobile phone. In other words, it wanted to create two kinds of citizens: ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. As might be expected, there was a furore and the plan had to be shelved. However, not many are aware that the huge atrium within the complex is actually public space (when the building plans were passed) and by no stretch of the imagination could it be appropriated in this manner.
In the mill case, the court was not swayed by public interest when it concluded: “From what has been noticed hereinbefore, it is evident that the purported reduction in green area compared to the pre-1991 situation would not create much difference so far as maintenance of the ecological balance is concerned by giving effect to 2001 regulations vis-à-vis the 1991 regulations.” It is this extremely narrow and legalistic definition of the term “environment” that causes concern for future cases and could set a precedent.
I attended public hearings on the mill proposals that the central Ministry of Environment and Forests imposed last year -- thanks only to the scrutiny these cases came under after the Bombay Environmental Action Group filed a writ petition on the mill land and obtained a stay on development in the high court. The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, which conducted the hearings, also took an excessively restrictive view of the environment, and the developers referred glowingly to how they were planting trees and grass within their complexes, recycling water, and taking other largely cosmetic measures. The environment can never be treated purely in such aesthetic terms; crucially, it involves the rights of the public to access resources at every stage.
The apex court argued: “We do not furthermore agree with the approach of the high court in interpreting the aforementioned provisions having regard to certain other factors, namely, deluge in Bombay in the year 2005 as also the requirements of the entire population of Bombay from environmental aspect.” Is the deluge of July 26 last year so irrelevant to the mill land case? The 280 hectares that mills occupy in central Mumbai are already seeing a massive makeover: malls, high-rises and the like. The National Textile Corporation, which owned 25 of Mumbai’s 54 mills, is already thinking of building an international convention centre at its 12-acre seaside property known as India United Mills No 6 (once the property of the famous Sassoon family).
This is not, as may be imagined, out of some overwhelming desire to make Mumbai catch up with Shanghai or other cities of its ilk; such complexes have a floor space index (FSI, the ratio of buildable area to footprint) of 2.7, twice the prevailing ratio. The NTC argues quite unabashedly that this will enable it to put up a 75-storey tower there. What’s more, if it loads FSI from its other mills on to this more valuable site, the sky is the limit -- permitting a staggering 120 floors!
But what about the supporting infrastructure? The mill is located on Cadell Road, which is the main north-south transport axis. Any addition of cars will bring traffic to a grinding halt. Girangaon lacks any infrastructure worth the name -- whether by way of roads, pedestrian connections to railway stations, drainage, or open spaces. There is an important factor also to be borne in mind: the island city of Mumbai will shortly connect to the mainland by a trans-harbour sea link starting from Sewri, cheek-by-jowl with the mills. And there are 1,800 acres of adjoining land belonging to the Mumbai Port Trust which are also derelict and also open for redevelopment.
Unless the authorities take a holistic view and plan for the entire mill and port area, Mumbai is in for a disaster that could make 26/7 look like a picnic. The island city does not afford any easy escapes because of the prevailing north-south traffic. If there are floods or riots in this area bristling with skyscrapers, there will be no escape for thousands of people. The city’s growth cannot be dictated, as it now is, by builders.
While Greater Mumbai already has 14 million inhabitants, if one takes the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which is 10 times larger, we are talking about nearly 29 million by 2020 -- the second biggest urban agglomeration in the world. This is why what happens in Mumbai is of significance not only to the rest of India but to all developing countries. One must therefore take strong exception to the Supreme Court’s edict that “the requirements of the entire population of Bombay from environmental aspect” was of no consequence when it decided on the future of the mill lands.
There are two other aspects of the case that have been brought to light by Shailesh Gandhi, a right to information activist. It was he who, exactly a year ago, caused a stir by citing evidence, culled by resorting to the RTI law, that the leases of several mills had expired; the documents of some in fact were not even traceable. In any case, there has been a change in land use from running mills to running malls and other modern amenities. The owners were given land at subsidised rates towards the middle of the 19th century, and early in the 20th, to create jobs in Mumbai. How has the municipal corporation permitted this change in use? Gandhi has also pointed out how mill owners (as well as owners of other old industrial sites) pay pitiably small lease rents a year -- amounting to a few paise per sq m per year, on average. For a state that is around Rs 110,000 crore in the red, such munificence is strange to say the least.
Gandhi has now drawn attention to another lacuna. As the Supreme Court verdict itself repeatedly emphasises, the DRC only permits sale or redevelopment of mill land if, under the BIFR’s sanction, the proceeds are used to rehabilitate a mill. The NTC is at least observing the letter of this law, if not the spirit. The private mills have done nothing of the sort; they have been made over irretrievably. This charade is relevant to other derelict industrial sites elsewhere in the country, which will be up for development. The verdict has not taken all these considerations into account, which impact urban growth and concern natural justice.
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Why should a Supreme Court verdict removing the legal stay on the sale of land belonging to cotton mills in Mumbai be at all relevant to other cities? Mumbai is unique in that there have never been such a large number of workers -- 250,000 at the peak, in the 1970s -- in one industry in a single city. It is for this reason that Mumbai was called (along with Ahmedabad) the Manchester of the East.
As it happens, the court verdict is important because it redefines many important facets of the environment, which will set a precedent in cases elsewhere. This concerns not only the potential redevelopment of derelict industrial land in other cities -- like the Binny’s factory in Bangalore and Ahmedabad’s cotton mills -- but the entire concept of what constitutes environmental concerns itself. These industrial graveyards occupy prime real estate in city centres, and their development is crucial to future urban growth.
The court genuflects before Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution regarding the fundamental right to life and to a ‘decent’ environment. However, it then elaborates the scope of a public interest litigation in the case of mill land. It asserts that it had to ascertain whether public interest was being served and had to strike a balance between several competing interests. These were “consideration of ecology,” the rights of workers, the claims of public sector institutions, including banks, owners’ rights, rehabilitation of sick industries and schemes approved by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) and, finally, “advancement of public interest in general and not only a particular aspect of public interest”.
It goes on to state: “Public interest litigations, thus, have been entertained more frequently where a question of violation of the provisions of the statutes governing the environment or ecology of the country has been brought to its notice in the matter of depletion of forest areas and/ or when the executive while exercising its administrative functions or making subordinate legislations has interfered with the ecological balance with impunity. The High Court of Bombay, therefore, cannot be faulted for entertaining the writ petition as a public interest litigation.”
In 1991, the Maharashtra government introduced the Development Control Rules (DCR), under which a mill owner was permitted to sell or redevelop his land, provided one-third was surrendered to the municipal corporation for public amenities and another third to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) for low-cost housing. The remaining third was the owner’s. Ten years later, it surreptitiously amended this clause to make it apply only to vacant land -- as distinct from the entire footprint of the mill. Since mills, characteristically, occupy a huge footprint -- each worker has about 32 sq metres of space in a shed -- the amendment fraudulently deprived Mumbai of several hundred acres of space at one stroke.
As the apex court notes: “DCR 58 was made to revive and resurrect neighbourhoods, foster development, regenerate lands which had become sterile, encourage the shifting of textile mills (thereby reducing the attendant strain that industrial activity places on civil amenities) and pay off chronic arrears and dues of workers, banks, institutions, statutory dues, etc. In its operation and implementation new DCR 58 would also unlock large real estate and make it available to residents.”
The public interest implicit in this amendment is apparent: it begins with the need to revive neighbourhoods. The entire Girangaon, or mill district, comprising 600 valuable acres or 280 hectares in mid-town Mumbai, is in decline with the closure of the mills since the late-1970s. The final blow was the 18-month-long strike in 1982-83, led by Dr Datta Samant, which was the world’s longest strike involving the largest number of workers. Dr Samant himself was murdered over another union dispute, the following decade. Many workers, rendered jobless, have sold their chawls and migrated to the northern suburbs where they eke out a livelihood as casual labourers.
While questioning whether the 2001 amendment substantially reduces the amount of land available to the public, the court has taken a very restricted view of what constitutes the “environment” in this case. By its own calculation, under the 1991 rules, Matulya Mill (owned by the Mafatlals), which was the first to adopt the original formula, would have surrendered 5,641 sq m for open space and 4,616 sq m to MHADA. Under the revised rules, the court shows that these areas would be 474 sq m and 388 sq m respectively. In the case of Modern Mills, the corresponding figures are 8,626 versus 1,163 sq m as open space, and 7,058 sq m versus nothing for housing.
The court has resorted to some sleight of hand of its own in lumping what it terms “private greens” with what is to be surrendered to the public, and thus deciding that the total open area remains a third of the total land available. As it says: “From what has thus been noticed hereinbefore, it is difficult to agree with the contentions of the writ petitioners that there had been substantial reduction in green area… It is contended on behalf of the Appellants that out of the total area of 2,430,000 sq m, the lands which would be available to MCGM as public green is 11.53% and the private greens works out to be 20.87%, thus, totalling 32.43%.” How this private space within office and residential complexes can be lumped together with public space defeats logic. By their very nature, these private areas are not open to the public.
It is worth recalling a precedent of a kind in Mumbai. When the first mall, Crossroads, opened several years ago at Mahalaxmi, there was a huge rush due to the sheer novelty of the concept. However, as Indians are characteristically astute shoppers and are more conscious -- for the most part! -- of price rather than brands, they visited the gleaming new attraction but did not buy very much. The owners wanted to deter crowds from visiting the complex and tried to restrict entry to those who owned a credit card or a mobile phone. In other words, it wanted to create two kinds of citizens: ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. As might be expected, there was a furore and the plan had to be shelved. However, not many are aware that the huge atrium within the complex is actually public space (when the building plans were passed) and by no stretch of the imagination could it be appropriated in this manner.
In the mill case, the court was not swayed by public interest when it concluded: “From what has been noticed hereinbefore, it is evident that the purported reduction in green area compared to the pre-1991 situation would not create much difference so far as maintenance of the ecological balance is concerned by giving effect to 2001 regulations vis-à-vis the 1991 regulations.” It is this extremely narrow and legalistic definition of the term “environment” that causes concern for future cases and could set a precedent.
I attended public hearings on the mill proposals that the central Ministry of Environment and Forests imposed last year -- thanks only to the scrutiny these cases came under after the Bombay Environmental Action Group filed a writ petition on the mill land and obtained a stay on development in the high court. The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, which conducted the hearings, also took an excessively restrictive view of the environment, and the developers referred glowingly to how they were planting trees and grass within their complexes, recycling water, and taking other largely cosmetic measures. The environment can never be treated purely in such aesthetic terms; crucially, it involves the rights of the public to access resources at every stage.
The apex court argued: “We do not furthermore agree with the approach of the high court in interpreting the aforementioned provisions having regard to certain other factors, namely, deluge in Bombay in the year 2005 as also the requirements of the entire population of Bombay from environmental aspect.” Is the deluge of July 26 last year so irrelevant to the mill land case? The 280 hectares that mills occupy in central Mumbai are already seeing a massive makeover: malls, high-rises and the like. The National Textile Corporation, which owned 25 of Mumbai’s 54 mills, is already thinking of building an international convention centre at its 12-acre seaside property known as India United Mills No 6 (once the property of the famous Sassoon family).
This is not, as may be imagined, out of some overwhelming desire to make Mumbai catch up with Shanghai or other cities of its ilk; such complexes have a floor space index (FSI, the ratio of buildable area to footprint) of 2.7, twice the prevailing ratio. The NTC argues quite unabashedly that this will enable it to put up a 75-storey tower there. What’s more, if it loads FSI from its other mills on to this more valuable site, the sky is the limit -- permitting a staggering 120 floors!
But what about the supporting infrastructure? The mill is located on Cadell Road, which is the main north-south transport axis. Any addition of cars will bring traffic to a grinding halt. Girangaon lacks any infrastructure worth the name -- whether by way of roads, pedestrian connections to railway stations, drainage, or open spaces. There is an important factor also to be borne in mind: the island city of Mumbai will shortly connect to the mainland by a trans-harbour sea link starting from Sewri, cheek-by-jowl with the mills. And there are 1,800 acres of adjoining land belonging to the Mumbai Port Trust which are also derelict and also open for redevelopment.
Unless the authorities take a holistic view and plan for the entire mill and port area, Mumbai is in for a disaster that could make 26/7 look like a picnic. The island city does not afford any easy escapes because of the prevailing north-south traffic. If there are floods or riots in this area bristling with skyscrapers, there will be no escape for thousands of people. The city’s growth cannot be dictated, as it now is, by builders.
While Greater Mumbai already has 14 million inhabitants, if one takes the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which is 10 times larger, we are talking about nearly 29 million by 2020 -- the second biggest urban agglomeration in the world. This is why what happens in Mumbai is of significance not only to the rest of India but to all developing countries. One must therefore take strong exception to the Supreme Court’s edict that “the requirements of the entire population of Bombay from environmental aspect” was of no consequence when it decided on the future of the mill lands.
There are two other aspects of the case that have been brought to light by Shailesh Gandhi, a right to information activist. It was he who, exactly a year ago, caused a stir by citing evidence, culled by resorting to the RTI law, that the leases of several mills had expired; the documents of some in fact were not even traceable. In any case, there has been a change in land use from running mills to running malls and other modern amenities. The owners were given land at subsidised rates towards the middle of the 19th century, and early in the 20th, to create jobs in Mumbai. How has the municipal corporation permitted this change in use? Gandhi has also pointed out how mill owners (as well as owners of other old industrial sites) pay pitiably small lease rents a year -- amounting to a few paise per sq m per year, on average. For a state that is around Rs 110,000 crore in the red, such munificence is strange to say the least.
Gandhi has now drawn attention to another lacuna. As the Supreme Court verdict itself repeatedly emphasises, the DRC only permits sale or redevelopment of mill land if, under the BIFR’s sanction, the proceeds are used to rehabilitate a mill. The NTC is at least observing the letter of this law, if not the spirit. The private mills have done nothing of the sort; they have been made over irretrievably. This charade is relevant to other derelict industrial sites elsewhere in the country, which will be up for development. The verdict has not taken all these considerations into account, which impact urban growth and concern natural justice.
InfoChange News & Features
1 comment:
brilliant ! what a superb post ! I've run a series on this issue on my blog (http://doesmumbaimatter.blogspot.com) - do visit. Thank you, wish I'd come here earlier.
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