A different shade for the city

MUMBAI: With a practically non-existent history of respiratory problems 71-year-old Shrimati Iya’s doctor was astonished at her persistent and chronic wheezing. At his wits’ ends he had to finally admit that it was a chronic case of asthma.

“In my 25 years of medical practice I am yet to see someone developing such an acute case of asthma so late in life,” says Dr Lohitaksha Suratkal of Lilavati Hospital, throwing up his hands in despair. But environmentalist Debi Goenka isn’t surprised one bit, and is actually wondering why it isn’t any worse.

“The green cover in Mumbai has depleted by almost 25 per cent in the last two years,” says Goenka, one of the founding members of the Bombay Environmental Action Group. “Every little patch of green that has disappeared has been taken over by ugly concrete blocks.”

Iya has stayed all her life in Chembur and has seen its once green avatar turn grey, first with the drab Soviet style of the 1970s and 80s and then the swanky high-rises of the new millennium.

“Even my doctor couldn’t find any reason other than pollution. The green Chembur that I knew has forever disappeared. And with it my health,” says Iya. “All the buildings that have replaced trees remind me of tombstones in a cemetery, standing tall and straight where trees once danced with life.”

For those who smell loony greens and nostalgic oldies here, there are more figures; sombre and sobering since they are from official records.

An internal Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) report Population Growth and Changing Landuse Pattern in Mumbai Metropolitan Region of India in possession of DNA paints a none too flattering picture of the future.

The proportion of green area to built-up area, for instance, in the western and eastern suburban areas of Mumbai in 1971 was 9.9 per cent.

In 1991 it reduced to 6.5 per cent and by 2011, the report, alarmingly, concludes that there will be no green area left. New favourite Thane also fares no better, with the 1971 figure of 6.8 per cent green area, reducing to 6.7 to 1991 and to a measly 2.7 per cent in 2011.

The report goes on: mangroves, which act as the city’s sponges and support an impressive ecosystem, have shrunk from 235 square kilometres in 1924 to less than 140 square kilometres in 2006.

Wetland and forest that used to cover 28 and 60 per cent respectively of the total land use of Mumbai in 1924 has come down to 16 and 26 per cent in 2006.

“From 1924 to 2006, the built up areas of the city increased fourfold from 12 to 58 per cent. As a result, six drainage basins in Mumbai are gradually choking due to construction of roads, buildings, and encroachment of slum areas,” says the report.

“By 2011 the green cover in the entire MMR (Island city, suburbs, Thane, Bassain, Bhiwandi, Kalyan, Panvel, Uran, Khalapur, Karjat) will be reduced by 40 per cent.”

For Shyam Asolekar the report only adds to his growing frustration at the complete lack of apathy shown by the institutions of the government.

The  professor and head, Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, IIT Powai, and one of the members of the famous Chitale Committee, which indicted the civic body for the 26/7 tragedy, is adamant that Mumbai is on the verge of an environmental disaster if immediate efforts are not made to regulate the city’s rapid and irreversible concretisation.

“I am disappointed with the government’s role. Not only are we choking up the city with concrete rubble, we are destroying the filters nature has given us. Most of the recommendations of (Chitale) Committee have not been implemented,” he says. “The floods and the decreasing green cover are inter-related.”

The rapidly denuding Mumbai has had an adverse effect on the health of its citizens. “There is at least a 25 per cent increase in respiratory problems, apart from a resurgence in diseases like malaria and leptospirosis, which were thought to be under regression a decade back,” says Dr Arun Halankar, Consultant Physician, KEM Hospital.

‘Mumbai only made it worse’

One cannot get a more crueller joke than this. Sixteen-year-old Siddhant Bhartee’s parents wanted the best treatment for their son who was suffering from occasional breathlessness since the age of eight.

“He came from Hyderabad and had to stay here for a couple of weeks. Instead of getting better his condition became worse, I had to put him on steroids at times. We probably have the best facilities to treat respiratory conditions in India, but the city only made it worse for him,” says Dr. Suratkal.

Today, Mumbai has the lowest ratio of open space in the world with less than three acres per 1000 people. Chetan D Narain, realty consultant and Managing Director, Narain Consultants, has an interesting perspective on why it is so.

“In 1985 Lokhandwala was sanctioned a crore square kms. For such a big locality, one garden was santioned. And on the back roads of Lokhandwala a joggers’ track was set up.

Today joggers inhale carbon monoxide and fumes from cars,” he says. “Urban planning is non-existent. It is a long process; almost like the movie Blood Diamond where the lady says ‘even a 1000 word article is not enough’.”

Narain’s view about the lack of urban planning is something environmentalist and editor of Sanctuary magazine Bittu Sahgal agrees with.

“It’s very true and so far city planners have consider planning to be a matter of aesthetics. What they will realise soon is that loss of green cover increases ambience temperature, which in turn causes a climate change leading to water logging and diseases. I hope somebody higher up reads this,” he says.

Mumbaikars sure are praying that the powerset not only reads it, but does something about it, and fast.