Marine Drive Makeover

Marine Drive is Mumbai’s best known landmark. It has its own natural beauty. That is why there is need to pause and ask whether it is necessary to spend crores of rupees to dress it up further. A beautiful woman would look ludicrous if she overdresses, wears too much make up and too many ornaments.

The most worrying part about the Marine Drive project seems to be the proposal to put high concrete barriers in the middle of the road which would actually obstruct the view of the sea. So instead of enhancing natural beauty we might end up spending money to ruin it. Fortunately, a committee including the government’s secretary for special projects Sanjay Ubale has urged caution in this regard. Architects can and do go wrong, especially the ones who are egoistic and who produce some weird structures just to be different and which are lapped up by a gullible public. The twin towers destroyed by terrorists in New York had come in for severe criticism for their lack of aesthetics. Earlier this month a noted architect Santiago Calatrava has come in for criticism for his designing of a foot bridge in Bilbao, the tourist center in Spain most famous now for its Guggenheim museum designed by architect Frank Gehry. Many people fall on the bridge because the surface for walking is made of glass which becomes very slippery in rain. Calatrava is now angry because he thinks that a walkway added to the bridge by Japanese architect Asata Isozaki has mutilated his work and he has demanded a huge monetary compensation.

Besides, instead of grandiose schemes why do the authorities not address basic problems in the Marine Drive area alone, not to speak of most other areas which are unprivileged. On the other side of the promenade, it is a torture to climb and get down from freshly built high footpaths. A little further there is so much squalor outside the Fort Campus of Mumbai university, currently celebrating its 150 years. This underscores the point that the changes being made are merely cosmetic. The priority has to be for maintenance, repairs and cleanliness, as expert have pointed out.

The much-talked about art-deco arc of buildings at Marine Drive is fine but the British period architect Claude Batley raised an interesting point about it. He said these tall buildings blocked the sea breeze for houses of lower height in less privileged areas. That is a logical approach but it would not be relished by residents of seaside buildings sprouting all over Mumbai with the tremendous inflow of money. Amidst these art deco buildings where does one put the big building of luxury apartments which has come up in the complex of the National Centre for Performing Arts ? It looks so prosaic in contrast even to the Air India building.. Land for the NCPA was given free by the Maharashtra government for arts promotion. But the NCPA premises are now being rented out for parties. And the NCPA is not even easily accessible to common people, not only because of its location at one end of the city but also its ambience.

The sad part is that barring a few stretches in privileged south Mumbai, more than ninety per cent of the metropolis is in an abysmal state. It does not require much money for its improvement. What we need is a little dedication, cleanliness and yes compassion. No intelligent foreigner will be impressed by projects like Marine Drive and Gateway of India. Just a glance at our child mortality ratio, school drop out rate, people’s food intake would tell them the real story.

The sad truth is that ordinary people’s lives in Mumbai are becoming more miserable, not better. The fancy talk of building more flyover and freeways, shopping malls and expressways means nothing to them. Yes, some of us can speedily cruise between Mumbai and Pune because of the fancy expressway. But people do not travel daily between Mumbai and Pune. The daily travel within Mumbai is becoming a nightmare. It is now an ordeal for many even to travel between their homes and the suburban railway station . In a suburb like Andheri it can take more than an hour. A German architect Philip Horst spoke at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai on March 20 on how artistes are intervening in public spaces in Germany, making them more pleasant. That is fine but Mumbai must first get its basics, get more public spaces, not fancy projects.