The Brave Pedestrian

Mumbai, 30 th December 2016: Did you know that Mumbai municipal officials can bulldoze and smash entire streets without official paperwork? No show-cause notices, no letters and memos, no demolition register entries, no records whatsoever. It's like normal BMC tod-phod in broad daylight, except there's no paper trail. If you ask under Right To Information, BMC says, “No records exist”. On the morning of 10 th December, 2015, Dinesh Bhosle (Sub Engineer H/West Ward), Vikrant Manyar (Junior Engineer) and Siddharth Kasare (petty works contractor) went to 40 th Road, Old Khar West with casual labourers and a hired bulldozer, and smashed up many shop extensions. Here's a video of the demolition , with local resident Imran Mansuri (red shirt) arguing with BMC officials and a policeman. Constable Sanjay Ware in this photo was identified by Khar Police Station in response to Imran’s RTI application. Following Mansuri's complaint to Deven Bharti , Joint ...

23 March 2016, Mumbai: While browsing through my old emails, I found the following letter drafted by some of my fellow activists to the powers-that-be a few years back, when Prithviraj Chavan was Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and Sitaram Kunte was the Municipal Commissioner. Methinks this letter is as relevant today as when it was written, back in December 2013. Activist friends like Abbaas Rizvi, who have been working to thwart the encroachment mafias in Mumbai, tell me that the issues that this letter points out are still as bad as ever. And so, I am reproducing this letter here for everyone to read, and hopefully to copy-paste onto their own letterhead, sign and send to the Chief Minister and our civic bosses.    To Hon’ble Chief   Minister of Maharashtra,   Mantralaya   Chief Secretary of Maharashtra,   Mantralaya   Principal Secretary-I, Urban Development Dept   Municipal Commissioner, BMC Head Office, Mahapalika Marg. ...

Monday, 9 March, 2015, Mumbai: Imagine you are enjoying dinner with your family at Golden Chariot restaurant, on the second floor of Goregaon’s  famous mall, The  Hub. Suddenly, you see smoke. No, not the delicious smoke from a sizzler, but the black, rubbery-smelling smoke from a short-circuit. An uncontrolled blaze has broken out in the building. People are shouting, “Fire! Fire!” and stampeding in panic. But you are calm. You guide your family to the nearest door that says, “FIRE EXIT”. But you are shocked to find that this door only leads to toilets and an enclosed room where drinks and junk are being stored! It does not lead to a staircase! You angrily start yelling at the Golden Chariot employees, asking where is the nearest genuine fire exit door that leads to a staircase. But nobody replies; people are running helter-skelter, the dimly-lit restaurant is filling up with thick smoke, and the temperature is rising. Photo 1: Activist Sulaiman Bhimani (right) show...