The handkerchief-size open space is also dotted with illegal food carts, which policemen and municipal workers visit regularly to collect bribes. What makes Pheonix Mills interesting is that neither the stream of government officials nor the usually aggressive activists have ever voiced any protest at its non-stop development.

Another attempt to parcel out public land for a song is the development of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, next to the historic Crawford Market. In this case, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation planned to allow a builder to develop a multi-storeyed market with a Floor Space Index of 4 in exchange for rehabilitating occupants of existing sheds. In effect, for a few crore rupees saved, the BMC was willing to part with a few hundred crore rupees of profit for the builder.

The move has run into rough weather at the moment, but it is safe to bet that the plan will be revived unless there is strong and continuous public pressure.

The latest outrage is a proposal to sell 30% of the space available at sprawling and highly coveted Bus Stations of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking all over Mumbai. This space will ostensibly be used for parking, shopping centres, eateries and wedding halls. After one large parking facility at Nariman Point has already vanished into private hands without any public benefit or revenue, the government wants to repeat the same strategy with the Bus Stations.

This is evident from the fact that the BEST flatly refused parking facilities for the modern taxi fleet planned by Fulora Foundation only recently. BEST’s bus stations belong to the public and must be developed for the greater public good. In the last two decades the municipal corporation has failed to build a single parking tower despite the dramatic increase in traffic density. Instead, it has usurped public roads and pavements to create paid-parking facilities that only allow private contractors to rip off people.

... contd.