Bombay is quite used to being bought and sold.

In 1661, when Infanta Catherine De Braganza of Portugal married Charles II of England, the island was the princess’ dowry to her husband. But Charles was evidently unimpressed by the gift, and in 1668, leased it out to the East India Company for the tidy sum of ten pounds a year.

So, three hundred and forty years later, when the city’s municipal corporation proposes to sell a 138-year-old market in a Grade I UNESCO heritage precinct to a private ‘developer’, we take it in our stride. The resolution, incidentally, was passed last September with record alacrity — in just under a minute and there were no public tenders. Or protests.

It was left to a handful of activists to point out that no one would benefit — officially, at least — from converting beautiful old Crawford Market into a twin towered, multi-storied mall: the BMC, which has ‘agreed’ to sell it at a fragrantly undervalued rate of 73 crore stood to lose roughly Rs 1,000 crore, and the city would lose a world-class heritage structure.

No one, that is, except Mumbai’s favourite scoundrel: Babu the Builder.

This week, the little group of protesters stood silently inside the corporation headquarters dressed in funereal white for the final hearing, while outside, noisy, colourful Mumbai did what it does best: minded its own business. And so, their plea to reconsider the controversial project was rejected without a discussion, again in a matter of seconds. “It is the biggest failure of a democracy, when even a discussion on such a significant matter does not take place,” says Shailesh Gandhi, Mumbai’s chief civic revolutionary.

... contd.