Supreme Court Withholds BMC Chief's Salary: What It Reveals About Mumbai's Encroachments

After the Supreme Court held back the salary of the municipal commissioner of Mumbai and ordered a fine of Rs 5 lakh on the corporation, within a day, commercial encroachments in a plot reserved for a bus depot by the civic body were demolished. Despite repeated orders by the judiciary, clearance of that area had not been done, the reason for the court’s annoyance. What does it tell us? The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation can act if it is forced to, but when left to itself it is a different story. The problem of encroachments that ubiquitously peppers the city is a function of that phenomenon.

Enormous tracts of the metropolis, which are now legitimately owned, were once illegal encroachments. There is a standard operating procedure for it. Slums come up, burgeon in size, and that then makes the dwellers there a sizeable voting bloc. Political parties woo them and slum dwellers are often the deciding factor as to who wins elections, because the middle class either doesn’t vote or is not united to pressure parties into conceding demands. That is the reason why commuters in Mumbai continue to go through horrific rail travel conditions for decades.

It is not just slums, shop owners encroach the fronts of their shops, hawkers encroach on footpaths, housing societies encroach on abutting open spaces. Anyone who can does it because an elaborate network of corruption services it. And at the bottom of it is the value of the land. Every square foot is coveted. Poor migrants who flood from every part of the country find their little corner by becoming part of this system. An encroached piece of land is cheaper because there is uncertainty and services like water and electricity are provided by unofficial channels, at least in the beginning. Once it takes scale, it becomes a humanitarian problem because all human beings deserve basic living conditions.

The corporation, at the centre of it, somehow muddles along as politicians exert power on it, builders bribe officers and so on. Occasionally there are high profile demolitions, as has just happened, but underneath the hydra multiplies its heads.