N A CITY WHERE EVERY INCH OF LAND IS AUDITED TO SHOW ASTRONOMICAL REAL ESTATE COSTS, INSTITUTIONS CONTINUE TO MAKE MONEY ON LEASED PROPERTY THAT IS A VIRTUAL GIFT TO THEM
An open secret that frequently slips through the interstices of the city's news is to do with squatting on municipal land by big institutions and companies. For more than a decade now, the BMC has tried to regularise leases given to clubs, private parties, public trusts and industrial houses in pre-Independence times at absurdly low prices. Often the groups have made loads of money by selling off bits and pieces of this leased land – a blatantly illegal move – for commercial gains.
Some may raise objections to the use of the word squatting for something that actually has an element of paperwork behind it, no matter how thin, faded (and frequently lost). In response, one can say that when a city prizes and audits every inch of land in super-built up terms to create a spectral haze about real estate costs running into astronomical figures, isn't it absurd that rich institutions and industries continue to make money on leased lands that are virtual gifts to them in terms of s h e e r p r i c e ? Besides, o f t e n m e m b e r s from these very spaces cry hoarse about how slumdwellers are squatting illegally on the city's prime property. How often has the city's privileged discussed – over elegant pots of tea in gated clubs, overlooking some cool colonial sports being played in lavish spreads of maidans – the issue of encroachment by poor migrants?
However, to reduce the whole debate to the question of revenues for the BMC is equally tricky. It would be like going from the frying pan, straight into the blaze – with a legitimate fear that the BMC will now become the legal custodian for selling land to quick-gain, real-estate guns.
It would be more productive – though controversial – to look at the process of landuse, rather than land-value as the basis of our official response. The fact is that the question of ownership in a city such as Mumbai – with a hunger for speculation that is insatiable – needs a corrective. That corrective can be in finding newer ways to look at the history of ownership. There is nothing wrong if the land given on lease defies market logic, as long as it is based on some agreed upon principles of new use. The city's activists have been crying hoarse that we need open land and more green spaces. If we accept that it is a valid need, then it could be better to make existing institutional bodies the trustees of the land as long as it is not used for commercial gains and aids creating more green cover and preserves open spaces. For this, such institutions have to open up to scrutiny and the media glare as well.
Mumbai was not built on revenue generation in the manner of a feudal landlord – as the BMC is positing itself to be. Rather it was made on grounds of productive use of land that generates wealth and employment. Many groups, entrepreneurs, and communities were given land on lease in colonial Bombay, at prices that even then were relatively low in terms of sheer value. The understanding was that the activities on the land would aid the city's economy as a whole.
Today, more than wealth, the city needs a better quality of civic life, and in some ways, this history of institutional squatting can be made more accountable. This will also make us see many poor neighbourhoods in Mumbai in a new light. They will not come across as encroachers, and instead as individuals and groups that are contributing to the city's economy in different ways – either by recycling garbage, producing cheap goods or subsidising the city's exorbitant costs through inexpensive labour services.
More efforts will be made to get these neighbourhoods to improve their environments than erase them.
Is the city willing to make such a radical move that cuts both ways?
