- 2 days ago
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday inaugurated the Navi Mumbai International Airport and the final phase of the Mumbai Metro Line-3, marking a major milestone in the city's infrastructure development.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Let's raise the big questions tonight. Is India's commercial capital a sinking city or now a rising
00:06city? Has the Fadnaviz government changed Mumbai's skyline forever? What are the challenges before
00:13Mumbai? How can Mumbai solve its infrastructure mess in particular? Joining me now are three
00:19special guests. I'm joined by Kaustub Dhause. He is chief advisor to the Maharashtra chief
00:24minister on investments and strategy. Smriti Kopikar is founder, editor, question of cities.
00:29Sudhir Badami is an activist and structural engineer who's written a book on Mumbai's
00:35transport systems. I appreciate all of you joining us. Let's separate this into two parts
00:40Kaustub and start with the Navi Mumbai airport. Do you believe as the prime minister said today
00:46that this will transform an entire region including the Konkan belt? You now have a airport which
00:52is with a world-class infrastructure but will it actually meet the needs you believe
00:58of an ever-expanding city like Mumbai?
01:04Absolutely. Today is a historic day to say the least. As a Mumbaikar who was born in Dadan
01:13and raised in Andheri, I remember my father telling me in the 90s that there is an airport
01:17that is going to come and we have waited for decades for the right leadership and the execution
01:21to come into place and today is an absolute celebration. The airport is not just an infrastructure
01:28project. It's a force multiplier on the economy. Imagine Rajdeep, we had our first airport in
01:35Mumbai in the 50s and then the T2 came in 2010-2011 and now we have a terminal which will eventually
01:44service 9 million passengers. If you add all the three together, we will be serving more than 150
01:52million passengers annually. I mean this is a remarkably large figure. So in terms of the volume of the
01:59business and the trade, this is a golden era which has started and I am so happy that being part of
02:08executing it and also seeing it today as a Mumbaikar, it's a truly emotional moment for me.
02:14As a citizen, I think I am absolutely indebted to our leadership, both administrative and political,
02:22to the people of Mumbai who really have lived through hell while the execution of this project
02:28was going on and it's time to celebrate now. You are calling it a celebration. Smriti Kopikar,
02:39at the moment I want to focus first on this new international airport. Do you believe it's a
02:43moment to celebrate that as Kaustuk puts it, Mumbai desperately needed another airport hub? The
02:49country's commercial capital couldn't work through just the first two terminals that you had.
02:54Existingly, you needed a brand new airport. Would you say it's a cause for celebrations or do you
02:59believe it will only benefit a very few in a city of more than 25 million people if you include
03:05the outer Mumbai as well? Thank you Rajdeep. This issue goes well beyond the celebration
03:14of a new airport. I am sure studies were done that showed that we needed a larger,
03:20newer airport and it got built. So kudos to that. But to make it sound like because of that airport and
03:28one metro line, Mumbai has suddenly become this fantastic, great rising city, I think would be well
03:35off the mark for two or three reasons and let me list them out. The first is that in the past few years,
03:44we have seen what is called a project-led development of the city. It's not the city's development as a whole,
03:51but project-led development. So you have project XYZ, you have project 123 and they benefit a certain
03:58class, a certain group of people and it is marketed as if it benefits all of Mumbai, it doesn't.
04:07Number two, very clearly when we say that there are these multi-million, multi-crore infrastructure
04:15projects that Mumbai needed, sure. But why are we concentrating, why have governments been focused
04:23and concentrating on these big-ticket, marquee kind of projects? I want to place one simple fact.
04:3254% of the fatalities in Mumbai in 2023 and 2024 were of pedestrians. Where is the pedestrian
04:40walking infrastructure? Why is that not part of the infrastructure development? Not just for the last
04:47five years, 10 years, 15 years. Where is that? We don't have pavements to walk. People fall into
04:53ditches. Children fall, get injured, are killed. You had a report that showed that five people died of
05:01falling off the trains. Two and a half thousand people die in Mumbai every year because of railway
05:08trains and the way they are forced to travel in the trains. So where is that infrastructure upgrade?
05:14We're not seeing that. That's the second. Number three is there has been a very steady
05:23public fund and private gain in the way Mumbai's infrastructure has been planned and built in the
05:31past few years. And I'll give here the example of the coastal road, which is largely a public funded
05:39project. By the time it is completely done from one end of the city to the other, quite possible that
05:47the city would have spent something close to 50, 60,000 crores. Which part of the public in Mumbai uses it?
05:55How many of us really have cars and drive on the coastal road? Why doesn't some of this attention,
06:05resources and planning go into boosting something like the BST bus service on which 3.5 million
06:16Mumbai cars depend every single day? And this very government, under this very government in the last 10
06:24years, we have seen a very steady decline of the BST. That was the network that kept Mumbai going even
06:32through COVID. A hundred drivers and conductors lost their lives. So why are we celebrating one airport,
06:39but ignoring pavements, BST and everything else in between?
06:48You've raised several points and I think Kaustub, because he's in charge of infrastructure,
06:52needs to respond. Kaustub, is this a conscious plan that the government has made that look we are
06:58putting in place this large world-class airport, we are putting in place the metro infrastructure.
07:05Now you've got critics who are saying what happens to BST, what happens to pavements, what happens to
07:10public funding for private gain with the coastal road. Is the government aware of this criticism?
07:16What is the government's largest strategy for Mumbai?
07:21No, government is absolutely focused on driving an equitable sense of governance and
07:29every state of society is being touched on. We have an increasing demand for aviation connectivity
07:36and that is being served. We have an increasing demand for green mobility and that is being served
07:40through the metros. We had a history of 11 kilometers in 11 years when we built the Warsaw to Ghatkopar metro.
07:47It's a shameful statistics to say the least. And in the last four years, I mean between 14 and 19,
07:53we put into together 373 kilometers of metro network under process and construction. So
08:00metros are at some point in time, maybe by 2027, will almost parallel the carrying capacity of the
08:08suburban railway network. Suburban railway network carry about, I think about 90 lakh people today.
08:12So metro will almost equally, you know, share that load. And this is a common Mumbaikers. I mean,
08:20I grew up traveling in a suburban. So will it, will it ship people, will it ship commuters from
08:25the old suburban rail network and buses? Is the aim that you will ship commuters from the old suburban
08:32trains and BST? The idea basically is that metro has a very different purpose.
08:36It connects to the inters of the city and suburban has a different purpose. So my sense is that both
08:43coexist and both are necessary. They serve the people of Mumbai and Mumbai people care about
08:48it. We have numbers to say that the utilization has been significant. And when the ladies talked
08:53about the open spaces, I mean, recently we declared about 70 hectares of road next to the coastal road.
09:00That's one part of, you know, the development. So there are government doesn't just focus on large
09:07infrastructure projects. Government is only not focused on a particular section of the society.
09:11I think that's a very narrow and a very pinpointed view of government. When you govern, you have to have
09:18an equitable sense of governance and each and every strata has to be touched. And I agree that there are
09:23issues related to, you know, the quality of best services that we have. I know there are issues
09:28related to the roads that we have. But these are things that need to be resolved. And my sense is
09:33that we have been able to solve complex problems like the projects we have delivered, whether it's
09:38Atal Setu, the underground metro, whether it's the coastal road. These problems are not as complicated.
09:43They are intertwined in the bureaucratic and the issues related to that. So my sense is that it is,
09:50I don't have a logical answer to say that why not, but I'm 100% certain, 100% certain, as a Mumbaiker
09:58and somebody working in the government, that this particular issue will be taken and will be resolved
10:03once and for all, and to address every single strata or every single section of the society.
10:09Sudhir Badami, as someone who's written a book on Mumbai's transport system, and I'm focusing on
10:18Mumbai, but this could be any part of the country. Do you believe that the present transport system
10:23with now the metro coming in is equitable? That's the whole question, that every Mumbaiker should
10:28benefit, not just those who travel along the coastal road in their SUVs, but every Mumbaiker will
10:36benefit. That's what Kaustub says, that they are intertwined. Do you believe they are intertwined or not?
10:41They are intertwined. The only thing is that the twines for the Am Janata, the largest population,
10:49is very, very thin string, while the others are quite heavy. So the benefit is only one-sided.
10:57That's why I had to write down a book to let people know in authority, what is equitable solution.
11:06And that is what I expected the Chief Minister to read and call me up for a meeting,
11:12which Mr. Kaustub Dhause has not invited me over to talk to him or to meet the Chief Minister. If they read
11:20through the book seriously, you'll find that I've provided a wide range of solutions, which is what
11:27Smriti has talked about. It's there in the book. And I think we must try and at least be open to discussing things.
11:35Beyond the book, I want to... If you want to say, Mr. Badabi, if you want to say one, two, three,
11:41what are the three solutions? What do you believe? Because now I'm showing you pictures of the older Mumbai,
11:47waterlogged rail tracks, potholes. We'll show you pictures of the potholes on the road. These are
11:53these are problems of urban governance. Do they... How are you going to fix urban governance? That's the real challenge.
12:01Potholes can be taken care of. There are instances when the potholes increase just like this year. The
12:08rains have been too heavy and continuous with practically no sun in Mumbai. Continuously, we have
12:17been having rains and cloud cover. So this was expected to happen. How would you fix the transport?
12:22How would you fix the transport? How would you fix the transport issue, sir? Give me the one solution
12:27that you believe top of the mind to fix transport. Is to provide last mile connectivity, if you may call it.
12:34But it is a connectivity, which through microbus is what I felt, because it reaches out quickly in
12:42narrow lanes near stations where the crowd is pretty high. And that can be evicted quickly.
12:49Microbus is the answer. But more important thing is, we have to understand that the capacity, what we talk
12:56about is hourly capacity of metro rail does not measure up to the needed capacity to take care of
13:05the overload of railways. That is why the metro came into being more than 10 years back or maybe 15 years
13:12back. I think I was trying to go for BRTS. But today we have one more point to consider. We have to see
13:19that the number of cars on the road are reduced. And that also is provided in the book because I say
13:25that provide BRTS for premium class of commuters. So they get onto the BRTS and leave the roads free,
13:36for which you then charge congestion charges. I also believe that we should not be overtaxing people
13:42unnecessarily. Okay, let me bring in. You make a valid point there. How do you
13:48you make a valid point? How do you reduce cars on the road? Some cities like London in particular have
13:53been very successful, Smriti, in terms of trying to ensure that at least the city's main hubs are free
13:59relatively of traffic congestion. But just the sheer size and volume of Mumbai surely, Smriti,
14:05needs new solutions. And therefore, you've got to surely welcome even if it's a metro line which
14:13may not fulfill the aspirations of all Mumbai cars. At least it's a step up compared to what the
14:18situation was a decade ago. Oh, absolutely. I am not decrying the fact that Mumbai needed a metro
14:26network. I don't belong to that group at all. Nor am I saying that Mumbai did not need a brand new
14:32large international airport. I'm saying very clearly, there is a selectivity in the choice of
14:41infrastructure that governments of the past decade have chosen to put their resources into. And that
14:49selectivity has come to hurt the entire city of Mumbai. It is hurting the BST, which takes 3.5
14:57million people a day, every single day. We're talking of millions using the airport. Sure, those
15:04millions need the airport. But why are you also not thinking of the 3.5 million BST commuters? Why
15:11are you also not thinking of making rail travel safer for the 7.5 million commuters every day? My point
15:19is on selectivity. And the selectivity comes right down to the infrastructure that we already have,
15:26including, and let me put this on the table for all your viewers, the underground metro line that
15:33the Prime Minister inaugurated today, a part of it has been functional for well over six months,
15:40of which for the majority of time, if you are a customer of certain mobile providers, you don't
15:49get connectivity in the underground line. If you are a customer of one particular provider, you get
15:56that. But if you are an Airtel provider, you don't get, I mean, Airtel customer, you go without
16:02connectivity in this super connected Mumbai for 45 minutes for one hour of your commute.
16:10And don't say that London underground London tube doesn't have connectivity. Don't compare
16:16the Mumbai metro that was brand new, spanking, gleaming, inaugurated today with London's tube,
16:23which has been in operation for 150 years. There is no comparison. And I'm not somebody who's going to
16:30take down, you know, a government because there is water logging after rain. Practically no city in
16:38the world, Rajdeep, can handle this kind of intense rainfall in a very short period of time. There is
16:44going to be urban floods, there is going to be water logging. Even more critical, why we need to pay
16:51closer attention to mass infrastructure. And I come back and I will end the point on selectivity.
17:00Please make airports, please make metro lines, but please also pay attention to pavements, cycling
17:07tracks. They built a cycling track in Bandra Kurla complex, BKC. That track did not lead out of BKC to any
17:15other point. So how are cyclists supposed to even get to BKC if you wanted to cycle there?
17:20Right. And therefore, this kind of very tunnel vision, project led, you know, singular project
17:27celebration, I don't think that sits very well.
17:35I therefore want to ask you Kaustub in conclusion because you made the point that,
17:39Smritis made the point that we are using public resources for private gain,
17:44that there are a few people who will end up making possibly windfall profits. How do you,
17:50how does the government respond to that? Because ultimately, the city has to be for every Mumbaikers
17:56convenience. Therefore, rather than being single project focus, it's got to be integrated. Is there an
18:02integrated plan and can you give us a vision for the plan over the next decade?
18:06Absolutely, there is an integrated plan. You cannot govern or function a city with a singular
18:12or objective on certain projects. I hear Smritiji's views and the point she makes. Whenever you decide
18:20something for a city, it has to be holistic. There are various facets that need to be taken into
18:26consideration. You also have to do a re-evaluation of what projects to pursue, what not to pursue. Like,
18:31for example, we did not pursue the metro related projects simply because we did not believe
18:35that it is really a mass transport kind of an ecosystem build out. So, we choose the projects
18:41wisely and there is always a holistic plan around the whole thing because you have to prepare your
18:46city for, you have to make it resilient and sustainable. Climate change is real and we are
18:51facing the wrath of climate change and cities have to ensure that the mangroves are protected,
18:58that projects are built with a sense of control on climate. So, all of these factors are taken into
19:03consideration. Every single project that we have built, we have given enough consideration to make sure-
19:08So, to give one example, BST buses, will the BST bus, to give one example, BST bus system,
19:14which is used by common citizens, will that be upgraded over the next decade?
19:19Has to be, has to be, has to be, has to be, has to be 100%. BST buses are undergoing a massive,
19:25massive, massive, massive transformation. A huge amount of electrification is happening
19:29and a significant amount of procurement. But here is what the difference is and the chief
19:34minister always says this. Before, before starting any project or before starting anything,
19:38he always gives this, this, this guidance to officers that people need to make sure that
19:44service delivery has to improve and steps need to be taken in order to do that. And yes,
19:49there have been challenges, but I think it's an incremental process. We have had, certainly we have
19:54had certain wins and then there are obviously certain things that we need to tighten up. Most
19:59importantly, I can assure you and all the audiences, Rajdeep, that we are building the city for the
20:04future. Mumbai will be a world city and I can assure you that it will be dynamic, it will be resilient
20:09and it will be 100% unstoppable.
20:14I, I don't want to sound cynical, but I remember many years ago, Manmohan Singh as prime minister
20:21claiming he would make Mumbai a Shanghai. That worried me at the time. And therefore, I get worried.
20:26Maybe I've been a cynical Mumbaiker over the years, but I only wish the best for the city. And I hope,
20:32Kaustub, you can organize that meeting for Mr. Badami with the chief minister, so that his ideas also can be
20:38shared. Citizens ideas need to be shared. I've run out of time, I'm afraid, but I appreciate my guests
20:44joining me. We want to see a better futuristic Mumbai is the message. Thank you all very much.
Recommended
1:57
32:57
5:46
Be the first to comment