Manu Joseph: South Bombay is the only part of urban India where life has gotten better—How did that happen?

Across India, the upper class complains of a deterioration in public spaces, except in South Bombay. Every affluent resident I have met is all praise for what has happened to their town in recent times. And what has happened is that new sea-links, including an undersea tunnel, have eased traffic congestion in South Bombay, which was in any case not all that congested by general urban Indian standards.

Also, their connectivity to the suburbs has improved, though such a connection with real India is not a major requirement for them, except when they have to go to the airport located there.

If you start for South Bombay from the airport area, which has a mofussil gloom to it, you eventually get on a majestic cable-stay bridge and there is suddenly the drama of a great city looming.

Once in South Bombay, there are even broad walkways of expensive material that are rare for pedestrians in India. Then there is another sea bridge that takes you to two parallel old-money streets. Somewhere along the way, Mukesh Ambani’s skyscraper stands gleaming. Then an undersea tunnel begins that, like magic, takes you to Marine Drive in less than ten minutes, a journey that earlier used to take more than half an hour.

Yet, these new roads are not the actual reason why life in South Bombay has improved. The reason why this part of Mumbai has gotten better as a place to live is that its new public infrastructure is in excess to what was required there. India is usually trapped in ‘essentiality,’ an idea that stems from poverty. The only way the quality of life in a city can improve is when urban infrastructure is in excess of what a government functionary would think is ‘essential.’

Everywhere else, India makes do with the bare minimum; it plans for yesterday and builds years later. Yet, somehow, it has given South Bombay infrastructure that might be ‘sufficient’ even ten years later.

Optically, cable bridges and undersea tunnels are a sort of vulgarity in a poor country, but they are needed as a mascot of where we are headed, even if it creates resentment in the poor, as it probably will. Do not forget that when Anna Hazare’s ‘anti-corruption’ movement began, his followers at first chanted curses at “swanky airports” and “expressways for the rich.”

Modernity is about tiring its opponents by persisting with it. The mini skirt eventually tires its critics; stand-up comedians eventually tire the thin-skinned; a great piece of urban infrastructure eventually stops being a monument for the rich. There is an important side to some forms of vulgarity.

The South Bombay I am talking about is a sliver of real estate, probably 12km long and about 2-3km broad. Aesthetically, South Bombay was always way ahead of the rest of India. Public rickshaws are not allowed. The roads were concretized a long time ago, when South Bombay was the beating heart of the Indian economy, and its drainage system was planned in the colonial era. When you hear of a monsoon deluge in Mumbai, it really happens only in Mumbai, never in South Bombay.

South Bombay does have poor areas. But its shanties are vanishing. The lower middle class still lives in chawls, though many of them have been redeveloped. Also, many people in South Bombay are only notionally rich; apart from their tiny flats, they have little income. You find strugglers even on Peddar Road, which has very expensive residential real estate. Once, when I was looking for a home on this street, the woman who showed me her flat told me at the end of the tour that she was happy to rent the flat to me, but would live in the balcony.

The dominant perception of South Bombay, however, is one of wealth, which has grown, and of sophistication, which seems to be vanishing. South Bombay is not the heart of the Indian economy anymore, for such an organ is obsolete in the modern world.

So why is India spending so much money on reaching South Bombay? It is its lineage. Like ancestral wealth, the lineage of a downtown area too is muscle memory. It never quite recedes. South Bombay continues to be blessed because it has always been blessed.

I used to hear so many stories of the obsolescence of Bombay and its impending doom. But such a death never came. There was an extinction, though, of an older generation, the old money that once gave South Bombay its character. Many of them did not survive the prosperity of India, where it is very expensive to be counted among the super-rich today. They had to sell off their property to the new rich.

Its people may have changed, but South Bombay endures. Its evident pampering is not a consequence of democracy. I don’t think any seasoned Indian politician believes that urban infrastructure for vehicular traffic wins elections. Infrastructure development does not determine electoral outcomes in India.

The fact that some very expensively built roads lead to a small sliver of a city is the likely result of the clout of industrialists. This is an unsung way in which a city becomes better.

The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’