EDITORIALS

Demolishing Legality
The road to urban disaster is paved with incidents like the Campa Cola stand-off.
he high drama and the excessive media focus on a small part of the enormous metropolis of Mumbai has set several disturbing precedents, all of them detrimental to the future of any kind of sane or planned urban development. Once you separate the rhetoric and high emotion from the reality, the problem is, and has always been, a fairly straightforward one. When Pure Drinks, the company that used to market the drink Campa Cola, in the late 1970s closed its bottling plant in Worli in what was then Bombay, it sought permission to build residential structures on the land it had leased from the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 1955. In 1980, this permission was granted and work began. Between 1981 and 1989, seven buildings were constructed on this plot, which was even then a prime location. The only problem was that the BMC had given permission for only ve oors for each building. Yet, no one stopped a 20-oor building and another with 17 oors coming up on the plot. We hear now that the builders were warned and even asked to stop work at various times. But once a ne was paid, work could continue unobstructed. Also, despite this violation of the permission, middleand upper-class buyers snapped up the property as it was available at lower prices. They willingly suspended any niggling doubts when told that the irregularity would soon be sorted out. That did not happen. Within a few years of moving in, residents would have known that there was a problem. They were not getting municipal water because they did not have an occupation certicate. For years, they lived on tanker water. Condent that the courts would give them a hearing, the residents moved the Bombay High Court in 1999 asking that the water supply be connected and their illegal status be regularised. Instead, the high court held in 2005 that as the oors above the fth oor were illegal, they would have to be demolished. When the residents appealed to the Supreme Court, it refused to intervene and upheld the high courts order. However, it did give the residents a reprieve and ordered that demolition begin in May. At the last minute, the deadline was extended to 11 November. The presiding judge made it a point to say that the Court would not reconsider its decision, nor would it extend the deadline. The Court had also emphasised that governments should not regularise illegal constructions. Yet in an unprecedented move, the same judge took suo motu notice based on media reports about Campa Cola residents ghting the demolition squads and has granted another six months reprieve. What is the import of these developments for urban residents not just in Mumbai but also in other cities in India? For one, it 8

clearly demonstrates that when the residents of a building are well-off and they are threatened with eviction, then, even if they had wilfully indulged in illegality, they get a sympathetic hearing not just from the media but also sometimes from the courts. And, of course, from politicians. All political parties across the spectrum supported the Campa Cola residents. Yet, scores of slums are demolished every year. Here too the residents have resorted to illegality out of desperation. Here too the local politicians and developers assure them that their slum will eventually be regularised. Here too they pay for their water and electricity and some taxes as well as regular hafta to the police and the municipality. Yet when their homes are demolished, often without any notice, there is no media coverage, no political patronage and no sympathy from the courts. Second, the very fact that high-rise buildings can be constructed without requisite permissions, and then house people, illustrates the agrant culture of impunity that has taken hold in most cities and raises some crucial questions. In Mumbai alone, there are over 6,000 buildings that the municipality acknowledges do not have occupation certicates. All these buildings are occupied. Will we now see a repeat of the Campa Cola drama if the municipal authorities decide to implement the law? Or should the municipal authorities be held liable for permitting such illegality to take place under their watch? Who should pay the municipality, the builder or the buyer? Third, while the Campa Cola compound and other such violations illustrate the disregard of builders for legal sanctions, the fallout of such blatant illegality manifests itself in other, more deadly ways. In April this year, a building collapsed in the suburb of Mumbra. Seventy-ve people died. Twenty-two people were arrested including the builder and two deputy municipal commissioners. In this instance too, the builder did not comply with the rules, the municipality looked the other way, and scores of people moved into a building without an occupation certicate, clutching at the promise that in time everything would be sorted out. It was, but with deadly consequences. Above all, the Campa Cola drama emphasises the urgency of putting in place systems that will curb such illegality, visible in every city across India. There are no easy solutions as every level of authority is deeply compromised. Yet it must be done. There is no point in having a law, watching it being violated, and then declaring that it is simpler to make the illegal legal, or the irregular regular. Once governments, or courts, follow such a route, there can be no law, no rule, no plan and no orderly development in any of our cities.
november 23, 2013 vol xlviII no 47
EPW Economic & Political Weekly