Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and Its Mills

309 Pages·2005·20.405 MB·English

by  Darryl D'Monte

Ripping the Fabric
The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills
Darryl D’Monte
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
- x A-
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Journalists are only too aware that everything they write —"history
in a hurry"—turns into waste paper the very next day. In the preface
to the first edition of this book in 2002, 1 had expressed my earlier
misgivings that six years of labour would already have been wasted
by the turn of events: the mills would have been sold, lock, stock and
barrel by the time the book came out As things have turned out, as I
write this three years later, the sale of land belonging to cotton mills
has become one of the most controversial issues confronting Mumbai
and has attracted nation-wide interest.
An underlying factor, which has given the redevelopment of mill
land a new fillip, is the recent rise in real estate prices, which makes
the 600 acres or 280 hectares belonging to the private and national-
ized mills extremely valuable. This straddles an area eight times
larger than Nariman Point, the controversial reclaimed central busi-
ness district in south Mumbai. Some still value the mill land at Rs
20,000 crore, which may be an underestimate. This is why the Na-
tional Textile Corporation (NTC) has decided to dispense with the
consultants it appointed to dispose of some of the 24 mills it owns
and put some of them on the auction block.
Up for the highest bid, Jupiter, occupying 11 acres —which is the
average size of many Mumbai mills —in Elphinstone Road in the
heart of the mill precinct has changed hands at Rs 276 crore. This is
half as much more than what the NTC expected. It was snapped up
by India Bulls, a financial services company, in which India's rich-
est multi-billionaire, the London-based steel mogul Laxmi Mittal,
owns a small stake.
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Preface to the Paperback Edition vii
ing a comprehensive study of mill land on behalf of the state govern-
ment in 1996. Keshub Mahindra, the industrialist, withdrew from
the panel when the media pointed out that there was a conflict of
interest, since Mahindras are property developers with the New
Great Eastern Mill owners. Such considerations did not deter Nusli
Wadia of Bombay Dyeing from serving on the panel. He is in the
midst of developing his extensive mill lands, said to occupy totally
as much space as Nariman Point; he has sought to explain his pres-
ence on the pretext of representing the Mill
Owners' Association.
The panel was given just three months to complete its delibera-
tions and asked for more time to untangle the extremely complex
and often confusing situation —compounded, no doubt, by venal
bureaucrats and politicians who have deliberately obfuscated the
issue in order to thwart any scrutiny by the workers and the
public. As they did in 1996, the private mill owners have once again
refused to allow the panel to enter its mills to conduct an on-the-
ground assessment. Why a panel officially appointed by the state
government cannot compel these owners to raise their shutters is a
question which it alone can answer. The government. refused to ex-
tend the life of the panel on the ground that the very issue was later
the subject of a public interest litigation.
Incensed by the blatant collusion between owners and the state,
several prominent citizens; including Correa and former Municipal
Commissioner Jamsheed Kanga, asked the Bombay Environmental
Action Group (BEAG) to file a petition to halt any further sale of mill
land by both private and nationalized mills. It was
directed at the BMC, NTC, and MHADA. The petition filed by Shyam
Chainani of BEAG expressed concern regarding the 600 acres of
mill land, which was 'the last chance to provide parks and recre-
ational ground of 200 acres and public housing of 222 acres for the
poor and middle class of Bombay'. It cited how in 1983
(in the draft DC rules) the Floor Space Index (FSI) for industries,
including textile mills, was 0.50. This was increased to 1.33 in the
island city and 1 in the suburbs 'both subjected to the specific
condition that no part of Textile Mills premises is converted and
used for purposes other than Textile Mills Activity'.
In 1991, it went on, the higher FSI was retained but without the
condition regarding continuation of textile activity. In 1989, BEAG
had suggested that the textile mill lands should be divided into three,
vi Preface to the Paperback Edition
It is for an identical reason that the Kasliwals, who own Shree
Ram Mills, has reneged on its agreement in 2004 to sell the land for
Rs 105 crore to Kalpataru builders, which has already put up the 39-
storey Kalpataru Heights on mill land in Mahalaxmi. Although the
builders have put down Rs 30 crore, the owners obviously now feel
that they can get more for this prime property.
I had criticized the 1991 amendment to the Development Control
(DC) rules, which entitled a mill owner to sell or redevelop his land
provided he parted with one-third of it to the Brihanmumbai Mu-
nicipal Corporation (BMC) for public amenities like parks or schools
and another third for the Maharashtra Housing and
Area Development Agency (MHADA), leaving the owner the
remaining third. This provision did not recognize the right of work-
ers to a share of the property on which many had been employed for
succeeding generations —families were known by the mill in which
their forefathers worked. The amendment also encouraged the piece-
meal redevelopment of land, whereas the city, gasping for open space
and facing an abysmal lack of housing, required the 400 acres due to
it to be pooled and planned in a holistic manner.
Not in one's wildest nightmares, however, could anyone have
foreseen the sleight of hand which the Maharashtra government
resorted to by amending this law in 2001, requiring owners to part
with two-thirds only of vacant land, as opposed to the total area
occupied. It omitted the built-up areas and this drastically reduced
the land available for public purposes. It took a couple of years for
unions, urban experts, and conservationists to discover this fraud
perpetrated on the people of Mumbai.
While the government sought to camouflage its misdeeds
by asserting it had published notices to invite objections in newspa-
pers and passed the amendment in the state assembly, it was obvi-
ously done behind the back of the public. Indeed, this only confirms
the conviction that successive state governments have been hand-
in-glove with builders, who dictate the state's agenda. The media
reported, on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections in May 2004, how the
builder's lobby had paid Rs 50 crore into various parties' coffers to
influence Mumbai's urban development.
In response to the public outcry, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh
instituted an enquiry panel under Deepak Parekh, who heads the
Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd (HDFC). It included
eminent architect Charles Correa who was responsible for conduct-
Preface to the Paperback Edition ix
to earmark as much space for the lungs' of the city. Later that month,
however, the Court vacated its stay, subject to certain conditions,
and reverted the case to the High Court in Mumbai, where it had to
be decided by July.
However, this may well be too late as far as the 32 private mills
are concerned, because 23 of them have already received the initial
sanction from the BMC. Of the 24 NTC mills, permission has been
approved for seven; the NTC is believed to have offered two of these
entirely for public use. What may well prove the unfortunate out-
come is that the private mill owners will be allowed to go scot-free,
while the. nationalized mills have to comply with the law's provi-
sions, a complete travesty of the law.
At any rate, the High Court has opened a Pandora's Box regard-
ing the bona fides of mill owners. They have asked the BMC and
NTC to provide details on the size of each mill which is being
redeveloped, its location, and the status of its lease. As it happens,
this coincided with a startling revelation, courtesy the activist
Shailesh Gandhi who, using the new Maharashtra Right to Infor-
mation Act, asked the BMC and the Collector (representing the state
government) to provide details of mill leases. According to the data
he had obtained, the average lease rent paid per sq metre was just
3.5 paise per year.
At a public meeting on conserving the heritage embodied in
Mumbai's mills, organized by the UK-based International Network
for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism (INTBAU),
supported by Prince Charles' trusts, and the Indian National Trust
for Art & Cultural Heritage (INTACH), Gandhi startled the audi-
ence by claiming that the land belonged to the government, not the
lease-holders. 'My question is, if this land belongs to us, why are we
begging for one-third?', he demanded to know.
A document he released shows that there were several mills whose
leases have either expired altogether or whose lease rents are pa-
thetically small. Thus the leases of Gokuldas Morarjee for 27,520 sq
yd and Kohinoor in Naigaum, occupying 22,205 sq yd, have ex-
pired, which is why he categorized them 'illegal occupiers'. In fact,
the Mumbai Suburban Collector admitted that there were 25 plots
occupied by industries whose lease had expired, making them
anadhikrut kabjedar, Marathi for unauthorized occupants. The BMC
stated, amazingly, that in the case of Gokuldas Morarjee and Phoe-
nix Mills, the leases were not traceable. Subsequently, a BMC official
claimed that both were for 999 years in the 1940s.
viii Preface to the Paperback Edition
with a third going for open spaces, a third going for public
amenities (hospitals, schools, maternity homes, dispensaries, etc.)
and a third going to the mill owners. (Although Chainani claims a
patent on this proposal, it has variously been attributed to the former
much-respected Urban Development Secretary D.T. Joseph and to
Correa himself, much before 1996.)
BE AG observed that when the government enacted the Develop-
ment Control Regulations in 1991, it made a three-way split by which
a third was allotted for public housing rather than for public ameni-
ties. 'In 2001, Government changed the regulation so that the calcu-
lation of 1 /3 was based only on the current unbuilt open area. That
would reduce the open spaces from 165/200 acres to 32 acres and
the public housing component from 160/222 acres to 25 acres'.
Some examples highlight the government's perfidy. At Victoria
Mills in Lower Parel, the developer's share has doubled from 40 per
cent to 78 per cent. Kamala is worse, leaving nothing at all for the
public. Little wonder, then, that a glossy ad for Trade Towers at
'Kamala City' proclaims that it is 'a futuristic building with such
superior amenities, that owning an office here would require rais-
ing all other standards. It is located in the lush [sic] Kamala City
among neighbours like media houses, travel agencies, banking and
telecom firms, food and health stations, and many others'.
Phoenix, which occupies 69,400 sq metres, would have parted
with some 200,000 sq metres to the BMC under the 1991 rules and
an equivalent to MHADA, but has become completely gentrified
today under the 2001 amendment. Jupiter, occupying 45,000 sq
metres, would have surrendered between 1,33,000 and 1,66,000 sq
metres respectively for the two public purposes, but by the new rules,
has to sacrifice only 513 and 420 sq metres respectively.
According to one media report, the government's largesse as a whole
has fetched the builders a bonanza of Rs 12,000 crore, calculated on
the basis that they would obtain an extra 300 acres, on which real
estate would fetch Rs 6,000 per sq ft.
To the surprise of most parties, the High Court granted a
temporary stay, which was challenged in the Supreme Court by a
battery of legal luminaries, including former Attorney General Soli
Sorabjee and constitutional law expert Fali S. Nariman, on behalf of
the owners. The Supreme Court reserved its verdict in May, stating
that it had to strike a balance between the commercial interests of the
mill owners and the public interest— specifically, the need
/
Preface to the Paperback Edition xi
had expired and the land was not being used for the purposes as-
signed, it would revert to the state. This sounds suspiciously like the
double-talk that all politicians are adept at.
At the INTBAU workshop referred to earlier, British experts cited
how two mill clusters in Britain have attained UNESCO World Heri-
tage status. The first were the Derwent Valley Mills—hallowed be-
cause it was here that Richard Arkwright first employed water to
drive mill machines. His Cromford Mill could be hailed as the har-
binger of the industrial revolution. Members of INTBAU —which
included The Phoenix Trust, Regeneration Through Heritage, and
The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment—stressed how
Mumbai mills were the 'grandchildren' of mills
under their care and if anything, Mumbai possessed an even greater
heritage, considering how much more had been saved —at the time
of writing this that is—from the bulldozer as well as the sheer scale
of Indian mills.
This is something that even Mumbai conservationists had not
grasped in its entirety although —as this book mentions —there have
been references to the heritage features of the mills, including by the
Correa panel. The British experts were able to demonstrate, as one
put it, ttyft 'it was important to look at heritage, but we should not be
timid about adaptive re-use for contemporary purposes'. This would
put to rest fears about the elitist preoccupations of conservationists
who might be seen as making a case for preserving mill structures,
irrespective of whether workers and those living in the
neighbourhood lacked homes and jobs—and open spaces. The im-
portant corollary, according to these experts, was that such a heri-
tage movement would assist commercial partnerships in
development projects.
As a test case, participants at the workshop, who included
architecture students from Mumbai and Delhi, surveyed the NTC's
large India United No. 1 mill in Lalbaug and suggested a slew of
adaptive re-uses. They came up with several options, whereby only
the more preservation-worthy structures—like the main mill build-
ing —would be kept intact. It could be alternately made a high-end
commercial complex within, since a mill worker occupied 39 sq
metres of space on average in any mill and many more could
be accommodated within, particularly with mezzanine floors
being added. Or it could be turned into a public hospital, with a
private hospital coming up on the vacant land alongside to cross-
x Preface to the Paperback Edition
Similarly, Simplex in Mahalakshmi—founded by a group of
investors who included Mohammed Ali Jinnah —had a 99-year lease
with the Bombay Collector in 1884 which expired in 1983, but the
lessees continue to occupy the land. According to the Collector, the
lease rent has not been raised for the 7,836 sq metre plot, which
remains at Rs 48 per year. This has not deterred Simplex from over-
seeing the creation of 'Planet Godrej' on the plot, comprising five 40-
storey towers.
Gandhi pointed out to the author that when government land is
leased, the owner contracts with a lessor to use the land for a
specific purpose. The Khatau Makanji lease in 1916 specifically states
that the lessee was entitled to buy it within the first five year of
entering into the contract —which clearly specifies that the lease did
not confer any ownership rights. There was an express reference to
it conducting 'mill business'. This puts a question mark over the
legality of 'ownership' of leased mills, even those on a 999-year
contract.
According to the BMC, only six of 28 private mills surveyed were
leased by it. But this was by no means the only complaint: unbeliev-
ably, the final deed of Phoenix in the 1940s had still not been final-
ized. In 2003, Atul Ruia, the owner, paid Rs 60 lakh to the corpora-
tion for change of land use. As he put it, 'Mill owners are replacing
derelict structures with planned development. How else will one
see Mumbai becoming Shanghai?' Others, like the Piramals who
own Morarjee, the site of a new office complex and 'super-luxury'
tower apartments, are sheltering under the clause of the original
lease which permits 'residential use' (as it does in Khatau's case) —
obviously meaning for staff and workers, not rank outsiders.
G. Pantbalekundri, the former Maharashtra Joint Urban Devel-
opment Secretary who also served on the Charles Correa committee,
believes that BMC should not permit user change on textile lands.
'Mills have been treated favourably in the past, like being excluded
from any reservations of public amenities because of their industrial
usage', he believes. As we see in the book, while new industries
were prohibited from being established or existing ones expanded
in the city, cotton mills were exempted because of their enormous
employment —2,50,000 workers at the peak. As a result of the public
outcry following Gandhi's exposes, the state government announced
that it would examine all the lease agreements of mills. Chief Minis-
ter Vilasrao Deshmukh even went so far as to assert that if leases
Preface
I seem to have made it somewhat of a habit to write a book whenever
I resign as an editor of a newspaper, though to be accurate, this is
only the second time round. In the first instance, two
decades ago, I had thought of writing a book on Mumbai, as a promi-
nent journalist friend advised me to do, since I was concerned about
several of the city's environmental issues. However, the
focus eluded me at the time: I certainly did not want to write a book
which devoted a chapter to each urban problem.
The opportunity presented itself when I resigned from the Times
of India in 1994. A couple of years later, it occurred to me that the
potential sale of land belonging to cotton mills in the city was the
window I was looking for. It allowed me to examine the future of a
city which was licking its wounds. It was the industrial hub of the
country but did not quite know where it was heading in the twenti-
eth century. The illusion, rather than the dream, was to convert
Mumbai into a city which specializes in services, particularly as a
finance centre. Hong Kong and Singapore loomed large in the imagi-
nations of planners.
Looking at the latest episodes in the never-ending saga of rede-
velopment of mill land in Mumbai, one is struck by the veracity of
the French saying: the more things change, the more they remain the
same. After completing the first draft of this manuscript in April
2000, 1 was concerned, perhaps excessively, that the thrust of this
book would be negated by subsequent developments. Specifically,
all the available mill land would have been sold and one would be
doing a post-mortem, rather than writing out a prescription. Even as