Sorry, but we are always very busy renaming stations

The surprise is not so much that Friday’s rush hour tragedy happened; it is that it does not happen more often. Mumbai’s life-line is too routinely its death-line. Occasionally, dramatically it is the terrorist’s bomb; on a daily basis, it is the callous hand of official indifference. One has wearied of asking why the citizens of India’s most swaggering metropolis should have to die on account of doing nothing more reckless than going to work each morning.

Was renaming Elphinstone Road more vital than mitigating the hell inside? Cocooned in self-importance, do the mandarins of the railway ministry even know of the dangerous overcrowding on the broad staircases, let alone narrow footbridges, of local stations? For now let us keep the trains themselves aside, though barely 24 hours earlier two men suffered grievous injuries after being squeezed off by the human crush inside the compartment.

The situation outside reflects the same set of blindfolds.

City planners seem to be totally unaware of the east-west demand that has ballooned while they were busy pampering to more influential customers travelling along the south-west corridors.

Lower Parel is an out-of-control jungle of commercial concrete, lengthening towards Mahim and Worli, widening to swallow everything up to Bharat Mata and beyond. Yet the only connectors to it from the eastern side remain the British-built Elphinstone and Currey Road bridges.

On the former, pedestrians do not so much walk as are pushed along a narrow path, restrained by the railing and daunted by the chaotic serpent of traffic. There are so many cross roads under the Lalbaug flyover that the wait near the KEM-Wadia hospital traffic light is routinely 10 minutes. Who cares for wasted man-hours, when there is no concern for man or woman, per se?

Currey Road is wider, but worse. Zillions worth of business is generated in the burgeoning mass of towers, yet the odd crore cannot be found to re-lay the pavement that monorail construction has made even more non-existent. So the torrents of vehicles and pedestrians play a dangerous game of dodge every rush hour.

Which brings us to the widening chasm between demand for and supply of public transport, with the multiplier effect of more and more space-grabbing private vehicles commandeering the roads. The metro will come when it will come, and hopefully bring the kind of relief that it has to Delhi. But the monorail is already a white elephant. Its pillars have narrowed important carriageways between Wadala and Saat Rasta, while the empty track above mocks the snarl beneath. Even at optimal use, it will barely make a dent in the need.

There is a more fundamental and selective blindness in the matter of infrastructure. Town planners seem to be unaware of the degree of residential development on the east. This relentless Gotham of towers disgorges people in vehicles wanting to cross over to the offices, malls and entertainment zones of Lower Parel and the west. But no one is in any hurry to service this need.

The daily stampede over public endurance exacts no less a toll.