Why can’t Mumbai, India’s financial capital, have better roads?

Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, the playground of the rich and famous. It boasts of having India's richest municipal corporation and some of the best infrastructure developers building roads and bridges across the world. A city that is fast, sharp and truly driven. And yet, Mumbai can't get its own roads right. Mumbai has a road network of 2,000 km which is maintained by the BMC. But come monsoons and following any heavy downpour, complaints about deteriorating roads and ride quality and potholes begin. And thereon are unending. Things get worse when bad roads lead to frequent breakdowns of vehicles and potholes lead to an accident of a motorist. Or even worse, loss of life. For example, in July 2016, 16-year-old Prakash Bhilore died after his bike fell into a pothole on the Jogeshwari-Vikroli link road. In this podcast we talk to experts, activists and The Times Of India's senior reporters to understand why the City of Dreams, famed to be forever on the move, has a recurrent nightmare of bad roads. Why can’t Mumbai have better roads? Why do the many roads in Mumbai -- built with much fanfare - break down in a year or two? Of course, the contractors are not complaining, but is the promise of motorable and safe roads too difficult for the country's civic body to deliver on? Topography and weather do not hold water as excuses. Goa -- coastal and rainy just like Mumbai -- has far superior roads. Architect and urban planner P K Das blames the nexus between the contractors and political leadership and decision-makers in the bureaucracy. “There's very little to talk about the quality of roads in Mumbai,” Das says. “It is no surprise. There is no hidden truth. The obvious thing is that there is a deep nexus between the ruling dispensation and the construction lobby. In the corporation, what we know for many years, there is a whole nexus of contractors who are tied up with the political leadership or decision-makers in the bureaucracy, who share the spoils of the project. “We need competent contractors, good construction agencies, not the nexus of these bunch of contractors who are ill-equipped and ill-knowledgeable, but only know how to transact in money,” he adds. “And we need to break this nexus. These are the only two ways to go forward to have better roads in Mumbai. So large construction companies like L& T, Sharpoorji and names of that kind can be brought in if there is a political will and desire.” Dharamveer Singh, associate professor at the Department of Civil engineering at IIT-Bombay, says the biggest challenge in Mumbai is the very high volume of traffic and very high rainfall. “It's not like rainfall and the high-volume traffic are not there anywhere else in the world,” he says. “Many other countries, they have similar traffic conditions also. But the paving practice, and quality control and the intention to really do a good job are the main factors to bring good quality roads in Mumbai.” Mumbai roads: Always being dug up Contractors keep digging the roads almost every two years. Many roads are built so that they can be broken after a year or two. Singh says there is often no purpose or planning. “The digging of the road is... you can say they dig it for some purpose,” he says. “Because if somebody is digging the road, there has to be some purpose for that. You know, like ducts can be there. You have to have the proper planning so that we put all the lines, all the connections wherever they have to go in a particular duct. So that there is no requirement of digging the roads.” Now nearly 50% of asphalt roads in Mumbai have been concreted. But how much better is a concrete road in comparison to an asphalt one, and will it really put an end to all our woes? Professor Singh says there are challenges, but also innovative workarounds. “Both types of roads are there in Mumbai, and in many of the places, bituminous road are also working out very nice,” he says. “But considering the construction variability and also the rainfall, I think we should try more concrete roads. But they bring some challenges also at the same time. “Bituminous road, there are certain other issues because the plants are located outside the city.” Singh adds. “So, when the mix comes, it has cooled down. But there are some innovative ways of construction that can be done actually.” Indrani Malkani, chair of the V Citizens Action Network, also known as VCan, says in Mumbai and its adjoining areas, the challenge of good roads remains in perpetuity because somehow, every year, people face the same issues. Which beggars the question: Why? Potholes, shoddy work plague Maximum City’s roads “Potholes are the bane of every one of us,” Malkani says. “Nothing new. So, then, why is it we keep having it? Of course it is the shoddy work, less supervision and equally, the material used is questionable in most cases. “When the citizens are alert and they work alongside, for monitoring purpose only, and in general, you know, look out ...when the contract is being done, when the work is being done... somehow it works out well,” she says. “Because you are always looking at things. And then I have found that, perfectly good footpaths are suddenly taken out to do a concretized footpath. “I think a bit of planning, proper coordination also is required because some roads are MMRD, some roads are BMCs, some roads are this and that. That doesn't help. So the quality suffers, the condition suffers, and you have broken areas where people suffer. But people's suffering is across. It doesn't matter where you are,” Malkani adds. How citizens can help Mumbai’s roads AGNI, an organisation working for the betterment of Mumbai, has been on the forefront of the demand for good roads and footpaths. AGNI trustee Zahida Banatwalla says citizens play a very important part when they get involved and monitor the road works. “An example being that in 2009, when AB Nair Road was being resurfaced, The then corporator Adolf D'Souza was standing shoulder to shoulder with us and we got the tonnage of the weight that a paver block and handle, and monitored the entire road. It was in a three-month period that it was finished,” Banatwalla says. “We can proudly say that this is one of the best roads that was ever done up. And it stands strong even today. So, my comment is that if the elected representatives pay attention to the quality... the residents get involved and monitor the quality of the work done. The result is for all to see.” Given the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's huge annual budget for roads, citizens are stumped by their poor condition. Contracts worth crores are awarded each year to repair or reconstruct roads. Banatwalla finds this unwarranted. “It boils down to bad quality of work, poor quality of material, no proper supervision, elected representatives not paying attention to the quality of the road being done up, and BMC of course. I mean, given the kind of budget that they have, why do they not monitor?” Banatwalla says. “Is it lack of concern for the citizens? Because how many incidents do we have where because of potholes, motorcyclists have died? Dumpers have killed people. And again, footpaths. Why are footpaths only left for encroachment and not for us? Wasn't it only recently 200 crore budget for the improvement of footpaths?” Corruption and political apathy to blame Citizens are also struggling with the condition of traffic and pedestrian amenities. Filmmaker and social activist Ashoke Pandit from Juhu ALM is especially worried about the menace of corruption and political apathy. “The conditions of traffic ,especially in the western suburbs, right from Malad to Bandra, is going from bad to worse,” Pandit says. “There's hardly any place to walk on the footpath. The roads are in bad condition. Most of the roads are even dug. You move around in Lokhandwala complex or you move around anywhere in the city, especially the western suburbs, they have been dug. An agency comes and digs it, does its job, covers the road. Then next week somebody else comes and he digs it again. So this entire corruption which is going on ... as far as roads are concerned, footpaths are concerned has become a menace.” While the BMC's move of concretizing all of Mumbai's roads may be welcome, but then these large works will need strict supervision of civic engineers. The question that arises is does the BMC have that kind of staff who will continuously monitor the work of the contractors to ensure that superior quality of roads are given to Mumbaikars? Audio production: Anil Chauhan