IE : Mumbai Makeover delayed : Nov 7,2007

Mumbai Makeover delayed

 Some components of MUTP yet to take off, deadline for completion of Bandra-Worli Sea Link reset

UNION Finance Minister P Chidambaram made sure Mumbai's administrators were not spared the blushes when he spoke at a function in the city on Tuesday; Make your city look presentable first, he told Congresspersons and industry heads.

Clearly, the big Mumbai makeover plan is cutting no ice with him. And here is why that's not surprising: From a maglev or very high speed train to the monorail, from a trans-harbour sea link to a unified metropolitan transport authority, there has been no dearth of ideas and proposals to add to the al­ready bursting-at-the-seams `Vision Mumbai' dossier. But delay, on every­thing from components of the Mumbai Urban 'Transport Project to the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, has been the overriding theme of the Big Mumbai Makeover.

Vaman Danait, president of the ac­tivists' group Forum for Improvement of Quality of Life in the Suburbs, says the weakest link is coordination among various agencies. "Apart from general lethargy; there is also lack of planning that makes timebound implementation of projects difficult," says Danait, whose group has been following up with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority on various in­frastructure projects that are planned but not completed.

• Mumbai Urban 'Iransport Project: A World-Bank funded project, it was have made road and rail transport more comfortable for the city commuter by June 2008. The status: A slew of compo­nents still to take off the Station Area Raffic Improvement Scheme, the Pedestrian Grade Separation Schemes and various road safety audits. The cru­cial Santacruz-Chembur Link Road is not even 50 per cent complete.

• Sewri Nhava 1rans Harbour Sea Link, stalled: Originally planned in the 1990s, this crucial connectivity

project for the proposed Navi Mum­bai airport, the tendering process for this project was stuck in litigation. The Supreme Court has now given the earlier disqualified Reliance En­ergy Ltd-led consortium time until December 15 to submit their bid for the sea link, estimated to cost Rs 4,000 crore and to be India's longest bridge across the sea at 22.5 km. The Worli-Nariman Point Sea Link is in the bidding phase too.

• Bandra-Worli Sea Link: Eight years in the making now, a contractor-consul­tant dispute on cost escalations is seeing the government fix yet another deadline for the project. Minister Anil Desh­mukh revised the April 2008 deadline discussed earlier this year to December 2008. The government is now saying the 5.6-km link will be ready by February 2009 "at least".

• Dharavi Redevelopment Project: After being on the drawing board for nearly a decade, the sudden announce­ment of the code of conduct in Decem­ber last year before the civic elections caused another delay, just when global tenders were to be published. Finally, tendering began in September, but the protests are far from over, for a project listed as one of the quick win" schemes in the makeover plan.

A series of other quick wins are still being fine-tuned too, three years after the makeover began-there are less than 250 fleet taxis in Mumbai nearly a year after the deadline for 1,000 new cabs lapsed, the ring-fenced in­frastructure fund and other models of funding infrastructure projects are still in the incubator.

South Mumbai Congress Member of Parliament Milind Deora himself gives them only a C-plus grade. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," he says. So although he appreciates the efforts of the government on cru­cial areas like 24-hour water supply, housing and transportation, he thinks the well-meaning plans could have fallen short of execution.

(Series concluded)

Publication : IE; Section : Mumbai; Pg : 3; Date : 7/11/07