Coastal Road: A Road For Few, Paid For By Taxpayers And The Environment |
This past weekend came bearing more news that begged the question: how much destruction of natural ecology in a city is fair enough to satisfy ambitious road projects that benefit a small section of people? The trigger was, of course, the Bombay High Court’s permission to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to fell 45,675 of the nearly 60,000 mangroves to facilitate the construction of the northern arm of the coastal road, which will connect Versova to Bhayander. A total of 102 hectares of forest land would be affected, the BMC counsel informed the HC.
This 26.3 km section of the coastal road, set to cost Rs 20,000 crore and be completed by 2028, is slated to considerably cut road travel time between Mumbai’s western suburbs and the Bhayander-Vasai area in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. While permitting the felling, the division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad directed compensatory afforestation and stated that the BMC plea would be kept pending for ten years, during which the civic body would have to file annual reports on the compensatory plantation. This, unbelievably, will be in Chandrapur, which is approximately 850 kilometres away on the Samruddhi Mahamarg and a densely forested part of Maharashtra bearing little ecological relevance to Mumbai.
In any other context, this might have been considered absurd. One, that a coastal road as expensive as this, financially and ecologically, is being executed; two, that the compensatory afforestation has been allowed so far away; and three, that........