Why terming Aarey a forest is a victory for Mumbai’s greens

@hepzia

Mumbai: The announcement by Maharashtra’s chief minister Uddhav Thackeray reserving 600 acres of Aarey as a forest within Mumbai, marks a huge victory for the environmental movement in Mumbai. The victory is also against the systematic plans to concretize and develop the pristine green forest with over 4.9 lakh trees, into a commercial business district. 

While the fight of the citizens fighting under the umbrella of Aarey Conservation Group (ACG) continues against the Metro-III car shed in there, the real fight was against the wiping out of the entire forest. After commercial development of textile mills land in Central Mumbai, usurping the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), the developer lobby had turned its eye for the commercial development of Aarey as a business district. The car shed was clearly just a front of the many other commercial projects there were to come up there. 

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Mumbai’s Development Plan 2014-34 had clearly unveiled real plans for developing 1009 hectares or 2493 acres of Aarey. “The Nariman Point, the Ballard Estate, the Bandra Kurla Complex were all lands owned by public authorities, which were harnessed upon in the making of business districts, through the evolution of Greater Mumbai. Today, as public land, only Aarey Colony offers potential for significantly restructuring the growth of the suburbs and Greater Mumbai over the next couple of decades.

The DP 2034 seizes this opportunity and presents the vision of Aarey Colony as a future growth node with potential to accommodate new commerce, cultural and institutional activities, combined with provision of large open space infrastructure that the suburbs must require,” the DP 34 stated. 

The DP further states: “If this prime land, owned by the State, is not properly planned, it may amount to a great loss of opportunity for the city to overcome deficiencies and provide large scale public infrastructure. The DP seeks to effectively plan and utilise the latent potential of Aarey Colony to provide land for institutions and much needed amenity deficit in open spaces, social and physical infrastructure to the Island City, and especially the suburbs.  

Aarey is envisaged as a new institutional area for the city with large recreational parks and spaces for conducting cultural activities. Large scale and specialized educational, research, and medical institutes could find a place here in the future. Aarey could also become a venue for national and regional sporting events, exhibitions. Large city parks within accessible distance, which are deficient in the suburbs, are proposed in Aarey. The shifting of the city zoo, as recently directed by the Forest Department, could also be accommodated in Aarey.” 

Pointing out to the 377.54 land already allocated to various government projects within Aarey like  Film City (133.14 ha, Slum redevelopment proposals (72.84 ha), Mahananda dairy (10.92 ha), Force One (39.65 ha), MHADA Colony (10.52 ha), apart from forthcoming projects like Zoo (76.89 ha), Metro III car shed (29.94 ha), the DP felt that that it was critical to prepare a master plan for Aarey to discourage ad hoc developments and allow for planned growth catering to strategic long‐term interests of the city.  

Aarey was also to be developed on the lines of New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park at the cost of chopping up the green lung of Mumbai. 

Is it any surprise then that the earlier Devendra Fadnavis government had insisted on setting up a Metro car shed right within the forest to facilitate all this commercial development. Their refusal to acknowledge this green zone with 4.9 lakh trees as a forest needs to be viewed in the backdrop of this commercial plan.  

Hence, this state policy turnaround to at least a part of Aarey as a forest comes as a sweet victory for the greens of Mumbai.