One-Third Of Paradise

Nine years after it blue-printed a master plan for the mill land of National Textile Corporation (NTC) in Mumbai, the state government-appointed Charles Correa committee might get more significance. The Correa report is a detailed plan on development of each of the properties of the 25 NTC and one state-owned while conforming to a larger vision of grooming the mill area in central Mumbai in a rational, humane and aesthetic manner. The report is back in focus after a Bombay High Court order last week stayed the sale and development of mill land in the city.

The report has detailed drawings and measurements of each NTC mill with artists' impression of redevelopment that would include affordable housing, pedestrian and commercial plazas, grounds, green spaces, boulevards and even a museum. It details how certain NTC mills along the waterfront could be redeveloped so that the city becomes richer by another beach like Juhu or Chowpatty.

The report was put together by a team of professionals and bureaucrats in August 1996, five years after the Development Control Rules had come into force allowing sale of surplus mills land. But it had elicited little response from mill owners. The government believed that a master plan showing how each group could gain individually, and the city collectively, would convince owners to sell. Charles Correa, a well-known architect and urban planner, chaired the study group.

Correa recalls that private mill owners did not allow them access into their properties despite the panel being appointed by the government. "But we did a detailed study of all 25 NTC and one state-owned mill. We believed it could be the best way out for all parties concerned but most importantly, the city would get a second chance to develop itself in a planned way."

The report kept gathering dust in Mantralaya as successive governments scurried all over for ideas to redevelop mill land—only to ultimately parcel out individual plots. "It's idiotic... the pace of land sales in the last five years," shrugs Correa. It is high time the confused government began reading the report.