Transport Systems in Bombay/Mumbai
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Transport Systems in Bombay/Mumbai This paper seeks to explore the impact of transportation systems on urbanisation trends and characteristics in the colonial city of Bombay. The central focus of this paper is an examination of the interrelatedness of flows and mobilities in a cityscape engineered by colonial and indigenous forces of capital. Mumbai offers interesting insights in this area, given the deep historicity of its transport systems, the aspirational significance of the city in the local as well as global landscape and the constitution of the urban fabric through socio-cultural forces of migration, colonialism as well as a planned approach to urban development. The multi-faceted nature of urban life in the city is complemented by a dynamic exchange of goods, services and people both within and at its boundaries. Situating the multivariate factors for its expansion in the need to facilitate these exchanges is then fundamental for caricaturing its composition. Identifying both global and local factors in the sustenance and expansion of the city in the past provide crucial input for understanding the urbanity in the present. Transportation in the city is closely correlated with employment flows, residential and settlement patterns, industrial requirements and political agendas of planning and organising mobilities around the interests of elites and dominant class groups. Objectives have been wide-ranging, including promoting access and affordability on one hand while also facilitating capitalist enterprise and exchange to develop the primary industrial centre of the colonial government in Bombay. The analysis in this paper locates the historical origins of transport and the planned approach to organising the movement of commodities as well as people in the heterogeneous composition of the city, which often stems from the agendas of planning, promoting segregation and unevenness in the development patterns within the city. The larger aim of such an analysis is to throw light on the persistent inequalities within the city and recognise the ‘splintering’ of the urban. Mobilities and Flows in Colonial Bombay A colonial past foreshadows the construction of contemporary Mumbai and sets the stage for global and local flows of capital and labour in the city. It is also equally important to highlight the contributions of the Indian elements in this process. A foray into the historical context of the development of transport and capital networks informed by a sociological understanding of the complexity of the urban landscape of Bombay presidency can help establish the backdrop against which the current cityscape has evolved. Bombay’s growth as the ‘second city of the empire’ was closely tied to the inflow of capital, both foreign and indigenous, as a result of a century-long import-export trade. The unique location of Bombay as a port city aided its rise as an industrial centre highly conducive for business and accumulation of wealth which further encouraged economic activity at rates much higher than any other colonial city. Multiple factors contributed to the rise of Bombay as a hub for commercial activity and massive economic exchanges throughout the course of the 19th century. The British opium trade with China was significantly responsible for funnelling a sizeable amount of foreign capital which furthered the economic interests of multiple stakeholders in Bombay. These factors also included the increase in the volume of trade for cotton due to the American Civil War, the improvements in transport and communication which in turn enabled expansion of markets exponentially and the construction of railways, road networks and telegraph links which connected Bombay’s manufacturing industries and cotton textile mills to the local markets and stimulated indigenous demand. The newfound mobility of goods through rail networks was complemented by similar flexibility of movement of people from the hinterland to the urban locations as it opened up avenues of employment and resulted in a notable rise in long-distance migrations. While the cotton textile mills dominated the industrial landscape in Bombay, the money lending activities of the Gujarati entrepreneurial community alongwith the indigenous banking system set up in parts like Jhaveri Bazaar and Sheikh Memon Street constituted the sources of financial flows in the city. In fact, it has been argued that most of the industry established in Bombay by the end of the 19th century was a result of the investments made by Indian capitalists. As Bombay’s administration became increasingly more important due to the changing political structures in the colonial regime, the economic and political organisation of the city was brought into focus. Largely under the control of business owners and industrialists, the turn of the 19th century also saw a shift in power from the colonial governance towards the business owners and industrialists. Chandavarkar argues that it would be a mistake to conclude that the emergence of Bombay as the mainstay of colonial industrial prowess was solely a product of imperial modernity (Chandavarkar 2002). Bombay’s linkage with its hinterland which extended to most of the subcontinent, the capitalist forces of the internal economy and the workforce which migrated into Bombay and populated its mills and factories played a crucial role in the construction of colonial Bombay and laid the groundwork for future development. As the economy of Bombay closely affected the rural economy through labour and capital flows of remittances and reinvestment, the capitalist development within the city could be located both in the larger economic arrangements of the country as well as the world capitalist system through its colonial interconnections. Activities of trade, especially in opium and cotton became important sources of accumulation for the bourgeoisie in Bombay, profits from which brought in and reaped both by the British and Indian capitalists. These profits were channelled in the social construction of space in the city and made the transition to urbanity in Victorian Bombay a product of both western and native enterprise. The social engineering of the city’s geography in order to organise housing and civic arrangements was undertaken within a colonial framework but it was carried out using the architectural and technical labour of Indian professionals, namely civil engineers and architects. The city’s urban development was marked by negotiations and conflicts between the desires of the local inhabitants and that of the colonial regime’s vision for the organisation of the city space. Furthermore, while historically the Fort, the Esplanade and the soldier’s barracks had served as the military base for the colonial masters, the elite merchant communities in the city, namely the Bohras, Banias and the Parsis alongwith other Hindu and Muslim trading communities made their presence known on the city’s landscape through the emergence of the Bazaargate localities. Patterns of settlement, largely determined by the need of commerce, saw the emergence of housing arrangements structured around communities and their religion, ethnic and occupational identities. The chawl became a characteristic element of the city’s social space as housing became an increasingly scarce resource with the influx of migrant populations from all over the country. The response of the colonial administration came in the form of an “urban improvement” trust in the city which sought to design the city space in order to combat the growing exigencies of population growth and the resulting problems of sanitation and hygiene. The plague at the end of the 19th century further exacerbated this requirement and set the wheels in motion for intensive urban planning in colonial Bombay. Construction of road and rail networks and policies to curb the spread of disease formed the main working points for restructuring the city’s landscape through town planning exercises. A retrospective inquiry into the design of various buildings and prominent landmarks in the city, through an analysis of the architectural styles of the city, reveals a significant contribution to the making of Bombay by the local communities who shared the city with their colonial masters (Chopra 2011). A recognition of the historicity of the city’s transport, housing and infrastructural networks elaborates the sheer multiplicity of possible future directions for urban development in the city. The next section examines the planning exercises undertaken in the Mumbai metropolitan region and the variety of objectives and concerns they sought to target. Urbanisation for Whom? Having recognised the variegated composition of the city of Mumbai as a result of both its past and present status of a ‘global-city’ in the Indian subcontinent, it would also be useful to explore the history of planned urbanisation interventions in the city which predate to the Bombay City Improvement Trust set up by the British in 1898 in the aftermath of the plague. The expansion of the large-scale industrial base in the city was also accompanied by the degradation of the environment and a land-availability crunch due to the laissez-faire urbanisation practices of the local elites. The congestion and unsanitary conditions resembled those witnessed in pre-industrial Europe, wherein the introduction of the industry also mandated a rehaul of the urban ecosystem and led to urban-renewal missions. Bombay followed a similar pattern as the city’s local elites sought to ‘clean-up’