Know what it needs to transform AAMCHI MUMBAI. About the problems that every Mumbaikar faces on a daily basis like – TRAFFIC, POLLUTION, SLUMS, HYGIENE, SANITATION. Do you know what will happen to Mumbai if the people living in slums d not show up – right from your auto, taxi, school bus, BEST buses drivers and conductors, dabbawalas, street food hawkers, cleaners and sweepers, your building garbage collectors, school, college and office peons and aayas, the wardboys, the nurses, your househelpers, your plumber, electrician, your vehicle mechanics, etc all live in unhygienic place called slums. And these are encroached lands. If we had more land we could have more park houses as almost 40% of the city roads are blocked in parking, resulting in traffic. AND SO ON…. Problems of Mumbai are interconnected and are a vicious circle. No matter how big the problem may be there is always a solution. But to know the solution, you need to know many things. Let me share some lights on Mumbai thru the articles here. Keep reading the space and be a part MUMBAI’S TRANSFORMATION, MUMBAI’S DEVELOPMENT.
About 125 years ago, a Parsi banker wanted to have home-cooked food in his office and hired someone to collect it from his home and bring it to him at work. He was the first ever Dabbawala or tiffin carrier. Many people liked the idea and the demand for Dabba delivery soared.
In the beginning the deliveries were informal, with arrangements being made between workers and Dabbas. But one day an Indian entrepreneur Mahadeo Havaji Bachche saw the opportunity and started the lunch delivery service. He started with a team of 100 Dabbawalas.
As the city grew, the demand for Dabba delivery grew too.
The system has developed and from the original 100 Dabbawalas in 1890 there is today a Mumbai Army of 5,000 Dabbawalas fulfilling the hunger of almost 200,000 workers with home-cooked food brought from their home to their office and back each day and on time.
The people who use the service tend to be middle-class citizens who, for reasons of economy, hygiene, caste and dietary restrictions or simply because they prefer whole-some food from their kitchen, rely on the dabbawala to deliver a home cooked mid-day meal.
Most of them reach work by train, which means they leave home early and may be boarding chaotically packed carriages, making carrying their own tiffin a challenge. The Dabbawalla system provides a welcome solution by collecting meals prepared at home, then getting them to the office and back.
Today let’s see the life of a dabbawala who live in slums and have a just in time delivery record be in summer, winter, floods, rains, etc.
“People Living in Slums are the one who actually runs the city of MUMBAI”
Life of Dabbawala Vitthalbhai
Life of Shankar
See a day in the life of Shankar — one of 5,000 Dabbawalas in Mumbai responsible for delivering 200,000 fresh home-cooked lunches to Mumbai’s office workers each day. Each day, with 60kg on his head, a Dabbawala travels some 65km. This home-cooked network makes less than 1 mistake per 6 million deliveries.
From an economically and socially under-developed country to one of the world’s best nations, Singapore has come a long way. Lacking in natural minerals and resources, it drew its strength from being a “stable and progressive economy” to drive more foreign direct investments and private investments. The country and everything that it is today reflects public-private sector partnerships and investment in innovation and security, among other things. During its transformative journey, one of the many challenges that the city-state faced was housing for its people — this was when the government decided to step in. Government housing served two purposes: it gave Singaporeans a sense of ownership towards their country, where their family and friends lived, and also a reason for them to stay in their country and serve it.
In land-scarce Singapore, it can be hard to strike a balance between heritage preservation and necessary urban development. However, the city-state has undertaken long-term strategic planning to optimise depleting resources like land, manpower and energy. What they’ve also achieved by this means, is eradicating homeslessness.
When one hears of public housing, one imagines grimy stairwells, peeling, seepage-infested walls, unloved and uncared for public spaces — but these do not hold true when it comes to Singapore. For over 50 years now, Singapore has been transforming public housing — from basic concrete blocks to shiny and slick high-rises. Singapore started its mass public housing project in the 1940s, led by the Singapore Improvement Trust, which by 1959 had built more than 20,000 flats. When the former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew rose to power towards the end of the 1950s, he built 30,000 more flats in less than three years. And today, the authorities say there are a more than a million.
In 1964, the government introduced the Home Ownership for the People Scheme to give citizens a tangible asset in the country and a stake in nation-building. This push for home ownership also improved the country’s overall economic, social, and political stability. In 1968, to help more citizens become home owners, the government allowed the use of Central Provident Fund (CPF; the equivalent of India’s Employer’s Provident Fund) savings for the down payment, and to service the monthly mortgage loan installments. This, together with other schemes and grants introduced over the years, has made home ownership highly affordable, say officials at the Housing and Development Board in Singapore.
Singapore before Public Housing Project
The government, which owns 90 percent of the land, promoted widespread home ownership to knit together an island-nation populated by ethnic Chinese, Indians and Malays. The vast housing system shocks visitors from every nation — it is clean, peaceful, crime-free and every three to five years undergoes a redesigning drive and at times, re-modelling. The public homes of Singapore use the technology and innovation at their service to build lives around them and remind some of the homes built across the US and Europe in the ’60s.
The Housing and Development Board of Singapore conceptualise towns: an example of this is Toa Payoh. A “mature” residential town located in the northern part of Singapore, Toa Payoh is the granddaddy of the towns in Singapore. Home to at least 1,07,100 residents in 37,358 flats, the Toa Payoh town got Singapore’s first Mass Rapid Transit. “These aren’t just neighbourhoods, they are their own little cities, you see,” said a resident on condition of anonymity. “Super markets, restaurants, banks, drinking holes, schools, gardens, lakes… you name it, you have it. All of that is just a short bus ride away. So, it doesn’t matter how far you live from the Central business district. And there is no crime.”
Singapore After Public Housing Project
Going further north on the Tanjong Punggol peninsula in the North East Region of Singapore, is Punggol, a quiet, green suburb lined with lakes which is now HDB’s newest township. It’s is also touted to be Singapore’s mini Silicon Valley. Punggol will become the heart of digital and cyber-security industries and is set to create 28,000 new jobs in tech and Information Technology.
As of 2018, there are about a million public homes in Singapore largely concentrated in two dozen new towns which helm the city’s coastal zone. All the homes come with a 99-year lease which are sold at lower-than-market prices. Applicants must wait three or four years for the construction to be completed.
Singapore has no homelessness and compared to other rich cities — London, New York, Hong Kong — HDB homes are more affordable, cleaner and safer. The deal works for the state too. According to reports, in 2015-16 the treasury put aside S$1.8 billion, or 2.4 percent of the national budget, for housing, which was enough to cover HDB’s annual deficit. HDB’s budget was $17 billion and it benefits from government loans but also borrows from banks and the bond market. People’s Action Party, which has been running the country for over five decades, has its housing scheme to thank for its political longevity.
Every Singaporean feels the need to play a social role, a resident shopping at the Waterway Point, an upcoming shopping centre in Punggol said. Owning a home, being part of the nation that they help build, supports the government’s agenda of nation built by their own, a great deal. However, strict rules about who can buy a house and government’s use of control to decide how an average Singaporean lives their life, raises several questions. Married couples are granted priority to own a home, a clause justified to raise country’s low birth rate. Those who are single can apply for their own flats but only if they are still unmarried by the age of 35.
This visit was facilitated by The Singapore International Foundation
Rani’s family lived in one of the peripheral slums of the Basti called Prem Nagar Slums, one of the most deprived precincts and also the most crowded. The average monthly income of a family there barely exceeds 3000 Rupees. Rani lived with her mother, two unmarried sisters and a married sister and her family in their two rooms arranged one on top of the other. The married sister occupied the top room. Half of the bottom room was occupied by a bed and the remaining floor space at the back was used for cooking, storage and for sitting around. The room had windowless walls on three sides and only opened onto the street in front. Rani’s mother had carved out a small shop selling cigarettes in the front of the room. There was no attached toilet or any piped water supply in this house.
When she was 11 years old, Rani kept a journal for me for a week, recording her day before she went to sleep. This account of her life provides some valuable glimpses about the multiple roles a girl child plays in this community. Rani was responsible for fetching milk for tea for her family every morning from Hasan Bhai’s tea stall. She would meet and chat with friends and neighbours here. In poor families such as hers, food is purchased on a daily basis, as there are no refrigerators for storing groceries.
Rani was a good practising Muslim. She washed herself in the morning and routinely offered all five prayers, or namaz, throughout the day. She called on her friend Meher, who lived around the corner, every morning and walked with her to non-formal school for adolescent girls. Rani performed daily household chores and shopping for the family, fetching cigarettes, snacks and groceries both for her mother’s shop and for home. Rani acted as guardian to her little niece, playing with her, feeding her, looking after her. She was a part-time shopkeeper, and sat in their small house-front shop to relieve her mother of her shopkeeping duties for some time every day.
Rani was a good student; other girls came to her for homework help. She bought sweets with small change, liked to play with domestic pets and with friends in the street in front of her house, in the nearby open spaces including the yard of the public toilet across from her house, in Meher’s back yard, and in the city park that was just outside the wall that separated her street from the park. Rani’s two older unmarried sisters took care of the cooking, cleaning and washing.
Rani had a friend called Wahida – unlike her, an orphan who had grown up in many households. Wahida split her time between the houses of her older siblings, her grandmother and her friend Rani’s family. Her days were filled with household chores, besides attending the non-formal Hope school and evening religious studies. Wahida also attended a vocational training course in tailoring and sewing every afternoon.
Both Rani and Wahida had grown up in severe poverty. Rani’s father had died of a drug overdose after reducing the family to penury. Rani’s mother barely earned a dollar a day from her shop and found it difficult to pay even the two rupees that would have bought Rani a hot lunch at school. Wahida had no one to watch over her and depended on charity for meals and a roof for the night. Yet both girls not only survived but thrived in this slum which represents one of the best examples of social capital in an urban neighborhood. Seven years later, Rani and Wahida have both successfully completed school and are undergoing training as nursery teachers. Wahida is also working as an assistant to a city physiotherapist.
People like Rani and Wahida take vocational training in tailoring, etc and are actually the source workers for your designer clothes.
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The terms “affordable housing” and “public housing” are frequently used interchangeably, causing a lot of confusion in the process. They are actually two very different.
Affordable housing refers to housing units that are affordable by that section of society whose income is below the median household income. Houses are owned by the households. Families buy the homes at affordable prices.
The concept of Public Housing was introduced by the United States government to provide housing for low-income families, disabled persons, and the elderly. These families or persons must meet certain eligibility requirements to participate in the program and may be required to pay a nominal amount of rent. The units are considered public because they are funded, owned, and administered by government authorities.
How Public Housing Transformed New York City 1935-67
Everywhere on the ground lay sleeping natives– hundreds and hundreds. They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads and all. Their attitude and rigidity counterfeited death.
– Mark Twain, on a nocturnal drive through Bombay in 1896.
The Early History of Slums
Late in the 17th century, Gerald Aungier tried to attract traders and artisans to Bombay. As a result, the population grew six-fold in the fourteen years between 1661 and 1675. Some of the more prosperous traders built houses inside the British fort. The rest lived in crowded “native-towns” around the walls. These were probably the first slums to grow in Bombay.
The problem of overcrowding certainly remained through the 18th century. A count made in 1794 found 1000 houses inside the fort walls and 6500 immediately outside.
All over the world, the 19th century saw the growth of slums give the lie to the idea of progress brought on by large-scale industrialisation and the understanding and control of diseases. Bombay was no exception. The cotton boom, followed by the rapid growth of mills and shipping drew a large population from the rest of the country into a city ill-equipped to deal with them. In the middle of the 19th century slums grew around the mills and other places of employment.
The Birth of Slums
Historically, slums have grown in Bombay as a response to a growth of population far beyond the capacity of existing housing. Migrants are normally drawn to the city by the huge disparity between urban and rural income levels. Usually the residents of these densely populated enclaves live close to their place of work. The residential area itself does not provide employment.
Bombay knows another reason for the formation of slums. As the city grew, it took over land that was traditionally used for other purposes. The Koli fishermen were displaced during the development of the harbour and port. Those driven out of the fishing villages improvised living space that was often far shabbier than before. This process continues even now, at the end of the 20th century.
On the other hand, some villages were encysted by the city growing around them. Dharavi, originally a village with a small tanning industry, has become a slum in this fashion. Many of the older slums in Byculla and Khar were initially separate villages, with their own traditional industries.
Churchgate,CST,Dadar,apolo bundar,Retro Mumbai,The city of Bombay originally consisted of seven islands, namely Colaba, Mazagaon, Old Woman’s Island, Wadala, Mahim, Parel, and Matunga-Sion. This group of islands, which have since been joined together by a series of reclamations, formed part of the kingdom of Ashoka, the famous Emperor of India.
See how mumbai , then Bombay city was , as described by the Britishers… Long liv Mumbai , eventually the charm has been lost , just have a look at the mumbai / bombay it was in 1920s
Bombay has no bombs and is a harbor not bay. Today(1st May), in the year 1960, Bombay (now Mumbai) was transformed from a Bombay State to Bombay City and a capital of a newly created state Maharashtra. Life of the present Mumbaikar’s is quite different from the early one’s.
From Stone Age to Sultan of Gujarat:
Anyone living in Mumbai today knows Colaba, Mazagaon, Mumbadevi, Worli, Parel, Mahim as local places of Mumbai. But, did you know that once upon a time they were 7 independent islands. In fact, Mumbai has its mark since stone age. Later it was a part of Magadhan Empire ruled by the Ashoka Maurya. The empire receded and left the Buddhists monks and Kolis, whose stone Goddess – MumbaiDevi, gave its name to the current alpha city in the year 1995.
Mumbai changed hands many times. After Magadha Empire, islands were ruled by the Silhara Dynasty till the middle of the 13th century. Walkeshwar Temple, Banganga, Elephanta caves probably date from this time – under Silhara patronage.
After Silhara’s, King Bhimdev founded his kingdom with “Mahikawati” (Mahim) as its Capital. He was said to be from Anahilavada dynasty of Gujarat. Babulnath Temple was built under his patronage. He brought various communities from Saurashtra and other parts of Gujarat to Mahikawati. Later the islands were wrested by the Muslim rulers of Gujarat. The mosque in mahim probably date from this time.
Deliberate Twirl to West:
Portuguese Period:
Portuguese explorer Fransisco de Almeida’s ship sailed into the deep natural harbour of the island in 1508, and he called it Bom Bahia (Good Bay). In 1534, Bahadur shah was forced to sign the treaty of Bassein (at present – Vasai) with the Portuguese wherein Bassein and seven islands were surrendered to the Portuguese thereby ending the Islamic rule in the city. By this time Portuguese had already possessed west coast areas of Panjim, Daman and Diu. With the treaty, they possessed Bombay and named it as “Bom Bahia” meaning a “Good Bay” in Portuguese.
They built numerous churches at the areas where the major population comprised of Roman Catholics. St. Andrews Church at Bandra is the only church that remains with the Portuguese style facade. Another church is the St. John the Baptist church built by the Portuguese in Mumbai. located inside SEEPZ, Andheri, which is opened only once in a year at present.
They also built forts at Sion, Mahim, Bandra and Bassien which can still be seen.
Dutch and the British:
In 1580, Spain invaded Portugal territories which opened the way for the Europeans to enter India (Possessed by Portuguese then). The Dutch arrived first, followed by the British. Portuguese had monopoly in trade in the 15th and earth 16th centuries. As a result, Battle of Swally was fought between the British and the Portuguese at Surat at around 1612 for the possession of Bombay(one of the seven islands then). The marriage treaty of British King Charles II and Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza in 1661 brought these islands into British as a part of a marriage dowry. Other 6 islands continued to be under Portuguese possession. British renamed “Bom Bahia” to “Bombay”.
In 1668, according to the Royal Charter of 27th March 1668, an agreement between British Empire and East India Company led to the transfer of Bombay(one of the seven islands then) to the British East India Company at an annual rest of £10.
Company then built harbours and warehouses for trade. Customs house was also built. Fortifications were built around Raj Bhavan (formerly Bombay Castle). The second governor of Bombay saw the opportunity to develop islands into a centre of commerce to rival other ports which were still possessed by the local kingdoms then. Various business incentives were offered which attracted Jews, Armenians, Brahmins, Gujaratis, Bohras and other communities. Population of Bombay rose approx. 6 times more in a period of 5 years. Ship building industry moved to Bombay from Surat.
In 1782, Hornby Vellard engineering project was started by the just assumed Governor of Bomaby – William Hornby to unite the 7 islands into one single landmass. The Bombay was connected to Salsette by a causeway at Sion, Colaba and little Colaba were connected to Bombay, causeway connecting mahim and bandra followed and so on. All 7 islands were merged to form a state of Bombay. Company built infrastructures like railways, Asiatic Society of Bombay (town hall), Elphinstone college, commercial banks, newspapers. All these activities led to the educational and economic progress and overall development of Bombay city. Victoria Terminus station (now CST) was one of the finest stations in the world then.
The concept of Dabbawalas originated during this period. Britishers in Bombay who did not liked the local food, set up the service of dabbawalas to carry lunch to their workplace straight from their home.
Post-Independence Period:
In 1950’s there was a demand from the United Maharashra Committee (Sanyukta Maharashtra Samiti) to create a separate Marathi speaking state “Maharashtra” from the state of Bombay with city Bombay (now Mumbai) as its capital.
On 1st May 1960, state of Bombay was portioned into the Marathi speaking state (Maharshatra) and Gujarati speaking state (Gujarat).
In 1995 Bombay was renamed to “Mumbai”, after Mumbadevi, a stone goddess of deep-sea fisherman.
