A disaster becomes a farce when the underlying tragedy gets buried, for whatever be the reason. That is just what has happened with the Supreme Court order paving the way for more malls and luxury apartments in the congested metropolis of Mumbai that should translate into billions of rupees for mill owners.
It is not just the court ruling which will be environmentally calamitous for Mumbai. The real tragedy lies in the fact that all voices of reason have been drowned in the Babel of eulogies that have been flooding the newspapers and the news channels. Trust the media to slut themselves for the shortsighted interests of the real estate mafia.
The ruling clears the way for the sale of about 600 acres (240 hectares) in a city where land is hard to come by. Mumbai has only 0.03 acres of open land per 1,000 people, perhaps among the lowest in the world. More than half the city's 17 million people live in slums or on pavements, and high housing costs have pushed even middle-income families to distant suburbs. But then, malls are more important, dearies. Who gives a darned hell whether the city's lungs get choked.
That the media did not (give a hell, that is), was palpable from the parochial slant that was given to the coverage of the Supreme Court ruling. The court's ruling pertained to a technicality about the sale of surplus land by the National Textile Corporation (NTC) being legal. And the newspapers, be they pink or white, heaved a sigh of relief. Understandably so. A city which is seeing a pitched battle for circulation among three newspapers has to rely a lot on real estate developers. In case you were not aware, a bulk of the advertisement rakings of newspapers come from the real estate sector. Not just in Mumbai, but the world over.
Yes, we all have our biases, for sure. But the unabashed prejudice that came through the news reports was brazenly farcical, to make a gross understatement. That the media is here to serve corporate interests has been said many times over by critics. The media coverage proves beyond reasonable doubt that journalists are not here to protect or speak for the interests of the people. They are here for their own tarty interests.
Let's have a peek at what they have been saying. The intros are all tell-tale.
The Economic Times (SC clears NTC mill land sale) opened, "Glitzy malls, spanking new offices and hotels, and upscale apartments could start springing up in the dingy and dilapidated environs of central Mumbai 2-3 years from now…." And served the death knell with "With this, the apex court has put an end to the long and bitter battle for Mumbai's mill land between environmentalists and mill owners." Boy, weren't they just glad? ET was quite pleased that property prices would now stablise in the city. Hmmm.
ET's sister, the Times of India (SC opens up 600 acres in the heart of Mumbai) was just as shameless, "Mumbai's heritage, its skyline, will change forever… and paved the way for 'planned development' with malls and highrises to come up on large prime swathes of real estate occupied by sick cotton mills in central Mumbai." Skewed view that. You couldn't be sure with BusinessLine (Mumbai builders are a relieved lot now) whether the builders were more relieved or the news managers at BL were.
The Telegraph couldn't wait for the demolitions to start with "The verdict is out — and the bulldozers and cranes can move in to demolish the skeletal remains of the textile mills to make way for sparkling glass-and-chrome retail and commercial properties in the heart of Mumbai. Private millowners were scrambling to whisk the dust off their blueprints hours after the apex court cleared the sale of five mills of the state-owned National Textile Corporation (NTC)."
The storyline was uncannily similar everywhere else. Well, almost everywhere. About development. About how NTC felt it had been vindicated by the court ruling. About how many swanky malls would be built on the rubble of the mills. The same newspapers which had cried their lungs out after last year's Mumbai floods coming down heavily on politicians and bureaucrats for making the city an environmental disaster, failed to find environmentalists they could quote in their stories. Not surprising. The higher echelons in the news industry are dominated by people whose notions about environment are limited to non-usage of plastic bags and switching off lights when not in use.
The environmental angle was sorely missing from the stories. The unkindest cut of 'em all, unfortunately, came from the one we journalists call "the journalist's newspaper" – the Indian Express. Of all persons, it chose to anchor page one on Wednesday with a spokesman of the real estate community – Hafeez Contractor. The architect flayed environmentalists, and made the preposterous claim that the Supreme Court verdict will now actually ensure more green space for the city. Goodness. Are we missing something here? Maybe, Contractor will be walking and talking with Shekhar Gupta next. Unless, of course, he hasn't as yet. Maybe, he will again.
The newspapers and news channels have all told us that there is so much of good news for real estate developers and property buyers in Mumbai. No one has told us the bad news yet. Probably, they won't. This is not a question of malls versus mills. It is one about an environmental damage that is being silently wrought on the people of today. The loss will be of the generation of tomorow. That's why this tragedy is such a farce.
