Navi Mumbai: A New Vision, A New Era

After we extended a warm welcome to Mr. Bhushan Gagrani, the distinguished IAS officer and the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Cidco, we had our very own Rtn. Purnima Advani talk about him to the members at our RCB meeting.

She introduced him as an esteemed visionary, and also a successful planner and achiever. His is probably one of the only Civil servants who has attained a PHD in management and MBA in governance. Beyond his academic excellence, he has devoted his life to Civil service after training at three renowned institutes in Nainital, Mussourie and at Panchgani.

He has been an exceptionally dynamic officer, and after a successful innings at MIDC he has also held many other coveted posts in Maharashtra, and been involved whole heartedly in the launch of ‘Make in India’ which as we all know is a passionate project of our Prime Minister. He has a vast experience in fields as diverse as youth affairs and sports, public health, industrial development and now Cidco. Wishing him all the very best, she then asked him to come forward and address the crowd.

Mr. Bhushan introduced Cidco, a Government of Maharashtra’s corporation that was formed in 1970. During the 50’s and 60’s Mumbai saw a sudden growth of population, as high as 35% to 45% and that is when there was a need to decongest the city, and that’s how the govt. corporation Cidco was set up to aid this process.

Many people had only a passing knowledge of Navi Mumbai while traveling to Lonavla, but not many were aware at that time, that they are crossing through one of the largest planned cities in the world.

Now with a population of over a 3 million people, it offers immense opportunities. The future development of mumbai is concentrated in Navi Mumbai since that is where there is the most scope to grow. It spreads across an area of 340 sq kms and has its own muncipal corporations and residential areas that have been developing over 40 years.

The main topic for the gathering today are related to concerns regarding the congestion at the current Mumbai Airport.

Although it sees over 45 million passengers, the airport’s capacity is only 40 million. In 2030 it is estimated to reach 100 million passengers per year.

Mr. Bhushan elaborated on the topic of the expansion of the airport saying that the aero activities and operations have their own limitations due to technical factors and there is a rising need for another airport, like there are in many cities. Some cities have minimum 2 international airports, and that has become imperative in a large city like ours. Or else it will become almost impossible to get in and around Mumbai.

The first challenge for Cidco is to find a suitable location which will not affect the flight path of the existing airports or the western ghats. And of course, the land has to have over 1200 hectares of area. We have started looking for such sites since 10 years and most were not technically fit. One proposed location that we narrowed down on is a site close to Panvel.

While a city like Delhi, comparatively has a lot of space to develop, Mumbai unfortunately has runways that are crisscrossing, allowing only one plane to take off at a time.

Although it is the only technically feasible land of that size in Mumbai, it is difficult to manage it with hills, rivers passing, mangroves and wetlands. If we plan to go beyond Vasai or Virar to get a suitable space, it happens to be too far, and therefor Cidco struggled with this dilemna before narrowning down on this one.

After several negotiations with the ministry of the environmental forests, to obtain clearances, the technical details have been presented and the bidding process is now on with 4 companies having been short listed.

Another challenge of the site besides the geographical and geological challenges are that there are about 10 villages and almost 3000 families that reside there, and removing them and shifting them in a democratic manner will pose to be a problem. Although they haven’t moved yet, the talks are still on and they have agreed to move out once the bidding process is complete, but we are not confident of this happening smoothly since it involves people and it is not an easy thing to do.

Once the work starts, it would take about 3-3.5 years towards completion. We have also proposed to plan a smart city next to the Airport, to be known as Pushpamandal. Although the work hasn’t started yet, all the necessary verticals have been addressed: the shifting of the people, the plans for engineering and the bidding. We hope that we can expect the actual work to begin in 6 months.

We will have to divert an entire river, which will be a huge challenge, and we have not yet found the right engineer for taking on such a difficult task. Although there are several issues like that facing us, we are moving forward, and quite confident that by 2010 the new airport will be ready, with 2 runways, 2 taxiways and an ultra modern cityway, he said.

Along with this project there is to be the planning of a city that scales up to 500 sq kms and that makes it larger than the existing city of Mumbai that is 450sq kms. There would be immense potential here, to invest in real estate and industries in the next 20-30 years.

He further talked about there being plans to find the right designers and architecrs to build a corporate park equivalent to Bandra Kurla Complex and hoping for it to be ready by the time the new airport is built.

The session ended with a very informative Q&A session that covered concerns about bidders walking out, connectivity to the airport, and to elaborate more on the choice of location vs. picking another area.