30 Colonial Port Cities Chennai and Mumbai

Amita Bhide

I.  Introduction

This is a module that comprises case studies of two cities viz. Chennai and Mumbai. However, it is not just a tale of two metros in India. It is an insight into the methods and approach of urban studies and the possibilities therein. Chennai and Mumbai are cities undergoing transformations. These cities have several things in common. Both are port cities, with their origins in the colonial period. Their municipal corporations are some of the oldest in the country. Both have emerged as metros in the post-colonial period and are currently in the throes of substantive restructuring of various realms. These transformations are spurred by globalisation on one hand with East Asian economies as models- Chennai models itself after Singapore, Mumbai sees itself as following Shanghai. They have also experienced a stamping of regional identities in parallel with this experience of globalization through a renaming process aimed at purging of colonial identities.These case studies give an insight into how local, endogenous factors interface with multiple exogenous circuits and shape a distinct urban scape. These case studies are not exhaustive and are meant to encourage further questions and inquiry.

Section 1: Mumbai

Mumbai is a city with a history that spans less than four hundred years. These nearly four hundred years have seen the city being made and unmade several times while also retaining some of the legacies of the past. The cityscape has been produced through top down processes but its contestations by excluded sections as well. A key ongoing theme in the city is the contrasts it presents between opportunities and denials, wealth (housing some of the wealthiest persons on earth) and poverty (nearly half the city lives in slums) and chaos and order. A study of transformations is thus also a study of how these continuities have been maintained through these turbulent transformations.

Colonial Mumbai

Mumbai or Bombay as it was known then has no precolonial history. It is thus a product of the colonial period. Historians differ over the extent to which the city is a colonial construct alone (Kosambi 1988, Hazareesingh 2001) or involved an interplay of colonial processes, indigenous forces and chance (Gyanprakash 2012, Farooqui,2012, Kidambi 2007) When the East India company rented and gradually acquired Bombay from the Portuguese in 1661, it was just an archipelago of seven islands that had the potential of a natural harbour with a vast hinterland. The creation of Bombay as a viable city over a period of a hundred and fifty years involved enhancing control over the region, encouraging mercantile communities and labourers from Gujarat to migrate and expanding opportunities of trade with China. By the end of the nineteenth century, Bombay didn’t just serve as a commercial and financial junction between a vast hinterland and the capitalist world economy but also became the locus of a major cotton textile industry that was founded and dominated by Indian entrepreneurship (Kidambi ibid).The spatial form of the city was highly divided (Dwivedi and Mehrotra, 1995), incorporating the racism of the colonisers with the ‘purity and pollution’ principles prevalent in the spatial organization of Indian society. Even though the initial wall that divided the colonial planned city from the Native town was broken down, geographical divides continued with the South and the West of the city with better beaches, hills became the abodes of the well to do while the labourers were concentrated in the swampy, eastern belt prone to malaria and close to the docks and the textile mills.Beyond the spatial form, the colonial legacy also expressed itself in the nature of planning, laws, institution of land ownership and creation of institutions (Municipal Corporation, university, and courts of law).

Chandavarkar (2004 ) points out how the city was created with the exploitation of labour that migrated from the larger hinterlands. This industrial city that took shape under colonial mentorship actively nurtured indigenous capital, initially through a collaborative relationship that grew strained around World War II and thus developed a nationalistic character. It thus became the site where the famous Bombay Plan that laid out a blueprint for post-independence development of India was laid out. As a city that developed with migration, Bombay developed a cosmopolitan character that embraced several ethnicities packed in proximate neighbourhoods. The city’s obsession with ‘money’ created a secularism of sorts that has been portrayed through several films. Protest became a part of the city’s character  during this period as well, it became the site for strong labour and national freedom struggle.

II. Post colonial City

The ‘urbs prima in Indis’ characterization of Bombay continued in the post colonial era though it was contested on several realms. The first of these was the attempt to provincialize Bombay when the state of Maharashtra was forged through a decoupling of Bombay province that included parts of contemporary Maharashtra and Gujarat. This was also a period when the labour politics coincided with the politics of regionalism. The overlap was broken through a process of centralisation at the state level which eroded the powers and autonomy of the Bombay Municipal Corporation and generated parallel institutions at the state level.

Policies that directed growth of industries away from the city were actively pursued.At the same time, crises like droughts in the neighbouring states brought in significant population into the city at well over 6% per year. The result was a geography of the city spilled into the peripheral towns along the suburban railway lines, creating a metropolitan Bombay much before its conceptualization as such by the planning authorities (Bhide, 2014).

Another facet of Bombay i.e. housing crisis also took shape in the period after 1970. The city had faced a housing shortage since the Second World War; the government measure to curb speculation was to introduce a Rent Control Act that froze rents at 1949 prices and lent significant protection to tenants. In 1976, the introduction of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) by the central government further curbed real estate activity. Patel (2005) estimates that the cumulative impact of both these legislations has been so significant that it made informal housing i.e. slums a solution that several lower segments in government jobs had to resort to. The growth of slums in industrial Bombay was so fast that it compelled the state government to pioneer several policies that were later followed by several states in the country. In 1972, the first slum census in the city registered over 40% of the city’s population in slums. Investment in planning and public services stagnated so that living in the city became strained.

The real change however emerged in the 1990s when the manufacturing economy of the city began to decline, following a massive textile strike in 1982 as a catalyst. The impact of this decline was so significant that there was a fall of over 8.9% organised sector employment per year in the decade of 1980-90(Development 1995). By 1991, over 65% of the city’s workforce was engaged in the unorganized sector (MMRDA, 1996). A substantive chunk of labour was always engaged in petty economic activity but 1990, it emerged as the primary option for employment. The city still retained its cosmopolitan culture and the culture of protest but as Appadurai (2000) comments- ‘a malignant city began to emerge from beneath the cosmopolitan ethos of the earlier period’.

The nadir of this malignant city was reached in 1993 when there were massive riots in the city, following the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Over a thousand people were killed in the two phases of the riots (Srikrishna, 1998). Unlike previous instances of localised, episodic communal violence; violence sustained for a number of days and was spread through various parts of the city and especially suburbs. Hansen (2009) attributes the severity of the riots to the decline of secular working class politics and the cumulative build-up of identity politics. Indeed the biggest gainer in the riots was the Shivsena which came to power in the state in the elections immediately following the riots. One of the first acts of the new government was to change the name of the city from Bombay to Mumbai, an act filled with several deeper resonances, given the backdrop (Patel and Masselos 2003)

Mumbai attempts to be world class

The post millennium Mumbai is one that shows several contradictions. Its economy has transited from manufacturing to services which include finance, hospitality, entertainment, retail and management consulting at both ends of the economy. Production has shifted to the slums or to the metro region and has been completely informalised. Identity politics dominates the political landscape with multiple contours- Hindu- Muslim, Marathi- North Indian and vegetarianism- nonvegetarianism. Space economy has emerged as one of the most important driving forces in the city.

An increased clamour for making Mumbai into a world class city is shaped by all these currents. Initially emerging as a corporate call for transforming Mumbai ( Mackenzie, 1996); the project of making Mumbai world class has engaged the national imagination ( Prime Minsters office in 2003 prepared a report for making Mumbai into an international finance centre) as well as that of the state leaders who call for converting Mumbai into Shanghai. There has been significant investment in projects of infrastructure transformation, particularly transport projects that have opened up new lands for growth, water and sanitation projects

  The city is in a redevelopment mode with several areas opening for transformation into more vertical structures, including slums, old public housing projects and now large areas. Banerjee- Guha(2015) sees spatial redevelopment of Mumbai as an instance of entrepreneurial planning that privileges the emerging needs of capital- state nexus. There is thus a massive spatial restructuring of the city that is impacting the social fabric of the city. The city which was once known for its ‘secular, working and living culture’ is now increasingly being seen as a city at risk. Besides being the subject of terror acts in the last decade, the city has also seen increased proportions of crime against women (Bhide, 2014).Nijman( 2006) concludes that Mumbai’s aspiration for a world class city is at the cost of its

lack of attention to the impoverished masses. Chattaraj( 2012 ) concludes that the project of world class city in Mumbai could not materialise because of the peculiar nature of political and economic interests that encourages only jugaad urbanism rather than comprehensive development . Mumbai’s aspirations for a world class city thus have shaped a city that seems to be definitely changing but changing in parts and producing a deeply divided city as an outcome.

III.  Chennai Colonial Madras

The colonial history of madras follows similar contours as Bombay and yet differs in significant ways. In 1640s, when the East India Company built a warehouse, and fortified it; Madras was a collection of fishing villages and agriculture based villages and one of the first colonial cities (Kosambi and Brush, 1988). As it developed its business, it began to draw in hundreds of migrants from the region as coolies, labourers and even low level administrators, the development of Fort St George ie the British Town and the Chennapatanam (named after the patron who was asked by the British to bring in his men) is a parallel development. The growth of the city was so rapid that by 1687, it was given the status of ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’ and in 1868, the first municipal corporation in the British Commonwealth outside of Britain was established in Madras. More than a century later, Bombay gradually surpassed the growth of Madras with opium initially and then the growth of textile mills and other manufacturing. Madras, the initial colonial outpost became the site of experimentation of several systems that became the backbone of the colonial raj such as the land survey, western style school, banking, church and orphanages (Muthaiah, 2004). However, it did not obtain the economic dynamic linked to manufacturing in Bombay or Calcutta and its spatial form retained a semi-rural ambience. (Lewandowski, 1975) The real difference between Bombay and Chennai however developed in the post-colonial period.

 Post coloniality

The post-colonial period brought in a strong wave of regionalism in several states that impacted both Bombay and Madras. The reorganisation of sates along linguistic lines created ‘an inflammatory parochialism in conflict with the nationalist ideal’ (Khilnani, 1997).Madras bore this with a much stronger intensity under the political regime of the DMK (Dravidan Munnetra Kazhagam) which swept to power in 1967. The state of Tamil Nadu and Madras have since been ruled by one or the other version of Dravidian parties since then. The Dravidian movement with an ambition of setting up an independent Dravidanadu sought to oppose four evils- brahminism, Hindi, religion and casteism all seen to be emerging from the North (Padmanabhan, 2004). Cultural nationalism was substituted with political strategy through language (resistance to Hindi as national language), calls for greater federalism and powers to states and affirmative action in education and employment and a particular brand of populist politics. This strategy extended to purging the colonial identity of Madras through spatio-temporal markings. Most civic projects thus involved raising of statues and building of monuments (Arabindoo ibid.) It is through these developments that the image of the city as conservative was shaped. Singer (1972) regarded it as a centre for civilisation under the Great Indian tradition. The strong influence of films, the link between films and politics (Padmanabhan, 2004) , the numerous shrines in the city( Muthaiah 2004), the strong vegetarianism and the presence of old fashioned values( Arabindoo 2008) led Murari (2004) to conclude that ‘Madras air,beneath the new odours of Chanel and pesto…is still soaked in

culture and old traditions’

This air of provincialism also shaped the economy of the state and impacted the city. Evenson (1989) shows that even in 1960, the per capita income in Madras of Rs 437 in comparison with Rs 1180 in Bombay and Rs 872 in Delhi. Further, the proportion of manufacturing was only 10% of the overall employment. However, into the 1970s too, there was stagnation. Thus in 1970s, the percentage of manufacturing employment grew to 25% while port activity remained almost stagnant. During the 1961-71 decade, when the population of the city grew at 5% p.a; it had advanced little in terms of growth in housing, income or water supply. The result was a growth of slums and slum population that nearly doubled.

The DMK had come to power first in the Madras Municipal Corporation in 1959 but it suspended the Corporation in 1973, following a financial scandal and its own weak position in the corporation. The Madras Municipal Corporation was financially weak, raising only 38% of its own revenue and highly dependent on the state government. (Pinto, 2000) The Corporation was superseded, and placed under the control of a Commissioner who reported directly to the state government. A new entity called the Madras Metropolian Development Authority was formed in its place; other functions such as water, public works, education, health were also placed with different state parastatals. The MMDA itself did not have a vibrant revenue model. Besides the structural weakening of institutions; they were also weakened by the individual – centred hate politics in the state. Low institutional capacity attenuated the capacity to attract investment and improve infrastructure.

IV. Regionalism and Globalisation

Dravidian politics that tied the state and conversely the city, to populist politics took a complete –turn with the advent of neoliberal reforms in the country. The DMK launched a regional programme of liberalisation, taking advantage of its presence in the central government in 1991. Sinha (2005) points out how the DMK took advantage of the opportunities presented by its critical presence in the coalition central governments to direct opportunities for the state. By 1998, the state represented about 10% of the investment in the country as against 4-8% in 1991(Sinha 2005). Tamil Nadu, after 1993 represents one of the most advanced states in terms of attracting investment flows and has revamped its image from a corrupt and entrepreneurially inward state to one that is enterprising.(Sinha op cit)

The shift in politics also meant a shift in outlook towards the role of the city. A project of regionalisation was replaced by that of localisation with restoration of the Municipal Corporation along with a name change (Madras to Chennai). The use of games (hosting of South Asian Federation Games in 1995), beautification (Singara Chennai) and revamp of infrastructure (construction of flyovers) all contributed to a project of repositioning Chennai as the best investment destination in India. Chennai has emerged as the ‘Detroit ‘of India, emerging as an automobile and information technology hub.

This has however been accompanied by widening of spatial and social divides. Koelho and Venkat (2009 ) note the emergence of RWAs (Resident Welfare Associations) that register the emergence of class. North Chennai which has historically been the axis of growth of the Black Town is emerging as a site of low lying areas, polluting industries and also neglected by projects of revamping ( Arabindoo, ibid). In a city which had an unsigned ‘no-eviction’

compact; slum evictions have become a regular part of city practice (Koelho and Raman, 2010). The CDP prepared for JNNURM identified 35000 slum households that came in the way of large infrastructure projects and would thereby necessitate removal. Large resettlement colonies like Kannagi Nagar, Perumbakkam have emerged in the citybringing in issues of concentrated poverty, uncertainty around livelihoods

V. Section 3: Comparisons and Questions

Issues of Scale: What is a good scale to understand a city? The colonial Mumbai and Chennai excluded the region; the region asserted itself upon these cities in the post-colonial period. However, this assertion of the region meant a curb on the growth of the city and its infrastructure. Current efforts at rescaling link the local to the national and the local to the global. What are the implications of this jumping of scales? Does this mean a hyper concentration of resources? What would this mean for the development of regions outside the metropoles? Can a city be part of multiple circuits – of capital, of labour, of ecological

footprint, of migration?

World Class Cities: Cities are parts of circuits of varying scales- provincial, national, and regional, global. How do Chennai and Mumbai locate on these circuits?Friedmann(1986) introduced the concept of a world city. The concept of world city involves the identification of certain cities which today are the focal points of international economic processes and exchanges. Is the world city same as a world class city? Is Mumbai a world city? Is Chennai one? As colonial creations, weren’t they always part of international circuits of capital? Are there prerequisites for cities to be part of these global circuits of capital? Why and how is the concept of world class deployed in recent times to forge developments of a certain kind?

What does the adoption of Asian role models- Shanghai/Singapore for growth indicate about the current world dynamics (Roy and Ong 2011)?

Land and Geography: These factors have historically played a critical role in the development of cities. It is no accident that Bombay and Madras which are both colonial creations are located on the coast. The geography also endows a city with particular advantages and disadvantages with respect to land, water and a particular risk of natural disasters. As an archipelago, Mumbai faces problems of a constant land mass that constrains its ability to expand while endowing it with abundant water. Chennai has no constraints of geographical expansion; however as its natural habitat of lakes and ponds has disappeared, water scarcity has become a common feature. How have these factors shaped the nature of issues in these cities? To what extent can Mumbai’s housing problem be attributed to its  limited land? To what extent can Chennai’s lack of manufacturing be attributed to its  geographical location and natural features? The city has always been viewed as a human creation. How much does nature and geography matter? How?

Legacies of colonisation: Kosambi and Brush (1988) direct attention to the similarities in the spatial development of Bombay and Madras, emerging out of the compulsions of colonial interest and imagination. Some of these include ‘a fort, a surrounding esplanade, and a Western style central business district juxtaposed with an Indian bazaar’. Besides these morphologies, colonial legacy is also reflected in laws, institutional designs and other realms. There have been deliberate attempts to purge the cities of these colonial identities. How successful have these attempts been? What according to you, would decolonisation actually mean?

Name Change and Identity Politics: Changing the name of the city is linked to emerging urban transformations and part of a larger trend of several state governments doing the same ostensibly to get rid of a colonial legacy. Arabindoo (ibid) points out that the communist government in Kerala first set the trend when they changed the name of the capital city Trivandrum to Thiruvanthapuram in 1991. The decision to rename Bombay as Mumbai was taken by the right-wing Shiv Sena, as soon as it captured state power in 1995 in alliance with the Hindu fundamentalist party, the BJP. The DMK government in Tamil Nadu followed suit in 1996. Are these ostensibly similar acts similar in their significance? Why is change in nomenclature so significant?

Transforming Relationship of State and Capital: The city is a site of accumulation of capital. It concentrates resources, labour, services and power. It thus depends on state to enable such a concentration. Madras and Bombay had no prior history as cities before the colonial state developed them as cities. What processes were involved in the ‘creation’ of

these cities? Can these cities be seen merely as colonial constructs? How did they partner with indigenous capital? In the post-colonial period, did the relationship between the state and capital change? How? More critically, what is the emergent relationship between state and capital? Can the current developments be seen as ‘neoliberal”? Can this relationship be

seen as a ‘nexus’? Or is it something more complex?

Restructuring of Space: Undoubtedly both the cities are currently undergoing significant spatial restructuring. The design of Indian cities as it emerged in the post- colonial period involved a tight enmeshing of social and spatial fabrics wherein the poor as well as middle classes lived in dense, proximate localities. This ensured proximity to livelihoods and some access to public services. The current round of restructuring is evidently impacting this fabric. What is the emergent fabric of the Indian city? What are its implications for the poor and the middle classes? Is the middle class an agent or an object of this restructuring? Who is being pushed away from the city? Is its basis- caste/ religion/class? How does spatial injustice add/ modify other injustices faced by the excluded? What are the implications for security and safety in a society that has relied on its own mechanisms rather than police for security and safety?

Inclusion: Banerjee–Guha (2015) asserts that the patterns of inclusion- exclusion in the Indian cities are a product of the interplay of neoliberal, entrepreneurial changes in the cities with the historically produced claims over space. Seen in this light, what can one say about the current wave and direction of slum resettlements/redevelopments in Mumbai and Chennai? Which lands are being re-appropriated, by whom and for what use? What is the direction of resettlement? Why? More importantly why is the identity of a slum dweller being transformed from that of proletariat to precariat?

Prospects of Subaltern transformations? : A key question that emerges in the context of transformations is the possibility of transformations of the city towards justice, equity and sustainability. Mumbai, in particular and Chennai to a certain extent has been historically

characterised by strong labour and slum dweller movements but which existed in distinct spheres. Currently, these movements are interfacing but do not seem to have a strong public face. The erstwhile trade unions have been replaced by NGOs. What do these developments indicate? What could be the basis of a possible challenge to the current transformations where the urban is the driver of growth – class/ settlement/ region? What would be its contours – an evening out of development across regions/ security of settlement/ opportunity to decent work/ all of these? What does right to city in India mean? ( Maringanti,2011)

On studying cities and their transformations: How does one study a city? What lens does one use economy/demography/space/society/politics/governance/culture? Does one focus on a sector- housing, education, health, sanitation, infrastructure? Would findings across these sectors be similar? Or would they have key differences due to their technical character? How does one grasp the interaction between the materiality and non- tangible dimensions of life in the city? From whose perspective? What does transformation of a city mean? Transformation of any of the above realms or their inter contentedness?

References

• Appadurai,A ( 2000):. “Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai.” Public Culture, 2000: 627-651.
• Arabindoo, P(2008 ): Absent Societies: Contouring Urban Citizenship in Post-colonial ChennaiPh.d thesis. London School of Economics. London
• Banerjee- Guha (2015):India’s New Urban Policy and Contemporary Urban Planning: Sociospatial Injustices in Mumbai’s Redevelopment in Mumbai Reader. Urban Design Research Institute. Mumbai
• Bhide, A ( 2014): The City Produced: Urban Development, Violence and Spatial Justice in Mumbai,Un published report, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Mumbai
• Bunch, M(1998 ): The Physical Ecology of Slums in Madras. The Indian Geographical Journal Vol 71 13-32

•      Chandavarkar, R (2002):The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940. Mumbai: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Chattaraj, S (2012):Shanghai Dreams: Urban Restructuring in Mumbai,