Are PPPs the solution to Mumbai's traffic and slum problems?

Mention Mumbai, and it immediately conjures up images of high-rise buildings, sprawling slums, gridlocked traffic and endless population. In a city where hundreds of migrants enter each day how can its problems of congestion and slums ever be solved? [caption id=“attachment_130110” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Ajit Gulabchand stresses a point at the India Economic summit - Photograph courtesy WEF India”] [/caption]“Privatize governing bodies and link it to one main organization. As the government cannot do everything by itself, public-private partnership will be able to deliver the city reforms,” said Ajit Gulabchand, Chairman and Managing Director, Hindustan Construction Company at the WEF India economic summit on Sunday. He was participating in a session titled “Spotlight on Mumbai-Getting Urbanization right”. The panel also consisted of Municipal Commissioner (BMC) Subodh Kumar, Social Entrepreneur Sheela Patel, Associate Professor of Stanford University (USA) Balaji Prabhakar, Group President of K Raheja Corporation Ravi Raheja, and Group CEO of SCOMI group Malyasia Shah Hakim Zain. The discussion centred on the problems faced by Mumbai and possible solutions. On slum dwellers Sixty percent of Mumbai’s population live in slums. Slums are indicative of a resource constraint, but are they also valid indications of urbanization? According to Ravi Raheja “no business plan will be viable in a city where a large portion of its population live in the slums.” He suggested the reclamation of more islands in Mumbai as a way to unlock more land and more living space. Subodh Kumar said it was his firm belief that however complicated the cities problems are, they are solvable. Kumar suggested the floor area ratio (FAR) per capita to be estimated rather than estimating the area used per family. However, Sheela Patel strongly believed that although everyone grumbles about how many people come to the city every day, it is a sign that Mumbai is urbanizing and the ‘ship is not sinking.’ On transport Mumbai’s traffic problems have become the stuff of legend. The island city has limited space, while the number of vehicles traveling its roads increase every day. Can anything be done to solve the problem? According to Sheela Patel, it is important to develop public transport. She also suggested that developing the ferry system and the waterways of Mumbai would help ease traffic and motivate people to stop adding cars to the roads. Meanwhile Kumar said that the BMC would begin work from January onwards to develop coastal roads around the city. But for any city to solve its problem of transport—it needs infrastructural development. “Build up city governments in such a way that they compete with each other like states– this will encourage more investment, more infrastructures,” said Gulabchand. Balaji compared the traffic in Mumbai to that of a computer network saying that “building infrastructure is like building network. So much demand but too little supply”. But unlike networks which wants more traffic, the real world hates it, he said. But given Mumbai’s huge capacity to pay taxes, is it really difficult to build infrastructure or does the problem lie somewhere else? Shah noted that the problem was also with Mumbai’s citizens. Building infrastructure is much easier than making people actually use it, he said. Are Mumbaikars listening?