Marine Drive

Marine Drive is one of Mumbai's famous pedestrian promenades (maybe the most famous). It runs alongside the southernmost bay, about thirty feet wide with a massive sea wall on one side and the street on the other.

I was strolling along it a few evenings ago, enjoying the cool sea breeze (which, incidentally, smelled fantastic) and the view of the decades-old apartment buildings on the other side of the road, all of which are rent act-controlled.

A lot has been written about Mumbai's Rent Act. The legislation froze the rents in all Mumbai apartments at their 1940 levels. Residents of the rent-controlled apartments could, according to the law, pass rent-controlled apartments to their descendents indefinitely.

At the time the government had the best of intentions. Nowadays, the courts side with tenants most of the time and interpret "descendant" loosely. Which means that many people living in apartments that face Marine Drive (possibly the best real estate land in Mumbai) pay 50 rupees a month in rent (about ~1). The market rate would be closer to 1 lac/month ($2000). A one-room shack in a Jogeshwari slum, meanwhile, costs about 3.5 lac ($7000, although not monthly).

The point is that people living without regular access to toilets pay more for their homes than people living in apartments in one of the nicest areas of the city.

The ensuing battle has been a passive-aggressive battle between landlords and tenants. The landlords don't get even a tenth of real value from their property, since most tenants refuse to pay anything resembling a market rate. Landlords cease all repairs to the building in hopes that it will eventually just collapse.

So the buildings beside Marine Drive, labeled a Heritage Site, are spattered with monsoon-markings and collapsing balconies and railings. The decrepit facades are irregular and unappealing, but until the law changes nothing will change.

In spite of the sorry state of the nearby buildings, Marine Drive is lovely. We went right at sunset and saw the north side of the Bay backlit by the setting sun. Couples and groups were walking along the top of the sea wall, and the breeze came in off the water. A few steps later we came to Chowpatty Beach, a big clean expanse of sandy beach that was busy even on a weeknight.

Now that I've been in Mumbai for a while, I would be curious to see Tokyo. I hear that city is just as densely populated, but urban planners have made very efficient use of vertical space and the city doesn't feel nearly as crowded.