It was at a xerox shop that the villagers of Nere first discovered, entirely by chance, that their life would be upended.
The storeowner possessed a large yellow and orange print of an urban plan in which 270 villages, including Nere, were reimagined by town planners in Navi Mumbai. A villager noticed it. “That was the first time we heard of NAINA. Nobody told us about it before,” said Vishal Patil, a resident of Nere. There was immediate demand for copies of the map, which the storeowner priced at Rs300.
The Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area, or NAINA, was created after the Ministry of Environment and Forest lay down 53 conditions that had to be met before it granted clearances for the Navi Mumbai Airport. Among them was that Navi Mumbai’s development plan had to be revised “in view of the airport development to avoid any unplanned haphazard growth around the airport.” In January 2013, two years and three months after the ministry’s letter was published, the Maharashtra government appointed the City and Industrial Development Corporation as the planner for NAINA. A swathe of towns and villages from districts far from Navi Mumbai found themselves bundled into a revised Navi Mumbai development plan under NAINA.
In August this year, the town planner called for suggestions and objections on the first phase of NAINA, which divided 23 villages into roads, “growth centres”, “urban villages”, “mixed use”, and “recreational” areas. Few villagers had heard about NAINA, or the suggestions and objections. Some wandered in to the third floor offices of NAINA at CBD Belapur, situated above a busy Navi Mumbai railway station, days after the deadline for objections. On popular demand, the deadline was extended by a month. During that time, over 3900 letters with suggestions and objections were submitted about the first phase of the development plan (where 65,063 people live), the additional chief planner, V Venugopal, said. The submissions were made by villagers as well as builders.
When the NAINA hearings began on November 27, they were sorted according to the subject of the complaints. Eight of the eighteen sessions were dedicated to one subject alone: the cancellation of a 120-metre wide transportation strip – a ‘Multi-Modal Corridor’ – that runs along the plan’s east and south borders. On the first morning of the hearings, Milind Patil, a villager from Nere, leaned on a pillar, pointed a roll of papers at the planners on the stage, and shouted in anger and distress while arms from the crowd pulled him back as police crowded around him. All of Patil’s land had been enveloped in one of several ‘growth centres’ on the NAINA plan. According to NAINA, “land designated for roads, amenities and growth centres … shall be notified for compulsory acquisition.”
“Milind couldn’t sleep when he heard about it,” Vishal, who was Patil’s cousin, said during the hearings. “All his land is gone. He’s so scared. Woh paagal ho gaya tha.”
Patil was on edge throughout the hearings. On the third and last morning, he stood outside the building, railing against the compensation he would be offered. “This land has been with us for seven generations. Shouldn’t NAINA be giving us land? Will I be able to run my life on the FSI they’re giving me?”
"They were expecting many more of us. But people in the village don’t know."
Throughout the hearings, Venugopal, who was surrounded by other planners and an architect, tried to calm the villagers by insisting that the plan was still up for discussion. “That is the purpose of these hearings,” he told a threatening crowd. He told them the plan could still be changed, and even set aside entirely. But he also told them that the “multi-modal corridor is a big project and it cannot be shifted or scrapped just because one or two villages are opposing it.” The confusion was compounded on the third and last morning of the hearings when Sanjay Bhatia, the managing director of CIDCO, assured a gathering of villagers that NAINA would happen only if the villagers agreed to the project.
To a group of listeners parsing every official statement, the conflicting explanations gave rise to a suspicion that the planners were not being truthful. On the first morning, Venugopal told villagers that the corridor was not CIDCO’s or NAINA’s, but belonged to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). The following day, MMRDA officials said the corridor was NAINA’s. “In the villages they’re saying that you can see the builder lobby in this. It’s obvious,” Vishal said.
At a hearing, an old man got up, spoke about the builder lobby, and said, “90 per cent of the land that CIDCO takes is farmland.” His son, a man named Kiran Mankame, was far more combative. He asked Venugopal how the survey had been done. Venugopal replied that LIDAR, “a laser survey”, had been conducted. Mankame said, “Your person said it had been done by satellite.”
Mankato then wondered about the intentions behind NAINA. He asked, repeatedly, if NAINA’s officials had sent a notice to Nere village about the proposal. “Show it to us. Show it to us!”
After the hearings, Vishal pointed to the empty room and said, “There are more police here than villagers. Look at the number of chairs. That tells you they were expecting many more of us. But people in the village don’t know. Everyone outside the orange zone is relaxed. They don’t know what’s going to happen to them.”
The development plan included clauses about a hiked ‘development charge’, which worried the villagers present. In June this year, CIDCO decided to raise its development charge by five times, which meant that a farmer constructing a house on his own land would have to pay five times as much. Both Vishal and Milind told me, separately, that they had met a senior planner in August to ask her what their options were if they chose not to accept NAINA. Their accounts were similar. “She said, ‘you won’t be able to develop it yourself because it is unaffordable’,” Vishal recalled. “We have land, but we don’t have money,” he said.
NAINA’s officials believe that the growth centres will make the project profitable. They see NAINA earning Rs12000 per sq.m in the growth centres. The land will be leasehold, while they estimate acquisition to cost Rs 800 per sq.m.
Vishal had thought hard about what it all meant. “We’re eating everyday without you, but your growth centre is dependant on us. Who will this benefit? Farmer? Or builder? Who is benefited by the growth centre? If your product is good, why don’t you go market it?”
He tired of asking questions aloud, and sighed. “They should come out with a book, telling us clearly what we will get. Then leave it to us. But it’s not a conversation they’re having right now.”
