New DP-2034 unveiled by CM Devendra Fadnavis is tall on promises but dwarfs when it comes to public health as the city would be converted into a concrete jungle in the years to come. 5 lakhs trees were felled last year and the figure would increase multi-fold if the new Development Plan sees the light of the day in the years to come. Homes would look like match boxes and the infrastructure would fall short when it comes to sanitation, garbage disposal, water shortage, parking issues and other necessities required for a healthy life style. No development Zone and salt pan land were some areas of open space where we should have planted more trees and greenery but that has been given in a platter to the builders for commercial consideration at the expense of quality life in the city.
Affordable housing is all humbug to fool citizens and don’t think the poor could afford homes in Mumbai which is one of the costliest cities in the world to live in. Focus should have been to improve transportation to the outskirts of the city so that new cities could have come up outside Mumbai with no need for people to crowd the city. Offices too could have been planned on the outskirts of Mumbai to ease the city of excessive infrastructure but CM had done just the opposite. Political decisions in our country are based on vote bank politics which is the reason why people suffer when it comes to qualify life. Request the CM to incorporate some of the suggestion and don’t play with the green belt of the city which supplies us oxygen. Else, the city would become a gas chamber and diseases too would rise with high rise towers!
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
