The year 2003-04 has been an eventful and fruitful year for Bombay First. We
have achieved some remarkable progress on several fronts. Thanks to the
co-operation of several government officials, public agencies, individuals and
professionals concerned with Mumbai who have helped Bombay First to create the
strategic vision, which the city has been lacking for a very long time. It has
been a great pleasure for me to drive this activity and mission, which clearly
transcended all kinds of initial resistance, and has now permeated into the
thoughts of individual citizens to political parties – essentially, all
stakeholders of the city.
Bombay First is devoted to bringing about investment led development and
improvement in quality of life in Mumbai. In doing so, it seeks to achieve an
overall development that spreads across all the sectors that drive the economic
growth. Bombay First was set up to act largely as a think tank of the city, and
to assume a more specific role of forming partnerships between the Government,
the Private Sector and the Civil Society. It is an organization dedicated to the
cause of the city, and to improve its economic and social infrastructure in
order to make it globally competitive, and also to enhance the quality of life
of its citizens. I am very glad to state that in the course of the last eight
years, Bombay First has undertaken more than thirty studies, initiatives and
projects, dealing with wide range of areas of city development like
comprehensive transport strategy, land use patterns & housing, reforms in
development control regulations, building Mumbai as an International Financial
Centre, solid waste management, education and employment.
While most of the efforts of Bombay First were acknowledged by the concerned
government authorities, they were not gaining any momentum in terms of ground
level action. We recognized the fact that these efforts would require to be
brought under a unified and integrated vision in order to be more effective in
grabbing the attention of our decision and policy makers. Most of the city’s
problems have also roots in the lack of a comprehensive development vision. This
is reflected in the fact that there are more than two dozen organizations
dealing with various aspects of the development of Mumbai. Recognising this flak
and continuing with our mission to achieve the objective of making this city as
a global city with comparable economic growth and quality of life, we requested
global management consultants McKinsey & Co. to prepare a perspective plan for
the development of the city. The Bombay First - McKinsey report ‘Vision Mumbai:
Transforming Mumbai into a World-Class City’ emerged from this joint study. This
report was submitted to the Hon’ble Chief Minister, Government of Maharashtra
who has accepted it and it was released in his hands in the month of September
last year.
After submitting the ‘Vision Mumbai’ report to the Hon’ble Chief Minister, there
has been a significant progress made in making this vision of Transforming
Mumbai into a World Class City into a reality. The immediate action was the
creation of a Task Force headed by the Chief Secretary to look into the
recommendations made in the report and formulate its own report. We are
extremely thankful to Hon’ble Chief Minister for accepting the report and
forming the Task Force. The Task Force, in turn, created six sub-groups each on
– Strategic Planning and Financing, Housing, Economic Growth, Physical
Infrastructure, Governance and Social Infrastructure. These sub-groups have
prepared their respective reports based on the recommendations made in the
‘Vision Mumbai’. Bombay First has taken an active role in catalyzing the process
of deliberation of these committees, which resulted in each of the Sub-Groups
submitting its own report. The Task Force has integrated the visions of the
Sub-Groups and created a consolidated vision, Mumbai Vision. This vision was
formally launched as the ‘Mumbai Vision’ by the Hon’ble Chief Minister.
Apart from creating the Task Force and Sub-Groups, the Hon’ble Chief Minister
also appointed Mr. Sanjay Ubale as the Special Secretary to look after the
matters concerning with Mumbai city development, and, in particular, steer the
initiatives and discussions on progressing with the Mumbai Vision. The
Secretaries of the State Government and the heads of all major agencies
concerning with Mumbai’s development would extend their co-operation and support
to the Special Secretary in achieving the Mumbai Vision goals. Bombay First has
not only facilitated the formation of such coordinating mechanism for action but
also played a very active role in the formation of Citizens Action Group (CAG),
comprising thirty eminent citizens of Mumbai, to act as a monitoring and
feedback mechanism wherein the committee would review various activities and
take a proactive role in identifying the immediate priorities. The first meeting
of the Citizens Action Group was held with Hon’ble Chief Minister and couple of
more meetings took place thereafter to discuss various issues. The CAG is
expected to meet every month to review the current status of various development
projects, discuss priorities and the initiatives for achieving city
transformation.
Mumbai generates good amount of goods and services and contributes to Sate GDP,
but it receives little in return. This has been directly affecting the creation
of new infrastructure and management of existing infrastructure, all of which
have had a direct bearing on the state of the city and its growth. So, in order
to overcome this, Vision Mumbai has suggested the creation of the Mumbai
Development Fund (MDF), which would be a ring fenced fund catering to the
development requirements of Mumbai city. The legal and financial aspects of its
creation are now seriously considered by the Government appointed Chartered
Accountants. Moreover, Bombay First also recognized the need to bring about the
mission under a common umbrella reflecting the citizens spirit. Mr. Ranjan Kapur
of Ogilvy & Mather has prepared a brand ‘My Mumbai, My Dream’ some time ago and
the dream city initiative was launched by the Honourable Chief Minister Mr.
Sushil Kumar Shinde. This would also act as a logo for the Mumbai Vision by
taking it into the citizenry.
Apart from steering the creation of institutional mechanisms, Bombay First has
also been playing an important role in the projects that would give a facelift
to the city. Some of them include: (a) Improvement of Marine drive Promenade;
(b) Clean-up drive of Mumbai; (c) Establishing the co-ordination mechanism for
law & order and enforcement; (d) Improvement and beautification of Airport
ambience and Gateway of India. A good number of meetings have taken place on
these subjects, and action centres were created for implementing the projects.
Bombay First has constituted a Traffic Core Group to deal with the traffic
management issues, which deliberated a lot on the actions required. The Taxis &
Enforcement sub-group was created by this group and it has taken up the
feasibility study of introducing new taxis for better service and comfort.
Another important strategic area is the Mumbai’s airport. The poor state of
airports and its approach roads has been a concern for most of us. An Airport
Ambience Improvement Special Group was created to accelerate the improvement
work. This group has achieved success in accelerating the development plans get
implemented and the approach road work, which was stalled, was initiated at the
behest of Bombay First through this sub-group.
Last year we have also commissioned some important studies which gave us an idea
of some of the important segments of the city’s development. Entertainment and
media is one such important sector which has a lot of potential, performance and
is promising. Even though this activity has been flourishing over last few
decades, it has not been adequately catching the attention of our planners,
policy makers and decision makers. Bombay First commissioned this study to
review the potential and prepare a strategic plan detailing out some key
initiatives that are required to be undertaken to make Mumbai an Entertainment
and Media Centre. It is hoped that this would place Mumbai on the map of India
and the World as a landmark entertainment city, and lead to high tourist visits,
like that in Hollywood.
In summing up, we have been able to achieve a lot during the last year, thanks
to the unrelentless support of the Government of Maharashtra; particularly, our
Honourable Chief Minister has always been receptive and reactive to the
proposals. The various expert committees, core-groups, sub-groups, individuals,
and government agencies have lent us their assistance in various manners in
making these efforts largely successful. The Bombay First Secretariat has
undertaken various tasks in achieving the results and ensuring their successful
completion, rightly forming the pillars to the movement. This was in spite of
the various constraints under which it operates, and the endeavours in the past
one year were largely due to the support I received from it. Having achieved
this much, we are moving away from a traditional largely think-tank kind of
organization to an active advocacy organization. We are going to play a major
role in steering the CAG meetings, and we will be acting as a secretariat for
all the development activities and plans concerning Mumbai. We will have to
assume this role in the changing circumstances and transform ourselves into this
new role. However, here we will face many more challenges in the next year, but
it will be another testing time for all of us. But, I am sure that we will
continue to get the support from all of you and progress further by leaving
aside skepticism and inhibition to make the Mumbai city into a real City of
Dreams!
N. K. Nayar
Chairman