REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Fragmentary Planning and Spaces of Opportunity
in Peri-urban Mumbai
Malini Krishnankutty
Rapid de-agrarianisation and transformation of the rural
has been unleashed by “fragmentary” urban planning
processes in peri-urban Mumbai. An overview of the
outcomes on the ground seen in relation to the urban
planning processes is presented through a case study of
villages around Panvel city, the last station on one of
Mumbai’s suburban railway lines. This paper specifically
engages with spatial planning in the Mumbai
Metropolitan Region and foregrounds the results of
fragmentary planning on the ground. It highlights the
schism that exists between sovereign planning by
administrative or political leadership and technical
planning by planners through spatial plans, which
renders the spatial expertise of technical planning
almost irrelevant to the transformation underway.
Additionally, the urban bias of technical planning
ensures that the rural either gets overlooked or is
transformed as the future urban.
The research was funded by the Social Science and Humanities
Research Council’s—Major Collaborative Research Initiative, “Global
Suburbanisms: Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in the 21st
Century.” An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Frontier
Urbanism: Tracking Transformation in Agrarian-Urban Hinterlands of
South Asia” workshop, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 24–25
February 2017. The paper has benefited from detailed comments and
feedback provided by Shubhra Gururani.
Malini Krishnankutty (malini.kutty@gmail.com) is an urban planning
consultant and PhD candidate at the School of Habitat Studies, Tata
Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
68
I
n Maharashtra, where close to half of the total population
is urban (45.23%, Census 2011) informal urban expansion
through gunthewaris (unauthorised plotted layouts), is
common in small and medium cities, which are later regula-
rised by the state over time (Bhide 2014). Urban expansion
processes are different in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region
(MMR), comprising 4,312 sq km, housing 22.8 million people
with nine municipal corporations, eight municipal councils
and 994 villages (MMRDA 2016). The ease of connectivity to
Greater Mumbai, where 60% of the formal jobs are located,
via the suburban train network, is central to the growth of
various towns in the region. The introduction of direct and
“fast” suburban train services to south Mumbai that reduce
commutes, serves as the trigger for urban growth in the region.
Thus, it was the extension of the suburban railway line in 1998
connecting Navi Mumbai to Panvel that hastened its transfor-
mation into a peri-urban suburb of Mumbai. Since 2008, the
announcement of the location of the second international
airport near Kopra–Panvel, has been the trigger for major ur-
ban development in the villages around Panvel, that is, how-
ever, poorly regulated.
There is a significant body of literature on the processes
underway in peri-urban areas around metropolitan centres in
the global South, and on their governance challenges. Plan-
ning has always played a significant role in the peri-urban and
has been described as “flexible” (Gururani 2013) and marked
by “informality”(Roy 2005). Benjamin (2007) uses the concept
of “occupancy urbanism” to describe how mega plans/projects
actualise on the ground while Kennedy (2007) details out
impact of regional industrial policy interventions on the peri-
urban. This paper seeks to detail out the impact of the frag-
mentary dynamics of planning on the peri-urban. From the
planner’s perspective, I make the case for breaking down “plan-
ning” into its constituents, “sovereign planning” and “technic-
al planning.” Technical planning here refers to spatial plan-
ning by trained or professional planners (that results in deve-
lopment plans or regional plans and is an instrument of the
state while sovereign planning refers to all other state actions
that have a spatial impact (such as policies, projects, schemes,
infrastructural plans), and are typically undertaken by the
administrative and political leadership with no leadership by
technical planners in the core conceptualisation. State plan-
ning is largely economic planning and a-spatial in conception.
Further, in the case of the transformation of the agrarian land-
scape around Panvel, it is urban planning, and particularly the
MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

sovereign planning interventions (with technical planning
serving merely as instrument) that have served as key drivers
of the current “regime of dispossession” (Levien 2013) that are
extensions of the state’s developmentalist role.
Though I focus on the role of urban planning in peri-urban
Panvel, my attempt is to contextualise the simultaneous pro-
cesses of de-agrarianisation and peri-urbanisation through a
multidimensional overview of ongoing transformations. The
overview draws on qualitative interviews in and around Pan-
vel’s villages of Sukapur, Adai and Khalapur conducted over
the course of six months in 2014–15 with diverse actors, sec-
ondary data relevant to the transformation, and an analysis of
the recent history of “planned” urban and infrastructural
development. Interview respondents included villagers, Agris,
(who constitute the majority of the village population) and
Katkaris (indigenous groups), new, transient and old migrants
to Panvel (from other parts of Maharashtra, from other states
and from Mumbai itself), social workers, a leading activist, a
senior journalist in Navi Mumbai, the manager of one of the
oldest institutions active in leprosy work, a local councillor and
local architects and urban planners among others). Data from
the Census 2011, the draft regional plan 2016–36, surveys con-
ducted in 2012–13 of naka migrant workers in Navi Mumbai
and brick-kiln workers by Youth for Unity and Voluntary
Action (YUVA), an active non-governmental organisation (NGO)
in the region (YUVA 2014a, b), on Katkaris by TISS (2014) and
recent research papers (Kim 2012, 2015) highlighting the agrarian
transformation underway.
For the final section on technical planning’s disciplinary biases,
I draw on spatial plans in MMR as well as interviews with several
senior government-employed planners and retired planners in
Mumbai and at the Town and Country Planning Organisation
(TCPO), New Delhi as well as on my own experience as an urban
planning consultant who has worked on spatial plans (develop-
ment and regional plans in Goa and Mumbai). In order to convey
how urbanisation is unfolding in the peri-urban Mumbai, the
paper first describes the multilevel changes that have trans-
formed Panvel over the last two decades. In the subsequent
sections, it describes their implications for rural inhabitants and
migrants. The fragmentary or uncoordinated planning that has
shaped the peri-urban terrain, its characteristics and its implica-
tions for the rural in the metropolitan context are described in the
penultimate section, which is followed by a concluding discussion.
Rural Panvel’s Transformation
In the first decade (1998–2008) post the extension of the sub-
urban railway network, the pace of transformation was slow
and the region around Panvel town served as a refuge largely
for poorer families (from Mumbai and Navi Mumbai and other
parts of the state) who were in search of more affordable hous-
ing (often informal), considering the very high real estate pric-
es in Mumbai. Panvel also served as the leisure destination for
Mumbai’s rich who built farmhouses in scenic, rural areas
around Panvel city. However, since 2005, a range of sovereign
planning interventions (national, state policies along with
several mega transportation infrastructure projects) have
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
intersected to transform Panvel’s surrounding rural areas into
a “zone of accumulation” and rampant real estate speculation.
Sovereign planning interventions (especially policies) in
India are mostly conceived a-spatially, though they have spatial
implications (Ribeiro 2013). Typical examples would include
the various policies like the 1991 notification of coastal regula-
tion zones (CRZs) under the Environment Protection Act 1986,
the foreign direct investment (FDI) in real estate (2005) or spe-
cial economic zones (SEZs) Act 2005. Since 2005–06 “a-spatial”
policy interventions at the national and state levels, like the
introduction of 100% FDI in real estate, 100 acre special town-
ship/integrated township projects, SEZs (including free trade
and warehousing zones [FTWZ]) have allowed acquisition of
land across the country for urban residential or commercial
development and have paved the way for opening up of rural
lands across India for urban development. These policies un-
dermined the role of spatial plans and planning authorities
since they allow developments to parachute into any plot of
land anywhere in the country. These have had major implica-
tions around peri-urban areas around metropolitan cities.
Around Panvel, too, several new townships and the country’s
first FTWZ Arshiya International Ltd, spread over 165 acres
took shape. While the effects of these policies on the ground
have been written about (Kennedy and Sood 2016; Levien
2011), I wish to highlight the dissonance that exists between
sovereign planning and technical planning. Though there is a
statutory regional plan for MMR (1996) that controls develop-
ment in rural MMR, including Panvel’s villages, the SEZs and
special township projects (STPs) that are sanctioned after the
regional plan was drafted do not necessarily take cognisance
of the zoning of regional plan 1996. Thus, there is no method
of spatial integration to synchronise sovereign planning actions
envisaged at different scales of government.
The 100 ha size of the STPs proposed by the central govern-
ment, were reduced in size to 30 ha by the Maharashtra gov-
ernment with a view to make it easier to agglomerate the rural
lands to capital accumulation. The state also proposed a new
rental housing scheme (2008)1 wherein high incentive develop-
ment rights (FSI of 4) were granted to builders in urbanisable
areas anywhere in the MMR.2 Rental housing (each unit of 160
or 320 square foot carpet area) constituting a fourth of the
total houses, were to be handed over to the state government
while the remaining units were saleable in the open market for
profit.3 This scheme has resulted in eight mega-projects, in
Panvel taluka (and many more elsewhere) and is now discon-
tinued.4 These schemes are set to generate around 35,000 ten-
ements and could accommodate around 1.5 lakh people when
fully occupied. They will occupy 18–25 storey apartment tow-
ers with very high plot densities of 2,000 people per hectare
(ppha). In other words, these eight schemes will house a popu-
lation equal to that of Panvel city’s current population on a
fraction of the latter’s footprint. The other policy with signifi-
cant impact in rural MMR is the gaothan extension scheme
wherein incentives (extra floor space index, FSI) were offered
to development in a 300 m buffer zone around village cores
(gaothans) to enable village extensions. This too has resulted
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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
in haphazard growth and densification without necessary
physical infrastructure.
Apart from the sovereign planning interventions above,
there have also been other sovereign planning actions in the
form of a number of major transportation proposals in and
around Panvel due to its strategic location along major road
networks (like the Mumbai–Pune highway and Mumbai–Goa
highway) and its importance as a major railway station. These
serve a larger national and regional geography centred on
Mumbai and are a major cause for the local transformation
underway around Panvel. There are several sovereign plan-
ning proposals in the pipeline (that have not been envisaged in
any regional plan for the MMR), including Mumbai’s second in-
ternational airport, and several road and rail projects like the
Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) road connecting Mumbai
with the mainland, a major freight corridor—Delhi–Mumbai
Industrial Corridor (DMIC) (connecting the Jawaharlal Nehru
Port Trust [JNPT] port to the rest of the country), a multi modal
corridor (MMC) to connect peri-urban regions in MMR (linking
Vasai–Virar and Alibag) along with a metro, a train terminus
and suburban rail augmentation.5
The most significant aspect of all these projects is that they
all require lands that have to be acquired by the government
against compensation. This inevitably means dispossession
and loss of livelihoods apart from the physical fragmentation
of the landscape. Additionally, it also means the onset of rapid
restructuring of land markets and “highway urbanisation”
(Balakrishnan 2013), which is common across India and in the
global South. Accompanying the mere announcement of new
infrastructure is the commencement of the processes of com-
modification of agricultural lands. As Balakrishnan (2013)
points out, serviced land is a key gap in India’s urbanisation
story. With roads and better communications, land gets ser-
viced and is then attractive for urban real estate and as a desti-
nation for capital. This is the route to commodification of land.
Of these infrastructure projects, the airport, the MTHL sea-link
and the MMC were the projects that have generated the maxi-
mum speculation since they made relatively inaccessible
agrarian lands accessible through the proposals to the real
estate market cheaply with the promise of windfall gains. With
such huge investments in transportation infrastructure
planned for the Panvel region, it is no surprise that this region
has become the single most attractive destination in the MMR
for speculative investment.
Agrarian lands were thus commodified through various
policies and the promise of infrastructure. The final nail in the
coffin of productive agricultural lands was struck on 5 January
2017 when the Maharashtra government’s revenue depar-
tment issued an ordinance relaxing the norms for purchase of
farmland for development purposes and abolishing the need
for obtaining non-agriculture (NA) permission from the dis-
trict collector, with the view to facilitate the “ease of doing
business” in the state.6 All agricultural land is now deemed to
be automatically urbanisable if it comes under the jurisdiction
of any urban local body (ULB) or if it is in an urbanisable zone
in an area covered by a regional plan. In effect, for the first time in
70
Maharashtra, the plan is a direct bringer of de-agrarianisation.
Earlier, even if a development plan or regional plan was noti-
fied, land remained “agricultural” until the owner applied for
development permission after conversion of use to non-
agricultural land. Now all agricultural land in urban areas is
automatically rendered non-agricultural and “developable”
and any collector who holds up the conversion certificate is
liable to be punished. Thus, it is clear that the transformation
of the rural lands has been directly set in motion through a
range of sovereign planning interventions (policies, ordinances
and infrastructure projects) and not through technical plan-
ning. The regional plan has played no major role in this trans-
formation post 2005.
To conclude, the slew of infrastructural projects coupled
with policies initiated through sovereign planning, that are
not integrated into the technical plans (development plans or
regional plans), have set in motion major commodification of
land resulting in widespread alienation of those bound to the
land.7 The resulting transformation of agrarian land relations
is covered in the following section.
Transformations on the Ground
Panvel and the villages within a 10-km radius of its suburban
railway station have seen most of the unplanned transforma-
tion in the last decade due to assured accessibility to Mumbai
and Navi Mumbai via the suburban train. Since 2008, improved
transportation infrastructure and the Mumbai–Pune express-
way, commissioned in 2000, brought with it several transpor-
tation and travel-related activities, including restaurants, ho-
tels, logistics and warehousing in villages located near the ex-
pressway, in and around Panvel.
The changes observed are corroborated both by the urban
sprawl data from Regional Plan 2016–36, and existing research
(Kim 2012) which indicates that development in Panvel taluka
is occurring along the major roads in the region and the period
2001–16 has witnessed the most rapid transformation (MMRDA
2016, Map 9). The RRP 2016 reports that the development trends
in the rural MMR show that “significant amount of development
is within the 200 m [metre] buffer beyond existing gaothans”,
while census towns in Raigad district grew at a very high com-
pound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7% between 2001 and
2011 (MMRDA 2016: 12). Further, Census 2001 data indicates
that 26.37% of the houses available in Panvel city were vacant
(MMRDA 2016: 45). Vacant houses are a good indicator of real
estate speculation since these are generally second homes
bought for speculation. All of this implies that rural areas in Pan-
vel taluka were rapidly urbanising, especially around Panvel
town alongside rampant real estate speculation. Developers are
wooing Mumbai residents and other investors, including non-
resident Indians (NRIs) with a range of buying or investing op-
tions in projects in surrounding villages: plotted development,
special township schemes, flats, farmhouses, villas, shares in
proposed schemes and inducements in terms of commissions if
the customer can bring in more buyers. The commodification
of village lands is rampant and its impact on farmers, indige-
nous communities and migrants is sketched out below.
MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Panvel is home to various communities, including the Agris,
(originally salt pan workers and now fisherfolk and agricultur-
alists, who constitute the majority of the population) and
Kolis, (fishing communities) who belong to the Other Back-
ward Classes (OBCs)8 in the state and the Katkaris, who are in-
digenous people listed under the central government’s list of
particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PvTGs).9
The villages in this agrarian periphery have historically been
engaged in paddy cultivation with Panvel city serving as a
trading hub. Most landholdings in the area are small, less than
half an acre. These villages are linked through the markets to
the next local centre only (either Palaspe or Panvel city). Elec-
tricity is not available round the clock, with “load shedding”
(planned suspension of electric supply) for six to eight hours
daily. In interviews with activists and social workers in the region
I was repeatedly told that a shift is underway and a sizeable
number of small farmers are moving away from farming:
“Now agriculture is coming to an end. Only the old parents are
continuing with agriculture. All this has happened in the last
decade since the railway and airport have come.”10 The fastest
growing profession is that of the real estate “broker” due to the
lure of making a fast buck with commissions from both the
buyer and the seller. Some of the village youth have become
developers while others engage in construction. Developers
and builders have a network that grows stronger over time and
land is slowly amassed and accumulated. In short, as one re-
spected activist lamented, “the village is no longer a village.”11
The farmers’ relationship with land seems to have changed.
Agricultural lands are increasingly left fallow as the monetary
returns from avenues other than farming are now possible.
Increasing development has made farming difficult due to the
disruption of older local irrigation systems among other
things. By and large, however, villagers still hold onto the land
needed to meet their annual supply of rice. Large landowners
have cashed the land they can spare and have made windfall
profits. Small landowners either find it difficult to hold out even
when they wish to do so, since they depend on the produce for
their own food needs but find it difficult to farm as the city ex-
pands. Distress sale of small plots of land to meet special needs
like a daughter’s wedding are also common among the small
farmers. In some cases, farming lands have been turned over to
brick kilns considering the escalation in demand from the
construction industry.
The landed or propertied villagers are also taking the oppor-
tunity to make some money through property or through offe-
ring services for the urban dweller. Since the migrant worker,
as well as the less affluent Mumbaikar in search of affordable
housing, is now a constant presence in villages12 that within 10
km of Panvel railway station, villagers are now renting their
own properties or building chawls on their lands to provide
rooms on rent to poor migrants who often live in shared acco-
mmodation, a familiar stage of slum formation even in Mumbai’s
urban villages (Nainan 2012). Villagers have also monopolised
the supply of building materials in and around Panvel city and
in all construction activity; they reportedly resort to force to
ensure that material is sourced from them alone. Similarly, there
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
were accounts of villagers who try to control vending by mi-
grant street vendors who wish to hawk their wares in pavements
in City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO)-planned
New Panvel13 adjoining the old town. Further, in the same area,
the entire vegetable vending trade was reportedly controlled
by the villagers only and no “outsiders” were allowed to ply the
trade. Other villagers have turned to transportation and oper-
ate Intermediate Private Transport (IPT) in the form of vikrams
(eight-seater vehicles), and “tempos.” Migrants are hired as driv-
ers and the vikrams connect the villages to Panvel city.
Lack of Tolerance for Migrants
According to the manager of a social work institution that has
been in area since the late 1960s, it is the lack of tolerance for
migrants in the planned Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation
area that Panvel and its surroundings have become the refuge
for all urban migrants.14 Migrants from other states, and from
within Maharashtra have also increased in number to serve
the need for more naka workers, construction workers, drivers
of mini tempos and IPTs. Migrants from particular regions
cluster in specific occupations; fruit sellers are usually from
Jalgaon and Bhusawal, dumper drivers from Latur and con-
struction workers from Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and West
Bengal.15 Migrants have also entered new service jobs like
shop/mall attendants, security personnel, drivers for private
firms or individuals. Women also join the construction trade
daily wage labour, or domestic help. The poorest villagers also
seek some of these jobs in case they do not have land to fall
back on or in some cases, if they have run through the windfall
profits from selling landholdings to CIDCO or private develop-
ers. A common story is that shared by a young first generation
migrant from a nearby village who now owns a shop in New
Panvel. He goes back to the village and the family has enough
land under paddy cultivation for its own annual supply of rice.
Thus, young villagers who may have moved out still keep links
with the village. One of them runs a shop in New Panvel, but
returns to his village nearby to help his parents with sowing
and harvesting on their subsistence scaled farm. Since land
values have gone up several times, the farmer, whose agricul-
tural output was never yielding enough, is facing uncomforta-
ble choices. According to an activist involved with the anti-
Navi Mumbai SEZ referendum in Raigad district,
For every family alienated there are seven more who are affected by
the alienation. This is not talked about though. There is a slow dis-
placement that takes place over time that is not recorded. This is hap-
pening on a large scale. (Personal conversation)
It is also significant to note that though the Mumbaikar is
able to access the rural areas outside Panvel city, the villager
in rural Panvel is connected only to the closest big settlement
that is easily accessible (in this case Palaspe or Panvel). So when
villagers migrate, they usually migrate to the next largest set-
tlement. The mobility patterns of the majority of villagers con-
tinue unchanged despite the urbanisation of the rural (Kim 2015).
The urbanisation of this last decade has resulted in increasing
real estate costs, causing gaothan rentals to rise out of reach of
poorer migrants. Thus urbanisation and commodification of
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land in peri-urban Panvel has hit the weakest and most vulner-
able the hardest. This is also the case of the indigenous people,
the Katkaris, who have traditionally had dali lands16 given by
the British with the aim to settle them. They worked on their
own agricultural lands, reared animals, collected grass from
the forest to sell to cattle sheds, and also worked on other peo-
ple’s fields. There were lots of tabelas (cattle sheds) and almost
all families used to live off getting grass for tabelas from the
forest 25 years ago. In Shiroliwadi, Khalapur (30 km south of
Panvel city),17 for instance, the entire way of life of the Katkaris
has changed from a few decades ago when hunting, gathering
forest produce, fishing and cultivation was undertaken collec-
tively and food was shared. Since the 1990s there has been a
major change in the lives of the Katkaris. With increasing ur-
banisation and land conversion, less agriculture and forests
has meant fewer cattle, grass, trees and honey, all of which
has meant that they have had to seek alternative livelihoods.
The Katkaris have become even more marginalised, since land
itself is out of bounds now. Farmhouses (luxury getaways or
second homes of the urban rich) have displaced the Katkaris
in some areas since the farms on which they worked as farm
labour have now been converted and farming no longer pur-
sued. Now they are largely engaged in seasonal work and they
are engaged in brick kiln work from November–December to
May, and between June and November, they work as agri-
cultural labour. A study by YUVA (2014b) records how the
Katkaris work as bonded labour stuck in a cycle of debt with
the kiln owner.
Thus, the Katkaris and farmers are being alienated from the
lands that they were historically connected to. Those who do
not sell their lands to developers, remain as islands even as
real estate speculation takes over and engulfs the village and
marches on to new frontiers in search of even more land.
Though building activity is not visible everywhere, almost all
village lands have been booked on the basis of advances paid
to villagers by developers.18 Levien’s description of the effects
of India’s first SEZ in Jaipur, could well describe the agrarian
transformation in Panvel which has led to the
disaccumulation of productive agrarian assets among the peasantry,
... and capitalist transformation of the countryside—characterised
by non-productive speculation and rentiership, the expansion of
pre-capitalist exploitation and the creation of a marginalised pool of
underemployed labour.
There is widespread
speculative land commodification, which intersects in complex ways
with agrarian social structures, draws certain classes into a chain of
land-based rentiership, and ultimately amplifies existing inequalities
in the rural class and caste structure. (Levien 2011: 457–58)
Sovereign planning interventions are responsible for major
rural transformations on the ground. The fragmentary nature
of these planning interventions is an important reason for the
shape of the transformations on the ground. It is essential to
reflect on the nature of the institutional framework that results
in fragmentary planning and how planning constructs the
rural, so as to better understand both the planning apparatus
and why it is unable to address the rural.
72
Planning the Rural within a Metropolitan Region
Apart from causing de-agrarianisation, planning is also unable
to actively address the rural. This failure can be traced to a
fragmentary planning apparatus and to the urban bias in plan-
ning. To better understand the nature of urban planning a
quick look at the planning apparatus is presented along with of
spatial plans in MMR.
A fragmentary planning apparatus: The various infrastruc-
ture projects currently ongoing in the region and proposals in
the pipeline, that were detailed out earlier in the paper, are
initiated by multiple state and central actors and parastatals
along with special planning authorities. It is known that Mum-
bai has a polycentric governance framework (Pethe et al 2011)
with overlapping jurisdictions. In terms of spatial planning,
the whole of the MMR is covered by a statutory regional plan
prepared by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development
Authority (MMRDA) which is revised every 20 years. Each of the
17 ULBs take cognisance of this regional plan in preparing de-
velopment plans. Additionally, there are seven areas under
special planning authorities (SPAs) that have been carved out
of the metropolitan region with their own development plans
(MMRDA 2016: 6). The MMRDA’s regional plan (which demar-
cates various zones, permitted uses and extent of development
permitted through FSI), thus directly controls the future devel-
opment of all the rural areas in the metropolitan region. This
means that anyone who wishes to undertake any development
must obtain building permission from the district collector. In
theory the urbanisation of the peri-urban is supposed to be
governed as per the regional plan, but what is the reality?
The sovereign planning interventions made after the Regio-
nal Plan 1996, such as FDI in real estate (2005) or SEZs Act
2005, do not take cognisance of the existing regional or devel-
opment plans that are in force. They usually run parallel to the
spatial plans and it is only in a subsequent revision (every 20
years) of the plan that they get incorporated. None of the
infrastructural proposals, the proposed second international
airport, or the DMIC, the Panvel train terminus, the JNPT
expansion, or the MTHL have been part of the regional plans for
the MMR before they were conceived. They are perfect examples
of sovereign planning interventions, initiated at different
times by different levels of government, or by central or state
bodies and parastatals. These institutions bypass existing
spatial plans and make their own proposals independently
based on the immediate objectives of the concerned agency
taking decisions. Thus, decisions regarding projects to be
undertaken and their location are often taken unilaterally
by the political-bureaucratic leadership without the involve-
ment of the planning department, that houses trained, profes-
sional planners. Later, in my experience, the planners simply
incorporate these projects in their spatial plans. Examples of such
decisions include the location of the second Mumbai interna-
tional airport near Panvel or the coastal road in Mumbai.19
Unlike the previous Regional Plan 1996, where the planning
authority, the MMRDA, conducted studies to establish the
feasibility of the second airport location at Rewas Mandwa,
MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

and was deeply involved in the decision-making of the location
for the new airport, in the case of Regional Plan 2016–36,
planners merely incorporated the new location (near Panvel)
decided by the state political leadership in the latest regional
plan. Similarly, the Rental Housing Scheme, which comes
after the Regional Plan 1996, renders the Regional Plan 1996
population projections invalid by adding a population equal to
the existing population of Panvel city to Panvel’s surrounding
villages. Additionally, the villages where these schemes are
located clearly lack the institutional or governance capacities
to meet any of the infrastructural or safety requirements that
the scale of these housing schemes need. Thus, it is clear that
there is no official mechanism for incorporating all the pro-
jects initiated through sovereign planning to the statutory
plans in a coordinated manner except recording the projects in
the next revision of the development or regional plan as fait
accompli! This is an illustration of the extremely fragmented
and uncoordinated planning process that is in existence.
The consequence of such a fragmented multi-institutional
decision-making process is that it is difficult to envisage the
physical implications of the projects proposed since they are
not integrated spatially into the plan. Technical planning and
spatial plans are based on projecting a future population and
planning for the spatial needs of that population. But if the
planner cannot know in advance how any plot of land in the
MMR is going to transform in the future, what uses it will be
put to and what populations it will attract, the regional popu-
lation projections have no meaning. Government policies like
the introduction of 100% FDI in real estate, or the 100 ha spe-
cial township schemes, or the SEZ policy can thus be argued as
being “anti-planning” as they contravene the basic principles
of urban planning. Another reason why they are anti-planning
is that in regional planning theory, a key principle employed is
the ease of infrastructure provision. Only those lands that can
be easily and efficiently serviced with infrastructure are zoned
as “urbanisable.”20 This necessarily results in compact plan-
ning around existing core settlements. As against this prac-
tice, policies like the STPs open up lands indiscriminately to
development and promote dispersed development. Since the
developer is responsible for infrastructure provision, it may be
argued that the state is not saddled with the high cost of provi-
sion of infrastructure. However, regardless of who provides
the services, it results in a highly inefficient spatial pattern
resulting in a waste of valuable resources, is expensive and
ultimately not sustainable. Its unintended outcomes include
fragmentation of the rural landscape and eventually, de-agrar-
ianisation, since entire ecosystems of farming practices get dis-
rupted by such pocket urbanisation. Technical planning is
rendered unable to effectively discharge its core functions of
planning for a projected future population and arrive at
some spatial distribution and infrastructure provision due to
the fragmentation.
Thus, though it is widely assumed that there is comprehen-
sive planning within the state represented and controlled by
the statutory plans (development and regional plans), prepared
by “technical” planning professionals within the state, in reality,
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
technical planning is increasingly marginalised from the major
transformations envisaged in urban space both within and
outside cities. It is sovereign planning, led by the administra-
tive-political leadership, and not grounded in technically
sound decision making21 that is the major determinant of urban
change. It must be foregrounded that unlike sovereign plan-
ning decisions, the practice of professional planning usually
follows some tenets and disciplinary norms and logics—for
instance, of working in the larger public interest, working
towards comprehensive planning, equitable distribution of
resources, greater efficiency and order, envisaging social and
technical, economic infrastructure needs, coordination of
infrastructure with land use, etc. The primary role of the tech-
nical planner in preparing spatial plans—to plan for the future,
through rational comprehensive planning for a projected
future population—has been undermined the interventions by
sovereign planning decisions. As against this, since it is sover-
eign planning that is largely responsible for sanctioning (and
overriding existing plans) planning interventions in urban
space in India, both within and in peri-urban contexts, deci-
sions affecting spatial development are taken by powerful
actors who do not have any formal training or commitment to
technically sound urban planning. Thus trained urban plan-
ners, the so-called experts, end up with a very marginal role as
compared to state-led sovereign planning. It is but natural
then that there are “zones of exception” (Roy 2009) and related
planning practices prevailing, which are coded into the prac-
tice of sovereign planning. The spatial plans produced by tech-
nical planners merely serve as the basis for development con-
trol permissions to be issued by the district collector.
However, this does not imply that technical planning has all
the solutions. In fact, in the West, master planning has been
criticised and abandoned due to its narrow technicist orientation
and an inability to address the broader socio-economic and politi-
cal context (Taylor 1998). Given the a-spatiality of sovereign plan-
ning interventions and fragmentary institutional architecture,
the statutory regional plan produced by technical planners
renders a comprehensive spatial outcome impossible and produc-
es the many unintended disastrous outcomes on the ground.
The urban bias in planning: One of the limitations of urban
spatial planning is, I would argue, its urban bias. The rural is
largely absent from the planner’s imagination. The physical
implications of technical plans for the rural population are
simply not accounted for systematically anywhere. Spatial
plans are useful artefacts to study the stated objectives as well
as the underlying logic and beliefs that guide the plan propos-
als. The spatial plans that impact the peri-urban primarily are
the regional plans drawn up by MMRDA. The first regional plan
was drawn up in 1971, followed by the revision in 1996, while
the second revision (Regional Plan 2016–36) is currently un-
der review. I provide a brief overview of two statutory plans
along with the plan for a new city Navi Mumbai Airport Influ-
ence Notified Area (NAINA) that has emerged with the second
Mumbai airport. I also draw upon my personal experience
as a planning consultant along with interviews with senior
73
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
planners in MMRDA, Town and Country Planning Organisation
(TCPO) for this section.
The MMR is described by the Regional Plan 1971 as comprising
of 947 villages, but no further descriptions of these villages are
offered. It does have a section on “Planning of Rural Areas”
(BMRPB 1974) to “pay adequate attention to the healthy devel-
opment of these rural areas ... for … avoiding steep polarisa-
tion between urban and rural populations in the region” (BMR-
PB 1974: 142). However, the implementation section does not
have outlays for the rural. The Regional Plan 1996 has a more
emphatically urban focus. It does not even mention the num-
ber of villages in the MMR and interestingly though it has a
section titled “Urban land policy,” it says nothing about rural
land policy (MMRDA 1995). Clearly the emphasis is firmly on
managing Mumbai’s growth and the urban population. The
rural remains an afterthought in regional planning, even
when it does get incorporated in the plan. Residential cores of
villages are simply left untouched by the plans and bypassed
even in the case of entire new town development. This is seen
in the case of Navi Mumbai while in Delhi a laldora (red line)
ring fences the village, which is not governed by the plan.
The reasons for this treatment of the rural can be traced to
modern urban planning’s roots. The discipline emerged as a
response to the problems of the cities of the industrial age: ill
health, poor sanitation, slums. The urban has always been the
primary focus of planning. Therefore, the rural is not well
imagined by urban planners or is imagined as a residue and
viewed primarily as a resource. The most common view held
by urban (technical) planners seems to be that voiced by a
senior government planner,22 when he said that the transfor-
mation of the rural lands surrounding an urban area is “inevi-
table.” My own experience in working on two regional plans,
(MMR and Goa) is that the rural areas in a metropolitan region
(unless protected by laws like the forests or the CRZ) are pri-
marily seen as potential resources for supplying land for infra-
structure and as sites for expanding urban footprint. It is com-
mon land use planning practice to look for government lands,
waste or vacant lands, followed by agricultural lands, in that
order, to locate new infrastructure since these are seen as
“green field” or vacant (even though they are not so in reality)
and of lesser value, if they need to be acquired. Urban planning
here works to “improve” the land by servicing it with infras-
tructure, and in the name of “development” acts as capital’s
handmaiden, enabling the commodification of the land. How-
ever, ironically, it rarely provides improved infrastructure and
services to existing village cores/gaothans that continue with
the same neglect and lack of physical and social infrastructure.
A review of a more recent initiative, the Interim Develop-
ment Plan (IDP) prepared for the NAINA,23 again reinforces the
planners’ lack of deep engagement with the rural. Here, the
planners aim to realise a new city, covering a small area of
38 sq km in peri-urban Panvel, covering 23 villages. They have
moved away from conventional master planning and have
focused on multiple modes of implementation. The aim here is
to control future development and prevent haphazard growth.
Given the impossible cost of land acquisition, and the high
74
infrastructure development costs, the planners have proposed
a partnership model where villagers have to give up 40% of
their lands to CIDCO towards city infrastructure be developed
by the planning authority. The farmers are compensated with
higher developmental rights in return. While proximity to the
airport has led to increased speculative interest in the NAINA
area, the plan is meant to channelise that interest and encour-
age villagers to give up their lands for common public ameni-
ties. This is a new role where the state planning agency is not
acquiring land but is actively trying to garner lands to imple-
ment its master plan. Once again what is visible here is a
superimposition of a vision of a city on these villages, a view of
urbanisation that is a foregone conclusion, and a lack of enga-
gement with the future of the villagers, once they are divorced
from their lands and livelihoods. There is also no engagement
of planners with any idea of conservation, tangible or intangible
or of productive farmlands.
In the abstraction typical of modern town planning, the vil-
lager and her ways of life are rendered invisible in representa-
tion with only the land visible as a resource, meant only to be
put to “better use” or “to generate best economic value.” Thus,
in the plannerly imagination, the “rural” is only a tabula rasa
(Kennedy and Sood 2016) meant for “development,” usually
through a town planning scheme. In various informal discus-
sions with planners and MCGM officials over the new LARR Act
when it was passed, the common view was “this would mean
the end of development.” Planners view the agrarian periphery
largely as a landbank for necessary urban infrastructure24 and
while sympathetic to the villagers, those who had experienced
the Navi Mumbai resettlement process with PAPs, also saw
the mandated negotiations with increasingly “opportunistic”
villagers as cumbersome roadblocks in the realisation of this
potential.25 The villages are seen by planners primarily from a
development control perspective and from the narrow perspec-
tive of providing very specific social amenities or transport in-
frastructure. Managing urbanisation pressures in rural areas
through regulations is the limited focus of the regional plan.
Conclusions
The fragmentary planning that is underway in Panvel reinforces
the fact that urban planning as a comprehensive planning effort
in India is a myth, even within the cities where statutory plans
exist. Given the existing institutional arrangements there exists
no coordinated spatial planning and no coordinated planning
is actually possible since there is no attempt at integration of
sovereign planning with technical spatial plans. Further, Panvel’s
example indicates that both strands of fragmentary planning,
sovereign and technical, have severe limitations with respect
to the rural. Sovereign planning is often conceived in the abstract
realm of policy and has no interest in the material consequences
of the policy on the ground. However, when the benefits it
seeks and the actors who benefit are taken together, its politics
is revealed. The same is the case when projects are conceived
through sovereign planning, since the focus is then on actual-
ising the project and acquiring the agrarian lands for the pro-
ject. The impacts of the projects on the rural are not something
MARCH 24, 2018 vol lIiI no 12 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

that enter its consideration. In the case of technical planning,
though it is better placed to pay attention to the physical im-
pacts of the spatial interventions, its urban bias and the nar-
row disciplinary conception of urban planning sets in motion
processes that may result in the dismantling of the rural.
What are the possibilities then given that land conflicts are
only going to increase with increasing urbanisation? Perhaps
there are some answers in the Draft National Land Utilisation
Policy 2012 drafted by the Ministry of Rural Affairs,26 wherein
a broad land utilisation survey is envisaged across all states,
Notes
1 The rental scheme has been abandoned in rural
areas since 2014 due to the unintended conse-
quences of extremely high densities which were
not considered viable by the MMRDA, Planning
Division, that was in charge of the project.
2 Except Navi Mumbai and Matheran.
3 Palaspe Phata just outside Panvel city along the
old Mumbai–Pune highway has become a rent-
al housing hotspot with large rental housing
schemes by major developers (like Marathon
and Indiabulls).
4 Information on rental housing schemes sourced
from planner at rental housing division through
personal communication, September 2014.
5 Connecting Panvel with other centres in MMR
like Diva, Karjat and Uran.
6 http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ma-
harashtra-norms-for-non-agricultural-use-of-
farmland-relaxed/.
7 Additionally, as of October 2016, Panvel Munici-
pal Council has been declared a municipal cor-
poration and its limits have been extended to
include 29 villages from Navi Mumbai new
town and the council area. This new area with-
in the corporation has a population of a little
over 5,00,000 (Census 2011) as against the pop-
ulation of the older council area—1,80,000.
The inclusion of villages into municipal limits
means the promise of access to better services
and better physical and social infrastructure
which in turn would spur land speculation.
8 Backward castes list for Maharashtra listed at
http://www.bcmbcmw.tn.gov.in/obc/faq/ma-
harashtra.pdf, accessed on 28 October 2017.
9 National Particularly Vulnerable Tribes listed
at http://www.ncst.nic.in/sites/default/files/
documents/StatewisePTGsList%20from%20
MTA.pdf, accessed on 28 October 2017.
10 Interview, senior manager, Shantivan, Nere
village, 24 May 2014, upper caste social worker
in his 60s, who has spent his lifetime working
with the organisation on leprosy relief.
11 Activist, anti-SEZ movement in Raigad, Navi
Mumbai, 10 May 2014.
12 Sukapur, Adai, Akurli, Nere, for instance.
13 Villagers from Adai village extort from migrant
hawkers, according to migrant from Beed district.
14 Senior manager, Shantivan, 24 May 2014.
15 Local corporator, Muslim, in his early 30s, Pan-
vel, 24 May 2014, Panvel.
16 Hill slope lands in forest peripheries.
17 FGD with tribal community in Shiroliwadi,
Khalapur, 2 July 2014.
18 Developer, Nere, 6 September 2014, Agri, in
early 30s.
19 This is based on my experience as a consultant
during the preparation of the Mumbai DP 2014
and MMR Regional Plan 2016.
20 Interviews with chief planner, MMRDA, Mumbai,
September 2015.
21 Of course, “technically sound planning” also has
its own serious disciplinary shortcomings in
relation to its promise (Jacobs 1961; Alexander
1965; Taylor 1998).
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 24, 2018
with a view to demarcate all the “no-go” zones and to protect
productive lands and other areas precious to local communities.
This then may enable technical planning to perform better its
spatial task. Perhaps, answers lie in pursuing a more bottom-
up planning exercises such as Kerala’s participatory planning
or the local area planning in Delhi and Kolkata. Sadly, the po-
litical will required for such change is not visible: the Land
Utilisation Bill, for instance has awaited discussion since 2013,
and the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Act empow-
ering local bodies is yet to be implemented on the ground.
22 Interview with senior planner, CIDCO, 2 May
2016, Belapur.
23 In 2008, the state government announced the
location of Mumbai’s second international air-
port near Kopra–Panvel area in Navi Mumbai.
With this, the period post-2008 has seen acceler-
ated growth in and around Panvel city, with larg-
er developers and developments flocking to the
region to capitalise on the windfall profits to be
made given the throwaway land prices in rural
Panvel at the time. In January 2013, the Govern-
ment of Maharashtra delineated an area of
561.72 sqkm that falls within a 25 km radius of
the proposed airport as the Navi Mumbai Airport
Influence Notified Area (NAINA), where City and
Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO)
would operate as the Special Planning Authority
(SPA). NAINA covered 256 villages in Raigad and
14 villages in Thane districts. With this demarca-
tion and the promise of better infrastructure,
more fuel was added to the speculative fire.
24 At a talk held at Institute of Town Planners
India, Mumbai Chapter, Navi Mumbai, in Feb
2015, for planners, by CIDCO senior planner, in
charge of the project, on the NAINA model, at
the discussion that followed.
25 Interview with ex-senior planner, CIDCO, Mum-
bai, 25 September 2015.
26 http://dolr.nic.in/dolr/downloads/PDFs/Draft
%20National%20Land%20Utilisation%20Poli-
cy%20(July%202013), pdf.
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