I guess by now every person living in Bombay should have enough sense to know that it is useless trying to blame the government and BMC for the poor state of the city. The best option is to take it in your hand to improve it.

I like to do things that I say we should not do so I'd start by cursing the government a little. If you live in Bombay and have not been desensitized to it, you’d' notice, if you just look around you, that the government has played no part in the development of the city. The only thing the government has done is to actually sell plots of land to builders. It has not paid any attention to the infrastructure and it has not bothered to keep the basic necessity like housing under control that has resulted in the cheapest 1BHK house in suburbs costing more than 15 lacs.

There are some other cases when the government has given bigger pieces of land to builders and they have done more than just creating a building. I have not explored Bombay thoroughly but I have come across two such places that are in complete contrast with the rest of the city.

Hiranandani in Powai

I don't know the history of it; all I know is that Hiranandani has developed a very large chunk of land near Powai Lake. The piece of land was not just for a building or a set of 3-4 buildings but big enough to make a small township there and that is exactly what they have done there.

When you go to Hiranandani, you feel like you are not in Bombay because it is so much more organised and better planned than the rest of the city. Here are a few things that I like the most about this place.

• Roads: The roads are not like the rest of the Bombay; they don't have potholes and are wider
• Footpath: In the rest of the city, the footpaths were created later and encroached first. All the footpaths either have hutments or have been encroached by the shopkeepers. This is not the case here. They are used what they are meant for-walking
• Encroachment (or the lack of it): As I have already said, this place has no encroachments
• Uniformity: Since the entire place is built by the same builder, it has a common link and synergy missing in the rest of the city where every building is trying to be different.
• Maintenance: Since the entire place is one big unit, it is maintained properly unlike the rest of city where the maintenance is limited to the confines of the building.
• Cleanliness: Goes with the previous point. You don't see garbage dumped all over the place; the sanitation here is much better than the rest of the city.

InOrbit Mall

Inorbit Mall is another place that I quite liked. Although it is not the same as Hiranandani and is built on a much smaller piece of land, it still has everything to kick the ass of the rest of the city. If you look at it, it is nothing more than a bundle of shops, same shops that are scattered around the rest of the city as well but nowhere near as organised as here. In other markets, shopping is a pain, as you have to deal with the weather, the traffic on the roads, and the lack of footpaths to walk among other things while in Inorbit you just concentrate on finding what you want and forget the struggles associated with shopping. No wonder you enter this place and before you realise it, 4 hours have passed. The other thing I loved is the ample parking space that would not have been possible in your usual market.

What this shows is that things are better planned if they are in private hands and if we need to get some sense in the chaos called Bombay, we need to get bigger pieces of land developed instead of selling space for fewer buildings. The choice is simple, do we want to live in nicely developed neighbourhood or in a nice building surrounded by slum.

Related Images
Image gallery of pictures of Hiranandani
Panoramic shot of Inorbit 1
Panoramic shot of Inorbit 2
Panoramic shot of first sunrise of 2006 as seen from Powai lake