Kalbadevi Jewellery Units Posing Danger To People, Challenge To Govt

Mahesh Vijapurkar

At one time, Mumbai had upwards of 80 textile mills, and the city’s main industrial activity till World War I was converting cotton into cloth. They sprang up in the mid-1850s with surpluses from opium trade and until recently, the tall chimneys, almost 200 feet high, were the iconic feature of the city.

That changed, however, when the mills stopped working after the crippling strike in 1982 by workers led by Datta Samant, and in the 1990s, the government allowed the recycling of the lands they stood on into real estate. Instead of chimneys, now one sees high-rise towers housing offices, malls, and residences.

With difficulty, if you have a good guide, you may spot one or two, but they too await demolition sooner or later. In a city starved for land, the spaces seek premium. However, now one sees more chimneys than the textile mills provided, but in a tiny space and excessively overcrowded Kalbadevi in South Mumbai. These spew toxic fumes.

These chimneys are of units which turn gold into jewellery using mostly migrant workmen, which find their way to the nearby Zaveri Bazaar, the country’s biggest bullion market. Proximity to Zaveri Bazaar is cited as the reason they are located in Kalbadevi precinct, never mind the inconvenience and threat to the health of the other residents there.

Unlike the textile mill towers only smoke, these evacuate the toxic fumes from within, never mind the chimneys reach only up to the neighbouring residential old-style block of tiny apartments called chawls. Chawls were the first type of mass housing of a sort, with single rooms opening on a common verandah with common toilets at its end.

They initially housed textile workers near the mills, and others who came to service the city’s expanding economy on the backbone of textiles mills. With these tiny dwellings, easily lending themselves to be defined as slum by the definition of Census authorities – congestion, lack of ventilation and services – turning into jewellery-making units, risks have been heaped on the entire area.

These units in which acids are stored, besides a large number of LPG cylinders, and where flames are used to melt and shape the malleable gold, are vulnerable to fires. The staircases are generally wooden, and if you see an open door, it is more likely to be of only the common toilets’ when not in use. Because of gold, closed doors mean security to it.

Fumes are the main daily issue, but the problems are not just the likely fire, which can spread from chawl to chawl as they are cheek by jowl. Because the roads so narrow, a fire brigade’s fire tenders cannot negotiate them. Firefighting is a challenge as was seen in the recent past. The daytime crowding – business districts see many come there to work – adds to the plethora of woes. It is a disaster in looming.

Though the chief minister has ordered the civic body to ensure the menace ends by removing the units, the local residents are not optimistic because the civic body has known all along the growth of jewellery making units run by the rich and powerful from the bullion sector. Some had been asked to remove the chimneys but they sprang up soon enough making a mockery of the civic authorities.

The bullion market can be obdurate. Though their constituents had bought premises in the high-priced tony Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) diamond bourse, for over a decade it was unoccupied because Zavery Bazaar was the place to be for the conveniences it offered them – proximity to anything the trade needed. This time, it is a test for both the chief minister and the municipal corporation.