A commendable effort to provide some space for Mumbaikars : Equal Street

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Yesterday, I had to attend an important meeting at National College, Bandra around 10 in the morning. Normally on any Sunday early hour traffic from Lokhandwala to Bandra takes  hardly 15 to 20 minutes. For me driving gone smooth up till Arya Samanj Crossroad on Linking Road, Santacruz. Thereafter the  traffic was very bad and also saw special police bandobast and the vehicles were moving at snail pace as only one side of road was vaiable for traffic traffic movement. The half of road from Arya Samaj  Road, passing entire stretch of SV Road and Linking Road encompassing 7.5 km was thrown opened for the people who always dream for a open and space for their family in the city of Mumbai which is not possible due to lack of planning or the earmarked open spaces have been grabbed by greedy builders with the help of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.

I just forgotten my meeting and became a part of the crowd enjoying new found liberation. Seeing toddlers ferrying around in a group on their tricycle , skating, playing football was a real pleasure. This was a part of an unique initiative by citizens with Times of India  called Equal Street.

This is probably for the first time in India to help the locals to reclaim some space in their neighbourhood for family, children, friends for few hours in a week. I have seen such permanent civic places in the mid of bustling cities in Europe as well as America. One such place I enjoyed most at the Farmers Market in Seattle downtown where one km of road stretch is blocked for vehicular traffic, kept for fresh vegetables, bakery products, craft beer, handicraft stalls are in plenty, the people can freely walk and without a fear of getting bumped by a car or any other vehicle. And by the way original Starbucks Coffee, which was opened in the year 1824, is in this Market only. Similar experiments have successfully done in Manhattan area of NYC and Barcelona. Manhattan's arterial road Broadway was closed permanently for vehicular traffic in 2010 while La Rambala in Barcelona was converted into walking and cycling space. There are many other innovative ways thought out to decongest city and make it available to citizens. Recently, new Mayor of Paris announced measures for reducing cars in the core city areas. For many years in Singapore, even and odd numbered cars were allowed on alternate days. London and Bogota also have such measures in place for many years.

Now back to Equal Street experiment, I felt mesmerised to see Children listening to stories by ladies of their grandmothers' age passionately sharing age old wisdom. People started sharing the their skills in culinary arts, rangoli making, graffiti and many other arts. Some local home grown Bands were regaling the crowd with old and new popular numbers.

Equal Street is a great opportunity for  brands who want to reach the focussed target group, it is a very smart move of TOI to gain good visibility as well as to show themselves as saviour for a genuine cause. This will continue upto May 2015. My question is why our very own representatives sitting in the government wait for some NGO to take a lead, why they do not take a lead and create this kind of effort to be a permanent feature in various localities by involving the local people. But any way if the government is not keen let the people living in other parts of Mumbai come forward to replicate this experiment to free their streets for some time at least once in a week for children, as well as the family, where every one should get opportunity to showcase their talent. We curse the hawkers to block our footpaths  at the busiest roads, the local administration should make all out effort to see that they should not block our walking space but may think about giving them a temporary place for weekly or a biweekly Haat. This experiment also prove a point that if you want to do something for betterment of communities, you do not need fat money, it you have passion you may create any thing.