The Vanishing Green Cover

This rapid development and widespread urban sprawl have drastically depleted green cover leading to habitat loss, pollution and significantly impacting the quality of life. In spite of this gloomy reality, the section of people including many political party leaders who support the felling of trees at Aarey Colony to make way for a Metro car shed claim that Aarey is not a forest. The Maharashtra government had told the Bombay High Court that Aarey Colony could not be declared a forest just because of its greenery. Adivasis who have been cultivating land there are helplessly making feeble attempts to oppose this.

In the middle of the city lies Aarey, an urban oasis that serves as a green lung for a city suffocating under the weight of its own development. It is also a sanctuary to an array of wildlife, some of it rare and vulnerable.

A portion of Aarey was declared a reserved forest in 2020, after years of collective struggle and protests. Just outside, the city’s first underground metro has started rolling in the first week of October.

Inside the ecologically sensitive zone, spread across 25 acres, is the barricaded enclosure of the Metro 3 car shed. It is almost ready, and shockingly silent. Nine metro rakes are parked in the shed.

An office building is positioned to one side, another building at one end, and yet another for the maintenance of the trains and their smooth operation. All that’s left are minor fixtures.

Interestingly, the green signal has been given by the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety. The final permission needed for this metro link to be flagged off.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already inaugurated Phase One of Metro 3, from Aarey to the Bandra Kurla Complex very recently. There’s a dense patch of trees at the heart of the car shed. This plot has not been needed yet, say Metro officials, although there’s no saying when the axe could fall.

The inauguration of Metro 3 is a hint of the things to come in the light. Presently everything has come to standstill. It’s a lull before the storm.

There are plans for a remote forest, and, around it, more construction. There is conflict brewing – administrators talk of high-rises and infrastructure.

The tribals who stay in the padas are helplessly looking at the prevailing situation. The land, now developed, was a part of their lives and livelihood. It’s where the indigenous inhabitants used to forage for plants, herbs, roots, vegetables and fruit.

A stream flowed through it, now diverted by the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL), and replaced with an extensive drainage line. The metro car shed rose from the ashes of a long-drawn-out movement led by environmentalists and citizens. Though they could not stop the car shed from being built in this green zone.