Sea Delinked

In South Mumbai, the coastal road is no longer the site of debate. It stands on concrete legs in the water where men used to set nets. Hemant Chandu, a fisherman from Worli Koliwada, watched it arrive. A household here once earned eight to ten lakh rupees a year, he said; it now earns about half. The drying grounds have shrunk. “The shallows our community worked for generations went under the road.” Nobody told the Kolis it was coming, Chandu said. “We found out, and we sat in protest.” The chief minister came and promised compensation, he recalled. In 2023, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation set aside about Rs 130 crore for the affected fisherfolk, to be paid in instalments.

The Kolis were here before anyone else. The city stands on islands that were theirs and takes its name from Mumbadevi, a goddess they carried to the shore. Worli was the latest major koliwada—hamlet of Kolis—to be affected by the road.

To its north, the villages are waiting. It is the fourth stretch of a road that runs along the western coast of the city. The first stretch, from Marine Drive to Worli—formally named the Dharmaveer Swarajya Rakshak Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Coastal Road—is operational and was built by the BMC. From there, the Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link connects Worli to Bandra and was opened in 2010. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation built this and motorists are charged a toll for using it. The MSRDC is also building the Swatantrya Veer Savarkar Sea Link between Bandra and Versova, and is expected to have a toll as well. From Versova, the BMC will build the new road—26.3 kilometres, more than half of it on stilts in the sea—at an estimated cost of Rs 18,263 crore drawn from the city’s revenues. In court, the BMC explained what the money buys: a two-hour drive will take eighteen minutes.