Impact Assessment of Mumbai Coastal Road on Livelihood of Fishing Community, Mumbai, India

Impact Assessment of Mumbai Coastal Road on Livelihood of Fishing Community, Mumbai, India

Author – Ar. Swapnil Deshmukh

Co-Author – Prof. Bhagyajit Raval

Abstract:
This paper focuses on the impact assessment of a part of the imminent Mumbai coastal road along Mumbai’s western waterfront on the livelihoods of the artisan fishing community along the alignment of this project.

Proposed Mumbai’s coastal road project is set to connect Marine lines to Kandivali. The project is divided into two phases – North & South. It will be built on reclaimed land on the city’s western waterfront. Surely, this project will alter its physical, social, and cultural landscape. This project is driven by broader political, social, and environmental processes while facing challenges like sustainability, climate change, and resilience. As the vicious loop of ‘More cars and more roads’, projects like these are promoting and becoming a symbol of modernity in the global south.

This study is aimed at analysing the project beyond its principle use as the transportation infrastructure and focuses on undesirable consequences on the livelihoods of fishermen and their hunting grounds which will be eradicated by the proposed reclamation of land.

Developing between an association of structure and conflicting metropolitan regions, it examines the example of most excellent enclaving that have come to portray one more sort of safeguarded urbanism that obliterates the history, age-old customs, sustainable livelihood, and texture of metropolitan regions. The on-going study is set to clarify the practical impact of the project on the vocations and traditions of distinctive fishing communities off the west coast.

It aims to gather inferences and provide suggestions to minimize the adverse effects on fishing communities and safeguard such communities from similar projects.