Sanjay Gandhi National Park - Question of Cities

The final straw: The plan that endangers Mumbai’s
National Park

The draft zonal master plan for the eco-sensitive zone of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park seeks not to protect the forest but to open parts of it for construction. In doing so, the plan ignores the web of life between…

A farce, a road map legitimising environmental destruction

It took the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation nine long years to prepare and release the draft zonal master plan for the eco-sensitive zone of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, thanks largely to sustained pressure and court battles by activists. Glaring omissions…

Walking the faultlines of a forest in the city

Amidst the chaos and cacophony of urban life in Mumbai and Thane, the lush green and quiet paths of the outer areas of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park offer a refuge and bring people close to nature. As the Brihanmumbai…

‘If the forest and animals exist, so will we. Otherwise,
it’s all over.’

In the fierce debates over protecting the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, its core area and buffer zone, the voices of the Adivasis, its oldest residents, are rarely heard. They or their ancestors were here before it was designated a protected…

‘Crown jewel of Mumbai…cannot allow it to slip away’

Ankita Dhar Karmakar, Multimedia Journalist and Social Media in-charge in Question of Cities, has reported and written at the intersection of gender, cities, and human rights, among other themes. Her work has been featured in several digital publications, national and…

‘Protecting SGNP is people’s movement, has always been’

Despite the onerous task of reading through the 400-page draft zonal master plan for the eco-sensitive zone of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, which the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation published only in English, and the limited time of 30 days to…

The shrinking public open spaces of Mumbai

There are striking examples of vanishing commons. Open spaces such as maidans, parks, and promenades are claimed by governments for so-called public projects. Mumbai’s open space network has been disrupted prioritising engineering over ecology. Every city needs its commons. But…

Seeing the unseen nature amidst Mumbai’s expanding concrete

A casualty of the build more approach is the erasure of precious natural wealth. Amidst the concrete maze of Mumbai-Navi Mumbai, there are still some treasures tucked away, as this photograph of flamingos shows. The Vihar Lake, the flora-fauna in…

See the frayed symbiosis between Mumbai and its shrinking forests

The Adivasis living in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and Aarey Forest, given their deep relationship with the natural forest, struggle to make sense of the intruding city. Natural resources such as water are no longer theirs by right…