Building Green: Environmental Architects and the Struggle for Sustainability in Mumbai

by Anne Rademacher

  The scuffle with the Builder Union, then, was symptomatic of a larger shift in

  assertions of power at the level of state and municipal government, one that might ultimately rework a calculus of state-builder power, but that would stil , presumably, limit the work of the environmental architect.

  But Darius’ very deliberate assertions about “corruption,” even as he described

  an entire system that works in a known, albeit not formal y scripted way, com-

  pelled me to ask further about his experience of the way urban development actu-

  al y happens in Mumbai. He took a deep breath, paused, and began a description

  that immediately introduced another important actor in many conversations with

  environmental architects: the municipal architect. He explained:

  To start a project in India, step one is you have to go to a labor commissioner and get his permission. That process, between fees and bribes, costs you 25–30 lakhs,

  depending on your project. Then you have a whole host of other officers you have to go through—the feeding order—and so that’s where your municipal architect gets

  www.ebook3000.com

  A Vocation in Waiting 149

  involved. At (Darius’ firm) we do not get involved in that. We are aware of what is happening, of course, but we don’t deal with that. We don’t deal with payoffs or making the bribes. So that’s the job of the municipal architect.

  Here, Darius made another common assertion: although this process exists, he

  explained, they were kept at a distance from his firm. Any necessary payoffs and

  shady dealings, he claimed, were in some way outsourced to municipal architects.

  He continued:

  You have a bunch of municipal architects; general y they are all ex-government of-

  ficials. So they’ve retired from government and set up these businesses. They have left the service, but they have all their contacts and so keep getting their share of the pie.

  So it’s sort of this circle of, after you retire, after you leave that department, you can retire or you can start your own practice and depending on how high you were up

  there, you have the connections and you have the ability to get things passed.

  Darius had set the category, and its place in the processes of urban development,

  that allowed the architect to be simultaneously a part, and to stand apart from, the broader system he described. When I asked him to explain further, he described

  how a municipal architect functions in his own firm:

  The way the system works is that any building that is built by (Contractor) in Bombay, on paper his associates are not the architect. On paper you have the municipal architect. So if we get into trouble it’s the municipal architect who gets into trouble, not (Contractor). This is standard.

  Consistent with my conversations with environmental architects in many kinds of

  firms, Darius explained what is “standard” according to the established “system.”

  Its dimensions were narrated as structures that confined action and limited avail-

  able choices for how an environmental architect (or any other architect) can oper-

  ate. In this sense, the municipal architect was rendered a rather neutral figure—a facilitator of other processes rather than, for instance, a derided subset of an otherwise respected profession:

  You have to have a municipal architect because drawings have to be done in a cer-

  tain way. They know the rules; they know the loopholes. . . . So for instance a client hires this municipal architect. The municipal architect knows the ins and outs of

  the government, and knows how the system works. The municipal architect will tell

  him, for your project, roughly, it will cost you this much. Official y it’s this much, but unofficial y you will have to pay him X. The client then gives him a bal park, saying, I’m alright going up to this level, but anything more is not feasible for me. So the municipal architect will go off and deal with the officer. Wel , he’ll never deal with the officer directly; he’ll deal with the secretary or the appointed person. And general y the deals real y do happen in these hotel rooms where they go, drop the money, and his fellow cal s up and says you’ve got it . . . I’ve never experienced that, thank god, but I know how it works in that sense and I’ve heard of how things happen.

  150 A Vocation in Waiting

  I asked Darius how he could possibly avoid experiencing this, given how closely

  he works with the firm and its projects. “Well for me,” he said, “it’s all still pretty shocking. And it’s sad. Being my father’s son, I know I cannot do anything illegal. I know it; I mean, I will get caught. So I have figured out how to avoid it and still do interesting work. But it’s not easy. The system is set up this way.”

  In every interview I conducted among practicing environmental architects, the

  default position in discussing how Mumbai’s urban development system works was

  to outline the technical y legal activities in which the interviewee took part, and to describe an arena in which a particular subset of architects undertook any necessary illegal or “corrupt” tasks. Designating two separate spheres not only facilitated claims to practicing without legal compromise, it also reinforced the notion that a powerful structural system determined architects’ capacity for action, rather than the other way around.

  This was nearly always supplemented by some overt expression of disappoint-

  ment, and occasional y disil usionment. In Darius’ case, the municipal architects’

  material gains were a kind of index of injustice:

  What’s real y sad is that a municipal architect earns more money per square foot than a regular architect. And his fee is not including the bribes that have to be paid. His fee is just telling the client the roadmap . . . as in, this is who you need to give money to, and when. And he does the municipal drawings, which are total y different from what an architectural drawing would be. They are essential y two different projects.

  They submit one project (for permissions), but a completely other project is being designed. They are literal y like two separate buildings, two different projects. At times it’s mind blowing. I’ve seen some municipal drawings and I’m shocked at how

  our plans are transformed into this other set of documents. And these people are

  making so much money.

  The challenge of maintaining a personal sense—or even a consistent and coher-

  ent narrative—of professional integrity in the midst of such uneven and opaque

  norms was a recurrent theme among nearly every RSIEA graduate with whom

  I spoke. In responses similar to Darius’s, interlocutors spoke of drawing certain

  boundaries around the work they were willing to do. Some also spoke of a con-

  science, or in Darius’s case, a familial sense of honor, that prevented them from

  engaging in the practices they labeled as corrupt. And yet even as each of them

  described their relationship to “the system” and “the process,” it was clear that they, too, had probably had to compromise those boundaries at times.

  Two graduates whom I will call Suhasini and Prisha are, like Siddharth, 2009

  graduates of RSIEA. I have known both since the study trip to Chennai and

  Auroville during which I first became acquainted with Siddharth and Aditya. Both

  women joined the RSIEA out of a deep commitment to what they described to me

  as their “environmental values.”

  www.ebook3000.com

  A Vocation in Waiting 151

  Thane-born Suhasini works for an urban planning and advocacy firm that is

  focused on “sustainable transportation systems” in Mumbai. She also lectures

  occasional y at RSIEA, and so in a short period has moved from graduate student

  to adjunct professor. H
er speech becomes most passionate, however, when she

  speaks of bringing about positive environmental change in Indian cities.

  Prisha, by contrast, works in a small design firm of four architects, with a changing roster of draftspeople and interior designers. Most of their work is in archi-

  tecture, and Prisha described her experience in the firm with great enthusiasm.

  This is not a nominal y environmental firm, she said, but “if a client comes to us wanting something green, we encourage it.” Any lack of environmental y-focused

  projects was not, she said, due to the firm’s collective willingness, but to the problem of demand.

  In a comment that instantly challenged the overwhelming impression among

  current RSIEA students of a widening scope for environmental architecture in

  Mumbai, Prisha told me simply, “I have never had a single client come to me and

  ask for something green.” She continued, “I think certification is still growing. We (her firm) are also relatively smal , so if it’s a big project and they want to make it green, then often that kind of client won’t be pitching to us; they would take it to a bigger (firm).”

  Although professional y positioned in different sectors, both Suhasini and

  Prisha emphasized the need to maintain boundaries around their work that

  allowed them to avoid engaging in illegal or “corrupt” practices and remain “neu-

  tral.” When I asked how one could possibly manage this in the context of “the

  system,” Prisha not only described a category of practice similar to the municipal architect, the “local architect,” but she further differentiated her own practice from the wider “system” by emphasizing the aspect of the overall process in which her

  firm was active:

  In my firm we are lucky, I think, because we can just concentrate on design. When

  it comes to passing permissions, the client has his own local architect to do that. If we get into that, because we are a small team, it’s like diverting your specialization in design. So this is so much easier. We all agree, let’s stick to it (design); we specifical y don’t get into it (permissions).

  But working on just one part of the larger process also created limitations. She

  explained, “this means that we are also restricted. But we have tried to create a line so we don’t cross into politics because, I guess, it’s not me, but my seniors must have indulged into it and (had bad experiences) so they have drawn a line as wel , saying, no, we won’t do anything illegal.”

  As Prisha talked through the details of this “line,” Suhasini nodded her head

  constantly. Without prompting, she substantiated Prisha’s expressed need to avoid

  illegalities at all costs by invoking the experience of her father, also an architect:

  152 A Vocation in Waiting

  It’s so bad otherwise. My father was working on a very prestigious project that was organized by WHO (the World Health Organization); they were designing disaster

  assistance schools. So I was working with him before taking a break to start the master’s program. . . . For the first two years it was going wel , and we were working, but my father was not getting paid. And the thing is, we were designing schools, and it was through disaster assistance, so the buildings had to be from good quality material. You know, no corruption and al . So he said we’ll find a contractor, and we’ll have a proper tendering process. But (the client) said no, they wanted their own local contractor who would also eat money like them. So then they stopped paying him.

  Even to this day, he has not been paid. So final y my father got so frustrated—after three years (they’re) not paying (him) and this is too much. So he filed a case against them and it’s (pending). When I see my father going through all this, I think, you know, why be in Bombay? I feel so discouraged when I see this.

  Suhasini’s story was in no way unique, and comparatively rather benign. In addi-

  tion to nonpayment for services, most of my interlocutors shared stories of extor-

  tion, death threats, and overt violence to degrees far beyond what one might

  entrust to the courts to adjudicate.

  Furthermore, several RSIEA graduates who work in environmental architec-

  ture, but whose employers are large builder firms, were unwilling to speak with me on an ethnographic record at al . All apologized, with some expressing a sincere

  wish that they could share their experiences with me. Yet even the appearance of

  sharing information about that builder’s designs or the processes they followed in order to have them built could cost these architects their jobs; this was a risk they could not, neither would I ask them to, take. Any promise of anonymity was automatical y insufficient, and the ambient sense of fear and danger that accompanied

  most discussions of corruption in Mumbai’s urban development omnipresent.

  Aditya assured me that in his experience the government tendering process was

  as fraught as the processes others described in the private sector. An inevitable

  choreography was predetermined, and it ensured a substandard buildingscape. He

  explained:

  With the government buildings the tender process is long and complicated. Let’s

  say that you and I are contractors, and a tender is floated by a government body at the cost they expect for the project. Say 50 crore is the cost of the project. You are a contractor and I am a contractor; you will charge 51 crore, and if I quote 49, I will get the contract irrespective of my actual calculations of the cost. No matter what background I am from, if I can quote it for 49 I will get the project. . . . Now, that same firm has actual y calculated a total cost for a project of 35 crore. They will stretch with the unskilled workers, maybe they will take labor from a place where they don’t have knowledge of construction, you know, they just make it work without the costs. . . .

  Why? Because if you want to get a government contract, then the practice is like that: you lower the quote to get the job. This is not how it should be. If you want good buildings it should be a good contractor. It should be good infrastructure. How can we talk about environmental anything when this is the process?

  www.ebook3000.com

  A Vocation in Waiting 153

  Inevitably this reliable choreography foreclosed any latitude for an architect to

  make any kind of intervention, whether based on good design intentions or not.

  Aditya continued,

  As the contractor I quote that low, but I have in my mind some way to make up that money. It’s like a lump sum contract. Now I come as the architect and I look at the drawings, and I see things that should be changed or improved. This is a normal

  thing for architects—I am trying to improve on some things. But if I do that, the contractor will say, “this is not under the contract,” and they will demand extra money as devaluation cost.

  When I observed that this would prevent any architect from revising the design

  to make it more ecological y sound, Aditya smiled and paused. “In fact,” he said,

  “that will cut my amount.” “But this means that you can’t make any suggestions,

  environmental or otherwise, without incurring the cost yourself?” I asked, realiz-

  ing that the personal material stakes of this kind of intervention were rarely mentioned in the entreaties to action that closed the most inspiring of RSIEA lectures.

  “Wel ,” he answered:

  If I find mistakes in the drawings, and I try to change something, and my boss agrees, then there are just a few sides to convince—the client side, the government side, and the project manager. You discuss it. But just the other day I went to Goa (to check on a project we are doing there) and I asked (my boss) if we can make some very important changes. These were for safety, not even for green aspects. But he said no. So here I am; I came back to Mumbai and I find today that eve
n my structural engineer has

  made mistakes. More mistakes! But I cannot change these things without cost and

  without convincing all the others. And they are not interested.

  Aditya’s experience with exclusively high-level residential development in

  Mumbai left him adamant that there is no scope for practicing anything that

  even resembles RSIEA’s version of good design—let alone space for reform in the

  urban development process—in Mumbai itself. Others, however, like Suhasini,

  Prisha, and Darius saw recent work stoppages associated with the municipal com-

  missioner’s tightened permissions enforcement, discussed earlier, as reason for

  optimism. “I think it is already changing,” Suhasini said; “this new commissioner

  looks good in principle, and I think he has some integrity.” What was notable,

  regardless of whether powerful structures in urban development were changing

  or fixed, was the degree of powerlessness that each architect described when it

  came to catalyzing that change. Each environmental architect I interviewed out-

  lined an ecology in practice that seemed in every way circumscribed by a “sys-

  tem.” Changes to that system were almost never considered to be within the

  architect’s purview.

  Yet, the system was changing. Darius pointed to a significant shift in old norms, which he called “loopholes,” that had previously allowed builders to create larger flats than Floor Space Index regulations would allow:

  154 A Vocation in Waiting

  The old rule was that when you design a lift, what is in front of the lift is free of FSI. So builders would have architects design one lift that would open this way, and another that would open (the opposite) way. So in the municipal drawings they are

  shown that way: all correct. But in our drawings, the space at the back, which would be 200–300 square feet, would go into the flat. This was also common practice with car lifts. You had a car lift, and builders would say they are providing parking spots in the air. . . . That’s one thousand square feet, and you were getting that FSI free.

  Technical y it wasn’t illegal . . . but then of course people didn’t use that as a car parking spot. They used it as an extra bedroom or extra living room, a den. These are the kind of loopholes that municipal architects informed us about. This is something