As you relish the sugary aroma of tea time, you’re glad the clouds are holding up—the alleyways of this quaint Bandra village are not wide enough for an umbrella.
‘‘It wasn’t always like this,’’ explains Francesca Falcon (42). But every time a house is demolished and new limbs stand up, ‘‘a foot or two of the lane is eaten up’’.
Falcon’s own ancestral home down Chapel Road is in the gloomy shadow of an awkward ground-plus-two storey newcomer, an increasingly common style as the gaothan (village), its little compounds and crucifixes go down to modern construction.
In March this year, when Falcon stumbled on the Maharashtra Right to Information Act, she saw a fresh twist to her nine-year battle to get a set of leaking drainage pipes in the neighbouring building repaired.
She filed an application, demanding copies of the progress report on her complaint, notices issued by the civic body to the building’s residents and details of action taken against them for not repairing the pipes.
‘‘If no action has been initiated, what action has been taken against the officials responsible for this inaction?’’ her application asks, seeking the names and designations of errant officials.
The reply of the public information officer (PIO)—Assistant Municipal Commissioner of H/West ward A S Khoje—reads like a poor gag. And one that came 15 days after the stipulated 15-day period.
MAGNIFICENT OBFUSCATION
‘‘No leakage of drain pipes are observed,’’ says the reply. ‘‘Hence the matter of other details does not arise.’’ The words ‘‘does not arise’’ are then struck out and penned below is: ‘‘may be given if details of 351 notices are submitted.’’
‘‘They asked me about notices that they served on the residents,’’ Falcon almost shouts, eyes gleaming. Her irritation is understandable—her battle began in 1995, when the neighbours sold out and suddenly two people couldn’t walk hand-in-hand to Falcon’s gate.
A yellowing copy of a letter to the local ward office, now at the very bottom of a thick file, marks the battle cry: ‘‘Sir, an illegal construction...a leaking drainage pipe...’’
The rest of the file is correspondence from 1996 to 2003—a whirlwind tour through a single woman’s fight. There’s a legal notice to the civic body, letters to then chief minister Manohar Joshi, to then municipal commissioner Sharad Kale (and later to Karun Srivastava), to the law officer of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, a non-cognisable complaint against an angry builder...
‘‘Nothing ever happened,’’ Falcon laments. Before her PIO’s reply came, the site was inspected. An earlier response to her repeated complaints, from the assistant engineer (Buildings and Factories) of H/ West ward, says the site was inspected and ‘‘it is observed that almost leakage is stopped’’.
‘‘That means the leakage is still there, right?’’ Falcon asks. Through this period, the toilet pipe continued to intermittently drop its murky contents partly on a plastic roof protecting the Falcon compound, flooding the shrunken alley and showering the rest on passers-by.
CAUGHT ON CAMERA
‘‘Sometimes one of the five drainage chambers in the passage would be choked, the sickening stench from the sludge filling my home,’’ Falcon says.
The spunky East Indian has photographic evidence (‘‘I bought a camera just for this’’) with her 83-year-old father holding up the day’s newspaper to mark dates when the alley stank like a public toilet. ‘‘Every time I’d hear the flush, I’d run out with my camera,’’ she laughs.
The appellate authority, Andheri Deputy Municipal Commissioner C R Hirekar, didn’t fare better. ‘‘Right after I met him, the pipes were fixed,’’ Falcon says.
And in his reply, Hirekar says: ‘‘...accordingly, the tenants have replaced the drain pipes.’’
Where were the documents she had demanded?
Last week, Falcon’s appeal came up at the office of the Upa-Lokayukta. Another hearing with the appellate authority and the information officer is due.
Falcon wants to see the PIO penalised for delayed, incomplete and inaccurate information. ‘‘Or it will be a mockery of the law.’’ And worse, who will ever use a law that only promises but doesn’t deliver?