It is hard to conceive that what was a hilly outcrop at the southern tip of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park barely 25 years ago, is now an upscale business-cum-residential enclave and home to a leading startup hub. Its 50-metre elevation even gives Powai—with its swanky highrises, shopping plazas and glitzy offices—a future perhaps more secure than Mumbai’s: a rise in sea levels, if global warming remains unchecked, would inundate most other parts of the city. Besides, Powai is one of Mumbai’s least congested parts, replete with green spaces and milder weather, not to speak of premium property prices. Not that everything is hunkydory though. The area around the lake which used to be a getaway for wildlife enthusiasts is facing the onslaught of urbanistan. There was a time one could spot crocodiles basking in the expansive waterbody and wary leopards in the undergrowth. That’s a rare sight today—development comes at an ecological cost.Back in the late 1980s, what worked in Powai’s favour as a planned settlement was that it was the city’s largest tract under a single builder. Niranjan Hiranandani acquired 250 acres of quarry land and transformed it into the country’s first self-contained township heralding the walk-to-work concept. Then, roughly a decade ago, Larsen & Toubro, which had a sprawling engineering facility, all but ceased industrial activity and went on to construct residential towers on a contiguous land parcel. This gave rise to a stretch that had wide roads, pavements, parks, wellplanned supermarkets and community centres, and to top it, a method to conserve water: The Hiranandani township’s sewage treatment plant recycles water for use in toilet flushes, gardens and washing cars. “When I bought the land, I was the only builder in the area. Today, there are at least 50 developers in and around Powai. Such is the demand for housing in this area!” said the builder who is synonymous with the project.When the first apartment came up, the going rate was Rs 1,100 per sq ft. Today a flat in the township commands Rs 40,000 per sq ft, comparable with locations in upscale Bandra. Prices have kept pace with prestige, a far cry from the pretownship era when no one had heard of Powai. Professor SP Sukhatme, former director of IITBombay, reminisces about the impression his South Mumbai relatives had of the place in the 1960s. “Well, actually they just didn’t know where Powai was. They just knew that the railway station nearest to the IIT was Vikhroli (back then). The campus was in an isolated place, with just one bus from the station to commute to and fro,” Sukhatme said.Recounting how unspoilt the area around the IIT was in the 80’s, he said “what is now called the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR) was only a 10-feet wide, twolane road, going up to L&T...IIT and L&T were the only two big establishments on that road. Otherwise there were small villages and a few isolated bungalows.”In the pre-JVLR days, the road was called Adi Sankaracharya Marg. To widen it, the catchment area of Powai Lake had to be shrunk, something environmentalists haven’t forgiven the authorities for.There was another controversy. The township came up on land taken over by the government under the Urban Land Ceiling Act, and hence reserved to house the poor and the middle class. But all one sees today are fancy apartments for business leaders, CEOs, presidents of MNCs. Hiranandani, who was forced to make amends, eventually built homes for the economically weaker sections, following an expose by social activist Medha Patkar and lawyer-activist Y P Singh. Still, Powai overwhelmingly remains an enclave for the upper classes.L&T’s housing project is not without controversy either. A local MLA, Naseem Khan, objected to industrial land being used for residences, alleging that BMC allowed constructions without ensuring that some housing was set aside for the poor. L&T refused to comment on the matter.Such objections apart, Powai can be touted as a relatively better example of sustainable development. And many prefer it to most other parts of the city. If one is lucky, the odd crocodile can still be spotted by the lakeside in the mornings, limbering up for the day.

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