The “neighbourhood” under study

 

Place: Nerul

District: Navi Mumbai, Thane

State: Maharashtra

Location: see Map 1 in Annexure I

 

An Introduction

Navi Mumbai sprung up as a twin city to the main urban center of Mumbai but in contrast it is a planned city as compared to unplanned origin of Mumbai. Most of the development here was and is being undertaken by City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Limited (CIDCO). It is the company which has planned and developed the world's largest, one of the most beautiful, independent, fully self-contained and well-balanced modern metro city 'Navi Mumbai' known as city of twenty first century. CIDCO is a fully owned company of the Government of Maharashtra specially set up for the systematic construction of the 344 sq kilometers - 'Navi Mumbai'.

Navi Mumbai has been planned as a series of nodes  and contains twelve major nodes in all. Vashi is the oldest and the most populated node of Navi Mumbai. The other major nodes are Central Business District (CBD) Belapur, Nerul and Panvel. Vashi is a mixture of residential and official spaces, CBD Belapur is almost exclusively a business place and Nerul is its largest residential node.

Nerul is divided into fifty sectors. In contrast to calling the to parts that the local railway line bifurcate it into as east and west, here the parts are called phase one and phase two. Interestingly or otherwise all the even number sectors lie in phase two and odd numbered in phase one. Phase one is the more developed of the two parts. The major market of this node is located in this phase along with the major educational and health care centers.

            Like any other node in Navi Mumbai or even in Mumbai the railway station forms its heart. But unlike the railway stations in Mumbai or any where else in the country the railway stations in Navi Mumbai are state of the art architecture. They are full fledged shopping, business and office centers with “twenty four hours of power and water supply”[*].

 

The Socio-Economic Build-up and profile of residents of Nerul

            As mentioned before, being the largest residential node in Navi Mumbai, Nerul houses a wide variety of people. A substantial part of population is build up of South Indians and Marathas. As compared to any other suburb of Mumbai the proportion of slum dwellers is quite low.

“Education levels here are well above the national urban averages”[†]. Service class makes up a large chunk of population. An interesting fact about the population here will be that the number of people with non-Marathi mother tongue is quite large. Households with English as their mother tongue are also found in some numbers. These are the people mainly from Goa and belong to Christian religion.   

 

The Pin-Points regarding the detailed study

            Most of the news paper stalls are located near the Nerul Railway Station. A total of seven stalls are situated in and around the vicinity of Railway Station. One other is situated near the Bus Depot. (See Map 2 in Annexure I).

             All the major new papers deliver their bundle of prints at a specified location situated on the main road (see Map 2 in Annexure I). The delivery is made on the footpath in front of the shops. This particular segment of footpath is wider, well built and well lit by street lights than other segments. This may be one of the reasons for selection of this spot apart from it being a central location. The hawkers pick up their bundle of prints from here.