A youth group sets up the citys virtual avatar on award-winning game Minecraft to find infrastructure and policy solutions to the controversial coastal road
Worli fishermen say their livelihood has been affected by the coastal road and now, with the BMC not allowing them to park their boats at the Lotus jetty, they wonder what options they have left. PIC/Ashish Raje
When we asked the BMC officials where do we put the boat, they told us, 'this is not your baap ka jaagir' and asked us to remove the boats from the jetty," says Sanjay Baikar. The 45-year-old resident of Worli Koliwada, is a member of the local fishing community that identifies this as the land of their forefathers, having lived here for generations, earning their living by fishing off the coast of Mumbai.
Like others, they too have been facing trouble due to the construction of the coastal road—an under-construction eight-lane track along the western coast extending from Marine Lines in the south to Kandivli in the north.
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Baikar, secretary of Vanchit Machhimar Haji Ali Sahkari Sangathana Maryadit, says fishing in the area has been affected in the last three years, ever since construction began off Worli. "The fish don't come this side because of construction noise. We make Rs 300 from selling the catch, and spend Rs 500 on the boat diesel," he says. With livelihood affected, the community has been living off loans.
Sanjay Baikar
"We have written to senior officials. A letter to the CM [Uddhav Thackeray], asking him to meet us has gone unanswered. It has been two months," he adds. In a bid to have their voices heard, the community is reaching out to people across the city for support.
Will it be a community of Minecraft players that change the game for them?
Speaking over a Zoom call, the three members that make up the core team of Minecraft Mumbai, explain why they are lending a hand to amplify Baikar's voice.
The first push for the initiative came from Nivedita Bansal, a Bombay International School alumna, currently studying Global Sustainability Science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Bansal, 20, who also runs the popular social media page, South Bombay Memes for Class Riddled Teens, says while the graduation course brought to light the urgent need for sustainable solutions, it also made her realise that a scalable solution would entail more than just "turning vegan". "For our projects, we are required to look at one issue from the perspective of different stakeholders. Say, a wind energy project from the perspective of farmers in the Netherlands who fear that it will affect the landscape," she adds. It made her realise that if more people in Mumbai could see the damage that the coastal road will cause, the voices against it will be stronger.
Nivedita Bansal
This, she realised, could be achieved if a virtual model of Mumbai—which showed real-time effects of various infrastructure projects—was created. This is possible on Minecraft, a game first introduced in 2011, and on which people can build their own environments. The award-winning game has been, world over, used as an educational tool and also to build virtual replicas of cities and universities. For instance, London already exists in the Minecraft world.
While Bansal is not a Minecraft player herself, she connected with Dev Shah, an 18-year-old biomedical engineering student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Vedant Talreja, 20, who is studying liberal arts and sciences at York University, through the meme page after sending out a call for Minecraft builders.
Dev Shah
Shah says their Mumbai will be on the same scale as the real city, with Geographic Information System data that will help build a rough version of the city. Details such as coral, for example, will be manmade additions. Bansal adds that the idea would be to make this virtual city available to those conducting future studies where different scenarios and infrastructure projects could be played out, their pros and cons discussed, before it goes on the floors.
It would also help people explore solutions to existing problems such as poor drains, intense rain during a short spell and high tides that have recently flooded even traditionally safe areas such as Churchgate and Cuffe Parade, says Shah.
The idea of the youth-led initiative, says Bansal, is to collaborate with the authorities for a solution that keeps the city at its core.
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Vedant Talreja
Coming back to the coastal road, Talreja believes it's a project that has been implemented without taking into account the several voices against it. "Even the Environment Impact Assessment has been rubbished by the Bombay High Court as a lip service that paints a false, rosy picture. Across the world, there's a shift towards public transport and pedestrian friendly systems. We don't want Mumbai to lag behind."
In addition to recreating the city, virtual brick by virtual brick, the team is also reaching out to communities affected by the coastal road, in order to understand how they have been impacted. The team, which is already 42 members strong—most of them below 25 years—have spent the last two months conducting their research and building the city, a process that's nearly over.
A preview of Mumbai on Minecraft
While the portal to the game, when it's ready, will be available on the Minecraft Mumbai site, for those who don't want to play, virtual tours will be available on their social media handles as videos.
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