Mumbai needs every green space it can get

For the past seven months, Mumbaikars have been deprived of one of the city's largest gardens over a petty ego battle.

The sprawling Pramod Mahajan Garden in Dadar has been ready since September 2014, but has still not been inaugurated, thanks to a tussle between two departments in the BMC and the alleged disinterest shown by the political establishment, stated a front page report in this newspaper yesterday.

It is criminal that people are being deprived of this much-needed green lung in congested, traffic-choked Dadar. The relevant authorities now need to step in at once to ensure that the gates of this garden are opened to the public. As it is, Mumbai has a paucity of green, open spaces. Senior citizens are afraid to go for walks given the state of our roads. Children are glued to the Internet and mobile phones, and need to be coaxed to play outdoors. Parents are in a dilemma; even if they want to send their children out to play, where do they send them?

In such a scenario, every open space, each garden is a place to preserve, relish and cherish. They should be nurtured and care should be taken that any equipment, be it a play area for small children or benches for people, is well-maintained.

Instead of that, we have shocking, apathetic attitudes and evasive answers from officials who claim they do not know anything about this garden.

The 42,000-sq metre (10.38 acres) garden in Dadar is made on taxpayers' money and now, the taxpayer must be allowed to enjoy the facility. It is summer vacation time for children, and people need to have recourse to open air recreation before the monsoon forces them indoors again. Enough time has been wasted already.