Visually and vision-wise, the LIC Colony was a path-breaking project. Each flat had a different configuration: from a small room to a 3BHK. "Which meant that people from different classes could live here," says Shivkumar. "It allowed for different kinds of people, with different sorts of payment plans, to be able to access affordable housing in suburban Mumbai. Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, probably some Dalit families as well [shared the same space]. Your access to a home was not determined by your last name. The state is blind in some ways, and it was possible for that sort of alchemy to form.
I doubt that is possible in the housing currently being made in this city. Developers now place a premium on exclusivity, not on inclusivity." With bricks and mortar, LIC managed to create Shangri-La. "Utopia never works," says Shivkumar. "But, the desire for utopia is real. Without the utopian urge, there can be no progress. That's why this colony was an experiment. I think it worked. I don't know why that model of housing cannot be [sustained]? Why have we given up on the idea of housing as a provision for nation-building?"
In fact, part of the LIC's mandate was to create a fund for nation-building. "So, if you think of this colony as a nation-building project, then that idea of the nation is embedded in the architecture of this place. My father was the classic success story of middle-class India. He went to IIT, he went to IISc, and then TIFR. He epitomised the modern Indian." The docu, then, is a tribute to the dreams and ambitions of the modern Indian in the 1970s.
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- South's Correa in the North, Sunday, January 20, 2019 - 10:24