In the 1970s, architect Charles Correa designed a 90-acre colony in Borivli, commissioned by LIC and paid for by LIC policyholders, which brought down the walls between classes, communities, and in a classic Correa move, the indoors and the outdoors.

Since the time architect Rohan Shivkumar was a kid, he knew that the man who designed the statuesque Kanchanjunga Apartments on Pedder Road also designed his humble abode in Borivli West. "Correa was very, very, very iconic even then," he says, as we talk in the very house.

In the early 1970s, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) had earmarked 90 acres in Borivli West for a housing project for its policyholders. Like VT/CST, it was called LIC Colony colloquially and Jeevan Bima Nagar officially. MP Gangadharan, 78, who bought a flat in 1975 and "who knows everything there is to know about the colony," recalls, "It was the brainchild of TA Pai, the LIC chairman. If you were an LIC policyholder, you were eligible to buy a flat, and you could take a loan at 10.5 per cent interest. So, the policy premium and loan instalment, you had to pay to LIC. For residents, the flats were somewhat cheaper, the financial policy had a lot of flexibility and there was a trust factor." LIC built about 60 buildings, with a total of 1,900 flats. Surprisingly, it hired the best in the business - and the most public-spirited - Charles Correa.

"There's a famous Marg publication that came out in the early 1960s," cites Shivkumar, who is also dean of research at Kamla Raheja Institute for Architecture. "Correa, architect Pravina Mehta and civil engineer Shirish Patel had made an argument for New Bombay [Navi Mumbai]. Correa was able to think about his practice as something that not only involved the making of aesthetically good buildings, but architecture as a tool for the development of a better society."

....

The C-type building in LIC Colony had step terraces (now closed), so that a relationship could be established between the forest and the buildings. 
The C-type building in LIC Colony had step terraces (now closed), so that a relationship could be established between the forest and the buildings.  - 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.  © Sameer Markande