Last week, the Colaba Back Garden became the site of a massive public backlash against a Brihanmumbai Metropolitan Corporation (BMC) proposal to install astroturf on the natural mud and grass football field within the premises. Several football clubs, coaches, players, and local residents’ groups from Colaba opposed the proposal, citing the prohibitive cost of gear required to play on astroturf which will price out players from underprivileged backgrounds and concerns over how the artificial grass surface might respond to rain, leading to potential injuries to players. In the face of growing backlash against the proposal, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar (BJP) clarified in a video statement that the playground’s natural mud surface will be maintained.

It was a rare win for collective action, but the incident also reveals how frayed the social contract between Indian cities and citizens have become. All levels of government — municipal, state, and national — seem to have become increasingly preoccupied with a narrow idea of “development”. This obsession with purported infrastructure over real, public-focused interventions has steadily dismantled the ecosystem of third spaces where local communities come together. Indian cities are losing playgrounds, promenades, maidans, reading rooms, rowaks, local chai shacks, and parks at an unprecedented pace as everything gets paved over and turned into concrete, steel, and glass in the name of “development”. But for whom?

The Colaba Back Garden, officially called the Sabina Chandrashekhar Memorial Municipal Garden and Playground, has been a cornerstone for the local community for decades. It is the only full-size natural football field available to the 20 local football clubs affiliated with the Department of Sports, Maharashtra State Government, and supports children from surrounding neighbourhoods as well as students from nearby private schools without playgrounds. The garden includes a full size football pitch, two basketball courts, and a children’s play area — a rarity for a city severely crunched for space.

As local football enthusiasts, coaches, and players pointed out, the BMC proposal could shrink the existing playing field and eventually restrict public access. Replacing a natural playground with artificial turf would increase gear costs that push out some working-class children while making others perform poorly in the monsoon, asartifical grass cannot absorb moisture the same way soil and natural grass can and emphatically increases injury risks. A turf ground could also lead to disruptions in the neighbourhood’s ecology.

The BMC’s astroturf proposal at Colaba Back Garden exposes how Indian cities increasingly prioritise investors over residents, making decisions driven by branding and revenue considerations even when they erode public welfare. The issue isn’t whether astroturf is intrinsically harmful, but whom such development serves and it rarely benefits the communities that rely on free, open, democratic public space.

Across Indian cities, public spaces are shrinking or being reshaped for an imagined elite citizen. Gentrified waterfronts, manicured parks with entry tickets, ornamental plazas policed into sterility, and “world-class” infrastructure that overlooks basic human needs all point to a fracturing social contract. Cities cannot be built and sustained only through blueprints and budget sheets. They are shaped, above all, by relationships between neighbours, between strangers, between people and place. For these relationships to survive, cities must preserve the ordinary, unglamorous, democratic spaces where they are nurtured.

What happened in Colaba this week matters because it proves that citizens can still intervene in the city’s future. But it also exposes how much effort it now takes to win the smallest of battles: to keep a public playground accessible, to protect a commons from being paved over, and to insist that leisure and play forever remain public goods.

If you enjoyed reading this, here’s more from Homegrown:

India & The World Cup: Tracing The Enduring Cultural Legacy Of Football In Indian Cities

Creating A Level Playing Field For Mumbai’s Female Footballers

Inside The ‘Namma League’ & The Homegrown Amateur Sports Renaissance