Mumbai: Traffic

Kelly D. Alley reviews Mumbai: Traffic, directed by Danish Radio (2011, 60 minutes)

This is a realistic film about the serious problem of transportation congestion in Mumbai, one of the world’s most populated cities. It is humanistic in its respect for the people it features and is also humorous at times about the unique and sometimes conflicting conjunctions that this complex transportation problem inflicts on variously positioned residents. The film presents many dimensions of the transportation problem through non-scripted portrayals of key actors as they debate plans and implement projects to alleviate traffic congestion in and around the main commercial hub of the city.

The main characters in the film are a bureaucrat of a government public sector transportation department, a citizen activist and her colleagues, and a street vendor and his family. The film chronicles their lives as they evaluate the planning and construction of the highway links proposed to alleviate vehicle congestion. The film convincingly shows how a sea bridge and flyover become infrastructure center points around which the city’s citizens converge. The film also conveys the individual and institutional struggles involved in building large scale infrastructure to meet the burgeoning desires of a large population, while showing the inevitable conflicts and differences of opinion that arise in the process.

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