India, Sept. 25 -- Time was when Mumbaikars chose to live in verdant Powai - a central suburb of Mumbai - for its planned wide pavements, tree-lined avenues and open spaces. Developed in the early 1990s, it was envisioned as a self-contained township where children could safely walk to school and residents could enjoy the breeze wafting across the hills surrounding the neighbourhood. Today, as that character of the suburb is on the cusp of change, with a proposed 13.40-meter Development Plan Road, a 30,000-seat Global Capacity Centre (GCC), redevelopment and expansion of commercial properties, and a proposed data centre, Powaikars have formed many groups as a collective to push back against the development.

Sunita Gohrani, a nutritionist...