The crowd starts gathering at Manjunath Gowda’s street-food stall outside a government office in suburban Mumbai every work day, starting from 7 am.
The customers are there to fuel their day with a quick bite of the city’s iconic street snacks – vada pao, samosa pao, pao bhaji. A key element of all of these dishes is the soft, fluffy loaf of bread known as pao.
“Without pao, our business is nothing,” said one of Gowda’s assistants. Gowda’s stall uses hundreds of loaves of pao every day.
But the signature food of Mumbai’s street might be in for a change – in flavour and cost.
In an effort to curb rising air pollution, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has asked approximately 650 city bakeries that are older than 50 years to replace their wood-fired or charcoal ovens with electric ones.
Owners of the establishments say that this will result in the golden-crusted pao losing the distinctive taste that comes from being baked on wood. Moreover, the expensive transition will force them to increase the price of bread – from Rs 3 for a loaf of pao now to perhaps Rs 4 or Rs 5.
Customers are concerned about this too. Waiting at Gowda’s stall for his vada pao, Sukhwinder Singh was not happy about the proposal. “If the price increases, I might reconsider having it frequently,” he said.
Pao, said food writer Antoine Lewis, is a “quintessential” Mumbai food. Mumbai was introduced to pao in the 19th century by the Goan Catholics, who learnt the technique of using yeast to make leavened bread from the Portuguese who ruled their territory. Pão is the Portuguese word for bread.
In time, migrants from Iran and Muslims from North India also began to open bakeries.
“Pao has become intrinsic to Mumbai’s diet – particularly for people from southern India who do not have a roti culture,” Lewis said. “Not just pao, even brun pao, which has a crusty top, is breakfast for a lot of people.”
Among them is Amuda Raghu, who lives in Siddharth Colony in Chembur, in north east Mumbai .
Pao is the staple food of Raghu’s family of six. They dip it in tea for a quick breakfast or have it as an accompaniment to vegetable dishes for a proper meal. “How will we manage if the cost increases?” she asked.
Setting a deadline
The anxiety around Mumbai’s daily bread is the result of a notice that the municipality’s health department sent out in December to the 650 bakeries, giving them a year’s time to transition to cleaner fuels.
On January 24, a second notice was issued, shortening the deadline to six months.
A municipal official said that this was prompted by an order of the Bombay High Court, which is hearing a public interest litigation on the city’s rising air-pollution levels.
Between 2019 and 2024, levels of PM 2.5 increased by almost 3%. Humans could face significant health hazards by breathing in fine particulate matter of this size.
According to a study by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board in 2023 , bakeries are the fifth-highest contributor to particulate matter in the city – they are responsible for about 3.5% of the city’s total pollution load.
However, experts noted that vehicular pollution is the leading source of particulate matter in Mumbai: 72% of the pollution comes from road dust, a by-product of vehicular pollution. Construction activities account for 8% and the burning of garbage contributed 4%.
Ruhie Kumar, a climate-change campaigner who has worked on air pollution in Delhi and Mumbai, wondered why the municipality was targeting bakeries alone when there are other major sources of air pollution in the city.
“We do not see any public dialogue or policy intervention with the construction and the transport lobby,” Kumar said. “We don’t see regular bans on construction dust or more car-free zones. Going after bakeries, a small business, then, is a low-hanging fruit.”
However, Hema Ramani, an environment consultant working with the municipality, argued that the decision was justified. “Even if the pollution contribution of bakeries is just 5% or 6%, it’s still a source we need to tackle,” she said.
Saroj Kumar Sahu, an assistant professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences in Berhampur University, noted that the impact of bakeries on pollution is localised. But since many of these establishments are in residential areas, the health of people living around them is at risk.
Though vehicular emissions will continue to be the major contributor to air pollution in Mumbai, bakeries cannot be ignored, agreed Gufran Beig, chair professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies and founder-director of the System of Air Quality Forecasting and Research.
When it comes to hydrocarbons and carbon in Mumbai’s air, bakeries play a larger role. They are the highest source of hydrocarbons, forming 25% of emissions. They form the second-highest source of carbon emissions, contributing 15.9% to the load.
But this, too, is not particularly worrying, experts say. While hydrocarbons can be more harmful than particulate matter for health, emissions of particulate matter are much higher than hydrocarbons in the city’s air, said Beig.
Bakeries contribute almost 24,000 kg of carbon per day. But the PM load from vehicular emissions along with road dust adds up to 71,000 kg per day. “As compared to so many vehicles, the impact of bakeries on carbon and hydrocarbons is almost negligible,” Beig said.
Besides, the city’s new bakeries and those getting their licences renewed have already made the switch to cleaner fuels, said Nasir Ansari, president of Bombay Bakers’ Association. That leaves only the old bakeries. “How much pollution could they possibly cause?” he asked.
Facing the challenge
Inside Akbar Bakery, opposite Bandra railway station, owner Talha Ansari is grappling with the challenges of complying with the municipal order.
The bakery, with a two-storey brick chimney, started operations in the 1930s and now runs 24 hours a day. Its wood-fired oven can hold 110 trays of bread at a time – 1,320 loaves of pao.
In the 1,000-square-foot bakery, its walls sooty and black, Salim Khan was busy kneading refined wheat flour. Another man took the dough, patted it into loaves, while a third placed them on a tray and then slid them into the oven. Five minutes later, he used a long-handled wooden peel to pull a tray out. The golden pao was ready.
In a few months, Khan and other workers stand to lose their jobs.
“If we switch to an electric oven, I may not need as many workers,” said owner Talha Ansari. Each electric oven, he said, can bake 60 trays of dough or 720 paos at one go. As production falls, he will need fewer men to knead the flour, mould the dough and bake it.
“I am looking at an initial loss if we go ahead with the transition,” he said. Remodelling the bakery to fit in the new oven will cost Rs 1.5 lakh, he estimated, while the price of a new oven will be at least Rs 6 lakh.
He will have to close his establishment during the transition, a fallow period in which he will have no earnings.
After the new machine becomes functional, its reduced capacity will mean that he will have to cut down on the number of customers he is able to supply to. For now, Ansari sells pao to over 30 restaurants in Bandra.
Besides, Ansari had another strong point to make about the death of a wood-fired oven. It will kill the characteristic flavour and texture of pao that he insisted can be obtained only by baking the dough in the “bhatti”.
That is what prompted former municipal corporator Makarand Narvekar in February to ask Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to exempt Irani bakeries from the order. Several of the city’s oldest bakeries are owned by members of the Irani community, who settled in the city in the 19th century.
These bakeries are a “cornerstone of our city’s food culture and history” and “the wood-fired ovens are an integral part of their legacy”, Narvekar said in his letter.
But the price of the transition may be more than just the taste of tradition. It is also likely to push smaller establishments out of business.
Low margins
Regal bakery, a few lanes away from Akbar bakery, is among those that are vulnerable.
Set up in 1948, Regal bakes over 1,200 trays of pao each day. Each tray has six loaves of pao. Twenty “paowallahs” on bicycles deliver bread to corner stores and make door-to-door deliveries. For the paowallahs, a rectangle of six loaves – a “laadi”, in Mumbai terminology – costs Rs 12 to Rs 14. They sell them to consumers at Rs 18 to Rs 20.
“The profit margins are extremely low,” said paowallah Mohammed Rashid. “Poor people are the biggest consumer of pao. If we increase the cost, who will we sell to?”
Regal’s owner Mohammed Aadil Khan knows he has little room to raise prices. Even though the cost of flour has increased from Rs 1,600 for a 49-kg bag to Rs 2,000 in two years, the sale price of pao has stayed constant.
He estimated the total cost of moving to electricity at between Rs 11.5 lakh to Rs 16.5 lakh. If he wants to moved to piped gas, he may have to wait for over a year because the firm that supplies the fuel has a long waiting period, he said.
“We will have to stop production for a few months to meet the deadline,” Khan said. “We don’t have that kind of money.”
Khan admitted that about 10 years ago, residents of the dense neighbourhood complained about the smoke when he used scrap wood to fire the oven. Khan increased the chimney height by 25 feet. But as Mumbai grows taller, there is a limit to how high chimneys can be.
Currently, a five-storey building hovers near Regal bakery. The smoke is a constant bother for its residents.
Managing change
In other Indian cities, the shift to cleaner fuel has been prompted by financial incentives.
For instance, in July 1998, the Supreme Court pushed for fiscal incentives to push petrol-fuelled automobiles to switch to CNG. As a result, the Delhi government offered subsidised loans to owners of three-wheelers and taxis. CNG for automotive use was also exempted from sales tax, making it cheaper than diesel.
The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board had suggested that for bakeries, “initial incentives and rebate should be provided for the conversion from traditional fuel”.
Khan of Regal bakery, said he would be willing to move to cleaner fuel if the municipality offers him a subsidy or financial assistance.
Environment consultant Hema Ramani, who authored a 2024 report titled Envisioning a Sustainable Bakery Industry for Mumbai, said that the municipality is willing to help bakeries with initial steps, such as tying up with oven manufacturers.
“The intention is not to close any bakery,” she said. “It is to switch to cleaner fuels and have clean air for the city...”
Nasir Ansari, president of Bombay Bakers’ Association, said the only assistance the municipality is willing to provide is facilitating bulk orders for electric ovens. “But each bakery’s requirement is going to be different,” he said. “How can we place bulk orders for all?”
He said they are demanding more time from the government and some aid to keep small bakeries afloat.
At Akbar Bakery, Salim Khan, a native of Balrampur in Uttar Pradesh, is watching in apprehension.
Khan came to Mumbai in 2003 and has worked in several bakeries, always doing the same job of kneading the white flour into dough. In 2017, he joined Akbar Bakery. He works for 14 hours a day and earns Rs 18,000 per month.
“I send almost the entire amount to my family,” he said. He has four daughters and a son, parents, wife and a brother who depend on his income.
If Khan loses his job, he does not know how he will be able to support his family.
