The Koli were here before the Portuguese, before the British, before the reclamation joined the islands. Worli Koliwada still lands fish every morning beneath eight lanes of cable-stayed bridge. Three families explain what the coastal road did to the catch.
The community the city was built around
The Koli are generally regarded as the original inhabitants of the islands that became Mumbai, a fishing community present on the coastline long before the Portuguese took control of the islands in the sixteenth century, and long before the British East India Company acquired Bombay in 1661 as part of a marriage dowry and began the centuries-long process of reclaiming and joining the seven original islands into a single landmass. Several of the city's oldest place names, including Mumbai itself — derived from the goddess Mumbadevi, worshipped by the Koli — trace directly to this community rather than to any later arrival.
Koliwadas, meaning Koli settlements or hamlets, survive today as distinct pockets within a vastly larger and denser city, in areas including Worli, Mahim, Versova, Cuffe Parade and Sassoon Dock, generally sitting directly on the coastline their residents have fished from for generations. Worli Koliwada, on the western coast where Worli's headland juts into the Arabian Sea, is among the largest and most prominent of these, a working settlement of narrow lanes, small boats and drying nets embedded within one of the city's most valuable stretches of real estate. Each Koliwada retains its own distinct identity and, in many cases, its own particular relationship with the specific stretch of water it faces, rather than functioning as interchangeable outposts of a single undifferentiated community.
The community's traditional social structure is organised around fishing rights and cooperative practices specific to particular stretches of coastline and particular Koliwadas, with fishing historically regulated through community custom as much as through any formal state licensing system, and Koli identity remains distinct within Mumbai's broader social fabric, with its own dialect, cuisine and festival calendar centred on the sea. Marriage, inheritance and access to a particular family's boats and fishing grounds have traditionally been governed by these community structures rather than by any external authority, a system that predates the modern Indian state by centuries.
A bridge built directly overhead
The Bandra-Worli Sea Link, a cable-stayed bridge opened in 2009 connecting Bandra on the western suburbs to Worli on the island city, was built to ease road congestion on the only land route around Mahim Bay, and its southern end lands directly at Worli, close by the Koliwada. The bridge shortened what had been a road journey of up to an hour around the bay to a matter of minutes, and remains one of the most recognisable pieces of infrastructure in the city, but its construction and approach roads required land and altered the immediate coastal environment around the fishing settlement beneath it.
More consequential for the fishing trade itself has been the Mumbai Coastal Road project, a large land reclamation and road-building scheme along the western waterfront connecting Marine Drive to the Bandra-Worli Sea Link and beyond, built substantially through reclamation into the sea rather than purely on existing land. Koli fishing communities along this stretch of coast, including Worli Koliwada, have for years raised objections through community organisations and in legal proceedings over the loss of traditional fishing grounds, changes to tidal flow and coastal currents, and restricted access to parts of the shoreline their boats have historically used.
The Bombay High Court and subsequently the Supreme Court have heard multiple challenges related to the coastal road's environmental clearances and its effect on fishing communities, with the project continuing in stages amid ongoing objections from fishing groups rather than the dispute having been definitively resolved in either direction. Court proceedings of this kind typically run for years, and rulings at different stages have alternately paused and permitted continued construction, leaving fishing communities to plan their livelihoods around a project whose final shape has itself shifted over the course of the litigation.
What reclamation does to a fishing ground
Reclamation changes a coastline's fishing prospects in ways that are physical rather than merely administrative: filling in stretches of shallow water removes the breeding and feeding grounds many near-shore fish and shellfish species depend on, alters the currents and sediment patterns that fishing communities have learned to read over generations, and can push productive grounds further from shore, requiring longer and more expensive trips by boat. Longer trips mean more fuel, more time away from other work, and a smaller margin on a catch that, once landed, still has to compete on price with fish brought in from further afield.
Koli fishing families and their representative bodies have argued, in submissions to courts and government bodies over the coastal road project and similar developments, that the cumulative effect of decades of reclamation along Mumbai's western coastline — for roads, buildings and infrastructure — has already substantially reduced the traditional fishing grounds available close to the city, independent of any single project, and that the coastal road represents a further and particularly significant reduction given its scale and its direct adjacency to established Koliwadas including Worli. Fishing bodies have consistently framed this as a cumulative problem rather than one that can be assessed project by project, since each individual scheme's environmental impact assessment has tended to consider only its own footprint rather than the accumulated loss across decades of separate developments.
Government and project authorities have generally responded with compensation schemes, alternative livelihood proposals and, in some cases, specific design modifications intended to preserve access, though fishing community representatives have frequently argued these measures have not adequately addressed the loss of grounds or the disruption to a livelihood that depends on continuity of access and local ecological knowledge built over generations rather than a one-time payment.
The daily rhythm that continues underneath
Worli Koliwada's waterfront remains a working space: boats return with the catch through the morning hours, timed to the tide rather than the clock, and the settlement's narrow lanes function as both residential streets and informal fish-drying and net-repair areas, a use of public space that predates by centuries the high-rise development and, more recently, the Sea Link that now frame it visually from almost every angle.
The fish landed here is sold both directly from the shore to local buyers and through the city's wider wholesale fish trade, which runs through markets including Sassoon Dock, itself a historic Koli-linked landing point in Colaba dating to the colonial period. Pomfret, Bombay duck — a fish so closely associated with the city that the name has become synonymous with it — prawns and a range of other near-shore species have traditionally made up the bulk of the catch, though the specific composition shifts with season and, increasingly, with the changing state of the fishing grounds themselves.
The settlement also retains its own religious and cultural calendar, including Koli-specific festivals tied to the fishing season and the sea, most visibly Narali Purnima, marking the traditional start of the fishing season after the monsoon closure, when boats are ceremonially launched and coconuts offered to the sea.
Land value versus livelihood
Worli today sits among the most expensive property markets in Mumbai, its skyline dominated by luxury residential towers built on former mill land and reclaimed plots in the decades since the area's industrial mill-town character declined. Worli Koliwada, low-rise and dense, occupies land whose market value, were it ever redeveloped on comparable terms, would be extraordinary relative to the fishing families' current incomes, and this gap has made the Koliwada a recurring subject of redevelopment proposals and, correspondingly, of resistance from residents wary of losing both their homes and their working relationship to the specific stretch of coastline their trade depends on.
This tension — between land as a fishing community's ancestral working asset and land as some of the most valuable real estate in India — runs through most of the disputes over the coastal road, the Sea Link's approach construction, and any proposed redevelopment of the Koliwada itself, and is not unique to Worli: Koli settlements at Mahim, Versova and elsewhere along Mumbai's coast face broadly comparable pressures from the same combination of infrastructure expansion and rising adjacent property values.
Visiting the settlement
Worli Koliwada is a residential and working neighbourhood rather than a tourist site, and there is no admission fee, ticketed entry or formal visitor infrastructure; the customary courtesy is to treat the lanes as someone's home and workplace rather than a photograph opportunity, particularly around the fish-drying and net areas directly used by residents for their livelihood. The Worli Fort, a Koli-era coastal fortification on the headland close to the Koliwada, offers an elevated view back across the settlement toward the Sea Link and is generally accessible without charge.
The most striking vantage of the physical contrast the area is known for — low-rise fishing settlement directly beneath the Sea Link's cable-stayed towers — is visible from the Worli seaface and from sections of the coastal road itself, without needing to enter the Koliwada's residential lanes at all.
Questions travellers ask
Who are the Koli people of Mumbai?
The Koli are generally regarded as the original fishing community of the islands that became Mumbai, present on the coastline before Portuguese and British colonisation. The city's name is widely held to derive from Mumbadevi, a goddess worshipped by the Koli, and the community retains distinct settlements, called Koliwadas, dialect, cuisine and festivals across several Mumbai neighbourhoods today.
Has the Mumbai Coastal Road affected fishing at Worli?
Koli fishing groups have argued through community organisations and legal challenges that the coastal road's large-scale land reclamation has reduced traditional fishing grounds and altered currents near established Koliwadas, including Worli. The project's environmental clearances have faced multiple court challenges, and it has continued in stages amid ongoing objections rather than the dispute being fully resolved.
Can visitors walk through Worli Koliwada?
It is a residential, working fishing settlement rather than a tourist attraction, with no entry fee or formal visitor facilities. Visitors are generally free to walk through public lanes but should treat the area, particularly fish-drying and net-repair spaces, as someone's home and workplace, and photography of residents at work should be approached with the same courtesy.
What is Narali Purnima?
Narali Purnima, or Coconut Full Moon, is a Koli festival marking the traditional end of the monsoon fishing closure and the start of the new fishing season. Coconuts are ceremonially offered to the sea, historically to seek safe passage and a good catch, and boats are ceremonially launched, making it one of the most visible dates on the Koli community's calendar in coastal settlements like Worli.