Today, the vision is marred by unchecked slums - some of them more than a storey high - dotting the coast.
Once a quiet suburb known for its East Indian and Koli communities and the lovely islands of Madh and Marve, Malad has seen the highest growth in population in the city in the last one decade.
According to Census 2011, the P-North ward, which includes Malad east and west, is the most populous in Mumbai (the most congested ward is C-ward that includes areas like Marine Lines, Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi, with 1.1 lakh people sharing one sq km of land).
A total of 9.46 lakh people - that is, 7.6% of the city's total population - live in Malad. The population here in 2001 was 7.98 lakh; in the last ten years, it has increased by 1.47 lakh.
This growth has been the result of the proliferation of slums, in Malvani and elsewhere, the influx of middle-class residents from south Mumbai as well as from the northern suburbs and even rural areas, the development of Malad as an Information Technology hub with the opening of many call centres, and the increase in the number of commercial establishments and malls.
The BPO units that have come up all over the place have sparked a boom in residential projects, and the suburb has at least seven malls. Yet the single most factor responsible for the change in demographics is hutments. Slums in Malad, occupying acres of space in several places and reflecting the ghettoization of the urban poor, comprise nearly 65 per cent of the population, well above the average of 54 per cent for the whole of Mumbai.
However, residents said the infrastructure has not kept pace with the area's growth.
Meenakshi Karandikar, a teacher, said, "The water supply, the beds-to-patient ratio in civic hospitals and the open spaces ratio have all not changed in several years. The open spaces we have, too, are in bad shape."
Those who have shifted from the island city said they may have a bigger house in the suburb, but the travel time to work has not reduced, the transport links haven't improved, and the overall quality of life is not very good.
Experts said the tribal hamlets on the fringes of and on the forest land of Sanjay Gandhi National Park don't even have electricity, drains, sewers or toilets, leave aside telephone lines and other civic amenities. Yet people from these hamlets turn out in large numbers on voting day.
Locals and politicians representing the area said that there is a need for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to re-distribute resources in view of the population growth.
Navin Pandya, AGNI co-ordinator for Malad who has been living in Malad (east) from 1982 and has witnessed all the changes that the suburb has witnessed over the decades, said that there has been a longstanding demand that the P-North ward be divided into two for administrative purposes given the population explosion.
"The increase in population has been due to the rapid growth in slums in this area. The civic and police machinery has not been able to curb the growth of hutments, which had resulted in deterioration in the standard of living of people due to poor distribution of resources," Pandya said.
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