By Frederick Noronha, IANS
Mumbai : The fate of nearly one million people of Dharavi, called Asia’s largest slum, hinges on a polemical debate between planners and activists over its redevelopment into a high-rise township with basic facilities.
Dharavi covers an area of almost 175 heactares in central Mumbai that a visitor from the airport to the city cannot miss for its miles of lean-to roadside cramped shacks made of tin, cardboard and tarpaulin and inhabited by migrant families who came to look for a better life in the country’s commercial and entertainment capital.
Officials and some experts have been arguing that this slum, that many see as the underside of India’s rapid economic advancement, could easily be rebuilt for profit but others fear the impact of that and say the numbers simply don’t add up.
The slum lies close to the commercially valuable Bandra-Kurla complex. It has attracted a reported 80 real estate giants in the redevelopment bid for a Rs.9.25 billion ($235 million) high-rise township, says columnist and former newspaper editor Darryl D’Monte.
Architect Mukesh Mehta, chairman of MM Project Consultants who used to be based in the US but has now returned to India, has been advising the Maharashtra government to get the slum development project going.
He told IANS that the current development scheme should not create “vertical or concrete slums” and notes that every family would get a home of 225 sq ft.
He set up his office in Dharavi itself and saw the people there as “very hard working, very honest, very decent people, who worked from 5 a.m. till 11 p.m. and still couldn’t make it…they simply deserved better.”
Mehta says high emphasis would be laid on creating facilities for health, incomes, knowledge and economic and social development in the resettled area.
But others question the official logic that land could be given out to developers, who would sell part of it at a profit and also create housing for the squatters virtually for free.
Slum residents’ rights campaigner Jockin Arputham says the “whole world” gets to know about such projects but not the slum dwellers of Dharavi. “In houses as tiny as 225 sq ft, everybody will be in one room, and people would have to perform a naked dance (while bathing or changing),” he argues.
Arputham, director of the National Slum Dwellers Federation, points to the intense economic activity going on in Dharavi, and argues that all this would end with the “resettlement”, with hardly any initiatives being taken to create economic opportunities.
Asks D’Monte: “Where will people do their work (and trades) once they are located in a high-rise building?”
There are questions being asked by critics of the plan as to how realistic the projects are – to redevelop the place, give free housing to squatters and create more housing to be sold at profit – all in a city that has a shockingly high peak density of 101,066 persons per sq km.
Former municipal commissioner D.M. Sukhtankar is scathing in his criticism of the plan.
“This policy should be given up. It is neither replicable nor sustainable (being based just on high real estate values in the area). It encourages encroachers and rewards lawbreakers. It also encourages large-scale corruption,” he contends.
Officials however say there is misunderstanding over the amount of land involved, and that some campaigners don’t appreciate their efforts to build awareness among residents over their plans.
Retorts an angry Arputham: “Dharavi is a place where we can sell shit and survive. How can you replace that?”
Prominent architect Charles Correa notes that Mumbai wasn’t meant to be a city of this size. It grew from two million in 1940 to four million in 1964, and 16 million now.
Officials say that the redevelopment project is only one of the initiatives to cope with the housing crisis in a city where six out of every 10 live in a slum settlement.
Others, including some documentary filmmakers in the past, have sought to dispel bias against slum dwellers and have shown how productive their societies can actually be, generating an amazing number of economic activities.
The debate has expectedly slowed down action on the ground. “We’ve been involved with the government of Maharashtra for the past four-and-a-half years. We thought we could start in six months. And now we realise we are only just getting started,” said Mehta.
(Frederick Noronha can be contacted at [email protected])