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Can a slum become a world class township?

Kalpana Sharma

What is the motive for a new slum redevelopment plan for Dharavi? Will people like the potter and the cobbler be given their due?

THE MONSOON has ended in Mumbai and the demolition season has begun. So even as slumdwellers take to the streets to protest, the Maharashtra Government is getting ready to launch a major new experiment in slum redevelopment, the ambitious Dharavi Slum Redevelopment Project.

The plan looks impressive in the power point presentation because it irons out the creases, eliminates the dirt and the mess, and, most important of all, removes actual people. So you have a messy, crowded, unplanned, settlement like Dharavi — a contiguous collection of distinct slum settlements that have merged over time into one entity — that is neatly divided into five segments. How have these segments been imagined? Where do the dividing lines appear in reality? Will they cut through people's lives and homes as the boundaries that divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan did?

Town planners don't ask these questions. But people do. They want to know who decided their future and why they are being singled out for this special treatment. Why has this slum, out of the thousands that exist in Mumbai, been selected?

The Dharavi Redevelopment Project is experimenting with a new way of dealing with slums, where an entire slum is redeveloped as an independent self-sufficient `township.' Thus the five segments of the 535 acres of Dharavi will be developed so that each has housing, health care, civic amenities, and industries.

At present, slums in Mumbai are being redeveloped by the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) under a scheme introduced in 1995 by the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party Government and continued by the subsequent Congress-Nationalist Congress Party Government with only minor changes. If 70 per cent of the residents of a slum agree, a developer can redevelop their plot of land by constructing seven-storey buildings where each family will get a flat measuring 225 sq ft free. The developer can use the remaining land to build commercial or residential spaces for sale.

The scheme has been through many ups and downs and lately several corruption scams have come to light. But despite its failings, as a senior official pointed out, some 60,000 families or 350,000 slumdwellers have been resettled in permanent housing. This is a drop in the ocean given that there are an estimated 6.5 million slumdwellers. But it is the largest number to be rehoused in a major city in India in recent times. Simultaneously, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has been resettling slumdwellers under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project and the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project. An estimated 34,000 families or almost 200,000 people have been resettled under these schemes. Another 100,000 tenements are currently under construction under the SRA. Once these are ready, an estimated one million slumdwellers will have got permanent housing.

The problem with the SRA scheme is that the developer is only responsible for constructing the buildings. He does not need to bother about civic infrastructure such as drainage, water or sanitation. These are left to the specific agencies. As a result, instead of horizontal slums, the scheme has successfully created vertical slums. People are living in formal housing often without adequate water supply, in areas that are not serviced by public transport, and in seven-storey buildings where they cannot afford to pay the money needed to run the lifts. For some of them, life is worse than what it was when they lived in slums.

In that sense, the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is breaking new ground. The developer will have to provide not just the buildings to resettle the slumdwellers living in the particular area but also all the infrastructure including roads, drainage, water supply, municipal office, hospital, school, industrial estate, open spaces for recreation, etc. In other words, the developer will be expected to deliver a complete `township' to the SRA.

To entice developers, the government has had to modify the Development Control Rules for this project. Developers will be given a Floor Space Index (FSI) of 4 as opposed to the current 2.5 and they only need to get 60 per cent of the slumdwellers to agree to their plan rather than 70 per cent as at present. So even with the additional burden of providing infrastructure, developers stand to make substantial profits under the scheme.

Prime land

But this still does not answer the question: why Dharavi? It is the value of the land on which Dharavi is located that marked it for this experiment. Dharavi sits just south of the Mithi River, a stone's throw away from the swank and futuristic Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) that has emerged as the major business hub for Mumbai. Last year, the lack of foresight in planning BKC became evident when the entire area went under water during the July 26 deluge. In the course of developing this business district, the Mithi River was diverted resulting in a serious adverse impact on natural drainage in the area. In comparison Dharavi, which was once a swamp but has been gradually filled up by the very people who live there, escaped unscathed from the flooding as it is now on higher ground.

This has enhanced Dharavi's attractiveness and its real estate value. Ideally, the developers would like to raze all structures in the slum and start from scratch, the way they have been able to do in Mumbai's textile mill district. But politically this is impossible. So the compromise is to find a way to accommodate those who live in Dharavi while converting it into a "world class cultural, knowledge, business and health centre."

At a cost of Rs.9,300 crore, the Government hopes this will be done by 2013. But the ground realities are a little more complex. Dharavi has developed incrementally under different schemes. In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi had donated Rs.100 crore to Mumbai. Of this, Rs.39 crore was used in Dharavi under the Prime Minister's Grant Project (PMGP) to widen roads, resettle some slumdwellers, lay drains, and extend water pipelines.

More recently, under the SRA, 72 seven-storey buildings have either been constructed or are in the process of being built in Dharavi. They are scattered across the 535 acres. In addition, scores of new toilet blocks have been built as also other permanent structures. When officials were asked what happens to all these structures, the answers varied, indicating a level of confusion. While I.S. Chahal, who heads the Dharavi Redevelopment Authority, said these buildings would be considered outside the project, other officials said that they would be part of it. If the developer wanted to pull down any of these structures, or modify them, he or she would have to negotiate with the people who have been resettled in the buildings.

The project has estimated that there are 4,500 `industries' — basically small to medium industrial units producing leather, readymade garments, jewellery, foodstuffs, soap, pottery. Under the scheme, people with such enterprises are entitled to 225 sq ft free and can purchase additional space at market rates. Some of the bigger units would be able to afford this but thousands of smaller units that work out of lofts will be forced to shut shop. Also, all polluting industries like soap making or leather tanneries will have to close. Kumbharwada, the large potters' colony that is a landmark in Dharavi, is being treated as a special case.

The other problem is the perennial one of numbers. How do you decide how many people live in Dharavi and how many are eligible under the new scheme? The Government has decided that there are 56,000 households to be resettled, or roughly 350,000 people. Yet in 1987, when the PMGP project was being implemented, the numbers were almost identical, 55,000 households. Even if only those who have lived in Dharavi before January 1, 1995 are eligible, it is impossible to believe that the population remained static for a decade.

Will developers really be interested in a project that comes with so much negative baggage? The Government has set fairly high benchmarks. Bids will be entertained only from companies with a net worth of 40 per cent of the project cost, which would be between Rs.1800 crore and Rs.2000 crore per sector. As a result, most Mumbai builders will not qualify. Yet the bureaucrats in charge are confident that the project will attract major international developers.

Like the Special Economic Zones, it is possible that the Dharavi Redevelopment Project will somehow be pushed through as a great deal of prestige rides on it. If the concept of area development works, then the SRA model could be drastically modified. But the imagery projected in the power point presentation leaves little room for the effervescent, innovative energy that has exemplified places like Dharavi. Indeed, in the sanitised environs of a "world-class township," what place is there for the potter, the chiki-maker or the cobbler?

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