In Asia's largest slum, free new digs are scorned

Reishma Rathore lives in a dilapidated one-room shanty in Dharavi slum, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), a stinking sea of corrugated iron shanties and rubbish. Last week, she was offered a spanking new apartment with a kitchen and bathroom free of charge. She turned it down. "This is mine," she says, patting her brightly painted front step.

Dharavi is Asia's largest slum – covering about one square mile of central Mumbai – and it is slated for the largest slum-clearing ever.

Within days, says the city's Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA), the government will invite bids from developers to raze Dharavi and rebuild it as a 21st-century "township."

Ms. Rathore's reaction to the plan to flatten her home is not unusual. "Not a single slum dweller has given consent," said Jockin Arputham, president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF). "We will fight it and fight it."

Dharavi's transformation is the latest example of a conflict that is sweeping India. On one side is a government committed to India's go-go growth; on the other are millions of poor citizens who feel left behind.

For the government, the redevelopment of Dharavi is an innovative solution to a land shortage in one of the world's most expensive cities. Developers will demolish the slum's low-level shanties and rehouse inhabitants in high-rise blocks, freeing up precious land for middle-class apartment blocks, malls, and business parks.

Few places in the world need the space more than India's commercial capital. Home to more than 13 million people, Mumbai is expected to become the world's second-largest city after Tokyo by 2015, with a population of nearly 25 million. Half of Mumbai lives in sprawling slums; elsewhere, the scarcity of land threatens the city's economic growth.

But many of Dharavi's estimated 600,000-plus residents say they will not budge. A sizeable voting block, their views are not easily dismissed.

For property developers, the issue is simple: Dharavi is a gold mine. Located between Mumbai's two busiest train lines and near a flourishing business park, it is likely to attract international investors hungry for a slice of the Indian real estate market.

Even the requirement that they rehouse the slum dwellers for free is unlikely to deter developers, who plan to foot the (US) $2 billion-plus bill for Dharavi's face-lift. The government will sell the land at below market prices and for every square foot of accommodation created for slum dwellers, developers will get 1.3 square feet for commercial use.

Free housing may sound like the perfect cure for the ugly scars that are India's slums. But the reality is more complicated. The SRA, which has already redeveloped pockets of slum in Mumbai, has determined that developers may rehouse inhabitants in seven-story blocks of 225 square-foot apartments and develop the remaining land, provided that 70 percent of slum dwellers agree.

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