In Asia's largest slum, free new digs are scorned
Mumbai's Dharavi slum is slated for demolition, but residents, feeling left behind India's go-go growth, want to stay.
from the March 21, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Low-rent property in a high-rent district
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.
But in Dharavi, the 70 percent condition has been scrapped. The slum will be bulldozed whether residents like it or not.
"You have to ask why, if this deal is so wonderful, it is being pushed though like this," says Parth Shah, president of the new Delhi-based think tank, Centre for Civil Society.
For some residents, the reason is simple: A small apartment is no replacement for homes that often double as businesses. Dharavi is as squalid as any slum, with open drains and grimy, labyrinthine lanes so crowded with shanties that little sunlight penetrates. But it also has more than 4,500 industries manufacturing everything from glass bangles to soap to bread. And some slum dwellers are achieving more than survival.
In a dimly lit hut twice the size of the others in its lane, young men sit bent over mounds of waste plastic, sorting it into piles. This is Rajesh Chawla's home, which doubles as a recycling center, and business is good. "It's people like me who will lose out," he says. "I won't be able to employ ten people in 225 square feet."
He does not add that he, like most Dharavi businesses, operates on the thinnest of margins. Survival in the formal economy, with taxes and regulations, will be tough.
Others fear homelessness. Only those who have lived in Dharavi since at least 1995 will get new housing. Given the alacrity with which Indians are leaving the countryside for cities, many have doubtless settled here since then.
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