Two families, and the ‘chor gadi’

 

October 12, 2022. A day like any other day in post-monsoon Mumbai. Muggy, cloudy, a brilliant evening sky.

 

But also, a day when hearts, hearths and homes were cruelly broken.

 

Let me backtrack.  I live in a mixed neighbourhood in Mumbai.  It has buildings with government officials, private buildings with a mix of rich and middle-income families, a large enclave exclusively for Parsis, and an even larger, in terms of population, urban poor settlement where a mini-India jostles for a limited space.

 

There are some private gardens, such as those exclusively for the government officials, and a short distance away public gardens for the rest of us.

 

There are also shops, a police chowki, a Hindu temple, a mosque and a Buddhist shrine. The road leading up to our neighbourhood is narrow, but on one side, it has something resembling a pavement.

 

For at least two decades, I have observed a family that consisted only of women and children living on the side of this road opposite the pavement.  They are waste pickers, originally from Tamil Nadu.  I sometimes saw a man, but mostly the women – an older woman and her daughter.  In the course of time, the daughter gave birth to a little girl, and thereafter to two boys.

 

The girl, Uma, grew up before my eyes.  She was toddler, then a little girl with neat plaits who would wind her way up the road to a municipal school. I bumped into her on most mornings when I went for a walk.  She would beam up at me, her eyes luminous. Over time I saw her grow into a statuesque young woman, clearly conscious of her beauty.

 

Then the entire family moved across the road, to a spot in front of the closed gate of the government officers’ colony.  They spread themselves out.  The older woman told me they had the contract to collect the dry waste from the government colony.  They seemed confident that they would not be asked to move.

 

I noticed at one point that the younger woman, Uma’s mother, looked ill.  She seemed to be literally wasting away.  They said that she might have TB but were not sure.  One day, I saw that she was not there anymore.  She had died. Of what, I asked Uma’s grandmother. Not sure, I was told. 

 

So now there was the grandmother, her grand-daughter, and a couple of boys.

 

Then another family arrived on the same spot.  The man had been around.  I had seen him as he collected the dry waste from our building.  But the woman and her daughter were new. They were also from Tamil Nadu.  The daughter’s name was Pooja.

 

The two families were uneasy allies – united in their homelessness and yet competing for contracts from the buildings and colonies in the neighbourhood.  The man managed to hustle Uma’s grandmother out of the contract with the government colony.  She found something else.

 

They fought often, but also shared a basic level of camaraderie.  Pooja was friends with Uma who was considerably older than her.  When her mother was out collecting waste, Pooja hung out with Uma and her brothers.

 

Then one day, I saw Uma with a tiny infant in her arms.  Whose? I asked. Mine, she said, her eyes gleaming.  And then by way of an explanation, the father did not want to marry me.  Uma was 16 years old then (although later she insisted that she was 18).  

 

Another child of the street, Uma’s little girl, is now almost four years old.  They call her Karooramma.  She is cheerful, waves out to the people she knows, keeps herself busy playing with whatever is lying around.  She imitates her mother and great-grandmother by pretending to wash clothes or the dishes.  She sometimes goes off on her own to the tea stall at the top of the road where she’s given a cup of tea, more like a thimbleful, and a biscuit.   

 

Over the years, both families followed a pattern.  During the rains, they would stretch out a tarpaulin over their belongings and sleep under it.  And once the rains were gone, so was the temporary cover and they continued to sleep in the open.

 

On October 10 this year, the municipal corporation descended on this little settlement of two families and demolished their shelter.  It was still raining.

 

For two days, they somehow continued to occupy the spot, which had now been ‘beautified’ with large potted plants.  They kept their belonging behind these pots and slept on carboard spread out on the pavement. The little girl slept under an umbrella.

 

I asked them what they would do now, as living this way was clearly untenable.  Could they not find a room in one of the many urban poor settlements scattered in the area, including the one nearest to us?

 

How is that possible, asked Pooja’s mother.  The rents start at Rs 7000 and more for a small room.  And then there is a deposit.  Of at least Rs 50,000.  Where will we get that?

 

And then on October 12, the municipal van came again – the ‘chor gadi’ as it is called.  And took away most of their belongings – pots, pans, mattresses, almost everything.  To get them back, they would have to go to the ward office and pay a fine, I was told.

 

When the clean-up operation was being conducted by the maintenance department of the municipality, I asked the man in-charge why they had to confiscate their belongings when they had already destroyed their temporary structures? We have had complaints, he told me. In any case, it was evident he was not going to stop.  He had his orders. And he was following them.

 

I want to record this moment because it illustrates the heartlessness of a big city like Mumbai where there is no place for the poor.  These families are poor, but they earn their living by providing an essential service.  Yet, the city can make no place for them.

 

For the people living in the area, the majority would only see them as the dirty poor ‘spoiling’ their neighbourhood. I can bet that even the woman who complained about them has never spoken to them and has no idea what they do for a living.

 

This moment also tells me how the entire system is stacked against the poor. Little Karooramma, for instance, cannot get an Aadhar card because she has no birth certificate.  She was born, literally, on the street.  Hence, even the municipal school will not admit her.  For the State, she is invisible, as is her mother, and her great grandmother. They are not even a statistic. 

 

I sleep tonight with a heavy heart as I think of Karooramma, who smiled at me when I passed her on the pavement, even as the BMC men were confiscating their belongings.  “BMC aya”, she told me solemnly.  “Sab le gaya”.  And then she waved and said her usual “bye”.

******************************************************************

A longer version of this post was published in Scroll.in.  Here's the link:

https://scroll.in/article/1034969/what-the-story-of-two-families-says-about-the-unchanging-reality-of-living-on-the-streets-of-mumbai

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye Darryl

I should have posted this last month but here it is anyway, my tribute to my friend and former colleague, an exceptional journalist and human being, Darryl D'Monte. (Published in Indian Express, March 19, 2019: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/goodbye-darryl-5632792/)

I never thought I would be writing an obituary about a friend and a colleague. Darryl D’Monte — journalist, author, environmentalist, human rights activist, and, above all, a good human being has passed. He died on March 16 in a hospital in Mumbai, a city he lived in, loved and fought to save from environmental destruction.

I knew Darryl for decades, as a fellow journalist with whom I worked for a short period in a newspaper, but more than that as a person with whom I shared many common concerns. Apart from his stints as an editor in Indian Express and Times of India, it is Darryl’s pioneering work as an environmental journalist that will be long remembered.

When he wrote about the Silent Valley controversy in the 1970s, where a dam would have destroyed precious biodiversity including the habitat of one of the world’s rarest and threatened primates, the Lion Tailed Macaque, the concept of “environmental” journalism was unknown. Yet, it is the controversy surrounding the dam in Kerala, and the prospect of habitat destruction, that yanked the issue away from conservation to questioning developmental policy. Eventually, the campaign to save the area led to the creation of a national park that would be excluded from the project area of the dam. In his book Temples or Tombs: Industry vs Environment (1985), Darryl has recorded this early environmental battle between the interests of saving the natural environment and the demands of development.

Although Darryl worked for much of his life in mainstream media, he never gave up his convictions on environment, human rights, civic and urban issues and on the rights of the most marginalised. Indeed, being a “committed” journalist was a label Darryl wore unapologetically. Through his reporting, he established that even if we, as journalists, have strong convictions, we can report with rigour and professionalism. His environmental reports stood out for the absence of polemics and for the thorough research that they contained. This kind of reporting set a gold standard for generations of journalists that have followed in his footsteps.

Darryl consciously mentored others. In the cut-throat competitive world in which journalists operate, this stood out then, and stands out even more now, as an unusual trait. But he was more concerned that the issues — whether to do with loss of biodiversity, destructive developmental policies, or climate change — were addressed by many more journalists than just those of his generation. By setting up the Forum for Environmental Journalists (FEJI), Darryl extended support and opened up opportunities for scores of journalists, many from outside the big metros who are not plugged into professional networks, to be trained in environmental reporting.

It is the city of Mumbai, with which Darryl was closely engaged, where he is most remembered and cherished. In Bandra, where his family has lived for generations, he was a known person, actively engaged in civic and cultural affairs — always ready to battle against insensitive and environmentally destructive developmental plans initiated by the municipality or the state government.

His book Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills (2002) is especially important from the perspective of the city’s maldevelopment: Darryl captured the indifference of the government to the rights of workers and its willingness to accede to the millowners and land sharks who only saw Girangaon (the area in central Mumbai once known for its flourishing textile mills) as prime real estate. In hindsight, what began then in terms of myopic city development has now cascaded into a situation where Mumbai has become a city in perennial crisis.

Till the end, Darryl never tired of raising the red flag on this. His most recent intervention was questioning the wisdom of building a coastal road to accommodate the needs of a small, well-heeled population owning private vehicles at the cost of the livelihoods of Mumbai’s fisherfolk, its coastal environment and the needs of the majority who have to contend daily with crumbling infrastructure. Unfortunately, the state government is determined to push ahead with the plan and the courts, so far, have not been sympathetic to the pleas of the fisherfolk.

There is never a good time for anyone to go, but this was not a good time for Darryl to go. His sane voice is needed today more than ever before. As this country hurtles towards becoming a violent and fractious society, where the voice of people at the margins is drowned, and where saving the environment is just empty words as policy forges ahead to destroy it, the passion of journalists like Darryl D’Monte is irreplaceable. One hopes the legion of younger journalists he mentored will carry forward his legacy.

New CRZ notification: One step forward, and two back?

Even as the new CRZ notification grants fishing communities the right to redevelop the land on which they live, it lays open coastal lands for other forms of development which will adversely impact their livelihoods, says Kalpana Sharma Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh wants to introduce a River Regulation Zone to regulate activities on the banks of major rivers. “The manner in which the Yamuna riverbed has been devastated by constructions should be a wake-up call to all of us,” he stated at a meeting in New Delhi recently. The statement was made, coincidentally, on the day his ministry announced the new Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2011 that replaces the earlier one from 1991. While the minister’s plans for rivers and their banks might be appreciated, his plan to manage India’s coasts has not been universally lauded. In fact, the very fear he expressed about the Yamuna riverbed could become a reality for India’s coastal cities. Not everyone is apprehensive about the new regulation. Builders and land developers are viewing it as a positive step. But the fishing communities that dot the 7,500 km long coastline are distressed, for the new regulation gives with one hand and takes away with the other. And environmentalists fear that unchecked development of coastal lands will destroy precious natural buffers and biodiversity. What the new notification gives is the right to fishing communities to redevelop the land on which they live so that housing conditions can be improved. This is now possible through a change in the classification of their location from CRZ II to CRZ III. (In CRZ II, redevelopment would not have been permitted.) Plus, in the case of fishing communities in Mumbai, they get an additional Floor Space Index (FSI) of 2.5 instead of the current 1.33. In other words, they can build higher on the same piece of land. The justification for this is ostensibly to ensure that everyone is resettled. But it also means that the excess land available once people are accommodated vertically can be used for other purposes. This is where there is ample room for manipulation and misuse of a concession designed to benefit fisherfolk. But the fishing communities’ concern is not just housing; it is principally livelihood. And on this they are not at all sure that the new notification will help them. For, even as it grants them additional rights to organise their housing it lays open coastal lands for other forms of development. For instance, one of the issues that fishworkers’ representatives took up with Ramesh in the run-up to the new notification was their opposition to roads on stilts along the coastline. They argued, as the Mahim fishing colony in Mumbai opposing the Bandra-Worli sea link had done for years -- that erecting pillars in the sea along the coast affects tidal patterns and thereby fishing. In the case of Mumbai, their pleas were overruled in the name of ‘development’. And yet their specific request on this count has been left out of the notification. Indeed, the Maharashtra government has already started pushing for a plan for coastal roads on stilts. There is some sense in the argument made by Ramesh and others that you cannot have a uniform rule for the entire coast of India. You need to factor in the realities of urbanisation as well as the urgent need to preserve natural buffers such as mangroves and reefs that can minimise the damage caused by sea level rise or by natural disasters like tsunamis. Those for a diluted CRZ hold out the example of other cities around the world where such strict regulations are not in place and where the sea front has been exploited for commercial purposes. However, environmentalists emphasise that even the original CRZ notification had been modified 25 times. And its implementation was followed more in the breach -- with spectacular instances such as the 31-storey Adarsh building in Mumbai, which added a full 25 floors more than it was allowed to under these very rules. If this can happen within shouting distance of the lawmakers of Maharashtra, and with many of them being complicit, one can only imagine what else has been going on. It also means that the new, more lax, CRZ notification will be even more amenable to misuse than the previous one. V Vivekanandan, advisor to the South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies, believes that the new notification cancels out the fishworkers’ struggle against the previous Coastal Management Zone plan that was sought to be introduced in 2008.  It had to be abandoned in the face of trenchant opposition. Since 1991, he points out, there have been new pressures on coastal lands. In 1981, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi acknowledged the need to protect coastal areas from an environmental and livelihood perspective. The CRZ, 10 years later, was the result of this awareness. But since then, he says, it has been steadily weakened by a combination of groups -- those who want to put coastal lands to other uses such as Special Economic Zones (SEZs), for the construction of power stations, including nuclear, for ports, for non-polluting industries -- and those who want to fence off coastal areas to preserve biodiversity. Both strategies overlook the concept of coastal zones as common lands that should remain accessible to everyone, especially those dependent on them for their livelihood, such as fishing communities. Take the case of Maharashtra. The government plans to build a series of power stations, nuclear and thermal, all along the Konkan coast. What this will do to the marine resources does not even form part of the discussion. Ramesh was quoted as saying: “India must get used to power plants being located in coastal areas. The availability of water, import of coal or uranium fuel… will necessitate power plants being located here.” Yet, it is an indisputable fact that the warm water discharged from power stations eliminates marine life in coastal areas. In addition, other infrastructure like ports and jetties will further disrupt the marine ecosystem and directly impact the lives of fishing communities along these coasts. The impact of the new CRZ rules on urban areas like Mumbai will also be considerable. Despite its many limitations, Mumbai’s coastline has been preserved to some extent because the rules forbade development within CRZ I and II. It is entirely possible that if such rules had not existed, popular beaches such as Chowpatty and Juhu, which constitute important democratic open spaces for people of all classes in the city, would have disappeared altogether. In Goa, citizens’ groups had to go to court to ensure that five-star hotels did not cut off access to beaches. On the other hand, one has to acknowledge that some slum redevelopment schemes have been held up because of CRZ rules.  These are not just the Koliwadas. They include slums that fall within CRZ II. In fact, some of the redevelopment schemes in Dharavi, quite a distance away from the sea, were delayed for over two years because, technically, they had to obtain CRZ clearance. Such anomalies have to be rectified. But they could have been sorted out within the older notification. The real problem in India with all environmental laws and regulations is their implementation. In Mumbai, as in other cities, those with power and political clout manage to get around every rule, while genuine cases such as those of the urban poor wanting to redevelop their land end up embroiled in endless red-tape. The importance of strictly adhering to a more stringent coastal zone regulation for a city like Mumbai, and other coastal cities, has become all the more urgent in light of global warming and genuine fears of sea level rise. If Mumbai experiences another episode of heavy rains and high tides, as it did in July 2005, and there is no buffer by way of beaches, rocky outcrops and mangroves, the devastation could be more extensive than that which occurred six years ago. The question that Ramesh has to answer is why the specific needs of the Koliwadas could not have been met by bringing in amendments to the existing rules without issuing an entirely new CRZ notification. Who will monitor implementation of these diluted rules if the past record has been so murky? Can the Centre really ensure that state governments are not complicit in diluting an already diluted set of rules? These are not just rhetorical questions. People living in cities along the coast as well as those dependent on coastal lands for their livelihood have a genuine reason to be worried about the future. Infochange News & Features, February 2011 (To read the original, click on the link above)

My name is India

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 21, 2010

The other half

My name is India

F or those of us who are diehard Mumbaikars, February is a month we will not forget for a while. Mumbai was spared a swine flu epidemic, unlike Pune. But this month it was laid low by a virus of acronyms — SS, BT, MNS, SRK, MNIK (for the uninitiated, that is Shiv Sena, Bal Thackeray, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Shah Rukh Khan and My Name is Khan). For days on end, Mumbai — and for that matter, the rest of India — heard nothing but whether a Bollywood film, which, by all accounts, is the typical concoction of reality and unreality, would be released or not or whether the will of the city's ‘super censor' would prevail.

At first it appeared that as BT and the SS had decreed that the film was unsuitable for popular viewing for no other reason than that SRK had said something they did not like, it would be pulled off the screens. That has been the norm for decades. But this time, thanks partly to SRK's star status, the people of the city said “Boo”, sort of, to the super censor, the state government pulled out most of its police force and stationed it, rather incongruously, in front of cinema theatres, and the film ran.

No victors

BT and SS claimed victory as did the state government and SRK fans. In fact, no one won. Mumbai's so called “spirit” prevailed only momentarily. It was better than in the past when the city's residents stayed at home each time there was the whiff of some trouble from these quarters. Also, rarely have Mumbaikars gone out in the streets to demonstrate for the rights of say, taxi drivers or street vendors, who are the soft targets that the SS and the MNS choose when they seek political mileage and media attention. Yet, it must be said, that even the act of going to see a film, albeit with full police protection, was an act of welcome defiance.

But the high drama, played out minute by minute on all news channels, revealed the emptiness of discussion and debate in this city of commerce. Posturing has replaced politics; violence and confrontation have replaced debate. Mumbaikars have now become accustomed to governments buckling under when these groups raise their voices. They are also used to Bollywood bowing down to the dictates of these political groups without protest. Commerce is more important than democratic sentiments such as freedom of expression.

The MNIK issue is one that every Indian should think about and discuss. What does this say about our democracy? At a recent interaction in Mumbai, Mohammed Hanif, Pakistani journalist and author of the hilarious fictional account of the death of Pakistani dictator Zia Ul-Haq, The Case of Exploding Mangoes, said that India should be glad that it is a democracy and has a judicial system that works, where someone like Ajmal Kasab can be tried. He said this in response to people in the audience who suggested that the only way to deal with terror was to seek summary justice. Hanif suggested that if Indians started talking in these terms, they would not be very different from the Taliban whose ideology they surely oppose. And he was right.

Our own Taliban

Yet, the MNIK brouhaha showed us that our own Taliban are well entrenched. They dictate what people should say, what language they can speak, what films they can see, what art they can appreciate, what books they can read and soon it could be what clothes they can wear. Is this India? Is this a democracy? Why are people sitting back and accepting this state of affairs? Why does a party, that has not managed to win a state election since 1994, dictate the city's cultural life? People of the city came out with banners saying, “Enough is enough” after the terror attack of November 2008. But should this not be the permanent slogan of a city that hurtles from one non-crisis to another?

Ignored issues

Of course, while the media's gaze remains fixed on these non-issues, the real problems that affect the lives of the millions who inhabit this city remain unaddressed. For instance, while the majority of people in the city are reeling under water cuts even before the summer has set in, and women in slums live in constant tension as they wait for water, private builders are advertising new luxury apartments with private swimming pools. Mill workers, who worked in the city's iconic textile mills — now mostly defunct — continue to wait for jobs and housing even as the real estate lobby builds deluxe towers on the vacant mill lands. And even as the city's poor, over half its population, struggle to get basic medical care from overcrowded government hospitals and dispensaries, the city is sprouting five-star hospitals offering three-room suites to its patients. The contrasts have failed to rouse our consciences, make us pause and think what direction the city is taking and who determines how it develops.

These issues should matter not just to Mumbai's residents but also to people in the rest of India. They reflect the absence of real engagement by civic society with urban development in many Indian cities that are becoming symbols of confused, iniquitous and environmentally unsustainable development. And above all, they expose the ease with which citizens and governments can get embroiled in non-issues while decisions that can make a difference to people's lives remain permanently on the back burner.

(To read the original, click on the link above)

You talkin' to me?

Indian Express Op-ed, January 23, 2010

They did not ask for it. But Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has given Bal Thackeray and his nephew Raj an unexpected and generous New Year gift. For two political parties virtually joined at the hip, what could have been sweeter than the so-called “secular” state government giving them a perfect chance to revive the much-flogged Marathi Manoos issue? Indeed, if proof was ever needed of the bankruptcy of Maharashtra’s political culture, this action exemplifies it.

What, one wonders, was Chavan thinking when he told the waiting media after the weekly Cabinet meeting that from henceforth those holding permits to drive taxis in Mumbai would have to know how to “read, write and speak Marathi”? Did he really believe that by doing this, he would undercut the ground on which the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) base their politics? In any case, the rule already exists as part of the Maharashtra Motor Vehicles Act 1989 but has rarely been enforced. So why now?

The Congress and the NCP, despite having won a clear majority in the state assembly elections last year, are worried at the growth of the MNS, which won 13 assembly seats principally in urban areas. With Mumbai municipal elections due in 2012, they are concerned about the expanding base of this party. Yet, could this be the only reason for such a gimmick?

For that is all it is. Mumbai has around 56,000 taxis — kali pili taxis, or the black and yellow taxis that have become such a symbol of this city. Of these, 24,000 permits are lying unused. In other words, drivers or owners with permission to run taxis are not running them for a variety of reasons, including lack of funds to convert these vehicles to CNG (now mandatory), replacing old vehicles with new ones etc.

The government has now decided to sell these unused permits to anyone willing to bring in new air-conditioned taxis with global positioning systems (GPS). This is ostensibly part of the plan to modernise Mumbai’s taxi system. The city already has such taxis run by private operators. But there are only a couple of thousand of these in a city of 17 million. Furthermore, not all the 24,000 permits will be sold at one go. Only 4,000 are up for sale this year. So the fuss being made is essentially about an additional 4,000 jobs as those who have been driving taxis for many years, irrespective of whether they speak Marathi or not, will not be affected.

Yet, by making this announcement, Mr Chavan has put the lives of the majority of ordinary taxi drivers who come from outside Maharashtra at risk. Given the standard tactics employed by the MNS and the Shiv Sena, these poor men will have to face harassment by their goons whenever these parties seek political mileage. Just as thousands of street vendors were once targeted by the MNS as “outsiders”, taxi drivers will now come under attack.

Yet what does the taxi-using public of Mumbai want? Compared to other cities, Mumbai’s taxis are a dream. Some of them might be broken down and dirty. Some of the drivers do drive rashly. Some of them do refuse to ply unless to a destination that suits them. But seven times out of ten you can easily hail a taxi on Mumbai’s streets and give your destination, and the driver simply puts down the meter and takes you there. The only test these drivers need is that of safe driving and learning their way around a city changing by the day. Passengers barely care whether such a test is given in Marathi or any other language, so long as they get the service they are paying for.

Instead of dreaming about making Mumbai into Shanghai or Singapore, Ashok Chavan and his colleagues need to deal with the more urgent needs that Mumbai faces — water, better roads, an efficient public transport system and above all, affordable housing and of course, better governance. If he concentrates on these, both the Marathi Manoos and the so-called “outsider” will thank him.

A Reprieve for Dharavi

A reprieve for Dharavi
Cityscapes
(Column posted on InfoChange India News&Features)





Urban planners have proposed alternative approaches to Dharavi’s redevelopment, which would view Dharavi as a thriving and functioning urban settlement and not as a slum that needs to be flattened and rebuilt. The October assembly elections may just have given Dharavi the breathing space required to discuss these alternatives, writes Kalpana Sharma


For months it appeared as if nothing could stop progress on the massive Rs 15,000 crore Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP). Everything was finalised. Only the final bids had to be confirmed. Suddenly, with the announcement of state assembly elections in Maharashtra scheduled for October 13, the project has come to a grinding halt. With the electoral code of conduct in place, the state government cannot initiate any projects. For many people in Dharavi, this comes as a huge relief.

The history of the project, mired in controversy from the start, is a story of how such redevelopment should not be done. It all began when a developer, who already had a couple of projects in Dharavi through the existing Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) of the Maharashtra government, noticed the potential of developing the entire area. Its location next to the Bandra Kurla complex, where land prices were going through the roof, made it even more attractive. Mukesh Mehta of MM Consultants outlined a plan to develop all of Dharavi in 2003. He divided the area into 10 sectors and proposed that each sector should be handed over to a developer through open bidding.

Mehta successfully sold the idea to the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the centre led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Maharashtra government responded by following up on Mehta’s proposal, appointed him initially as an adviser and eventually as the consultant for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project.

In the course of time, the original 10 sectors got collapsed into five, a separate authority was created to oversee the project and the government set about finding ways to give special incentives to attract private developers to take on the project. One of these was to increase the FSI (Floor Space Index) from the current 1.33 to 4 and allowing developers to use all the additional FSI in Dharavi itself rather than converting it into TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) to be used in other projects elsewhere in the city.

In the initial years, the project was estimated to cost Rs 9,300 crore. Today it is valued at Rs 15,000 crore. The delay has helped increase profit margins as land prices have steadily gone upwards, by 30 to 40%, although there was a slight dip in the last year. But between the date the project was initiated and the present day, there has been a notable increase in land prices. All of this benefits developers who are aiming to win bids to develop one of the five sectors.

Also in the interim, to pacify Dharavi residents who have argued that their existing spaces are considerably larger than the 225 sq ft apartments promised free to them under the DRP, the government agreed as a special case to increase the size of each apartment to nearly 300 sq ft. For this the relevant Development Control Rule (DCR) needed to be amended.

The project has inched forward, with the government inviting bids, shortlisting 14 possible developers and promising that by July 30 the final bids would be announced. Inexplicably, on that day, the entire process ground to a halt. The government claimed it had not yet amended the DCR to accommodate the bigger apartments for Dharavi’s residents. Hence the bidding process could not go through. In fact, this was a mere technicality. The thought of the impending elections, and having to face the ire of disgruntled residents in Dharavi, was probably a much bigger reason for postponing the final phase of getting the project underway. Now, with the election code of conduct, this government cannot take any more steps and the project will have to be revisited, or revived, by the new government that takes office at the end of October.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)