Mumbai gambles on slum plan

Joe Leahy ON a clear day it is almost impossible for visitors flying into Mumbai's international airport to miss Asia's largest slum or rather the patchwork of dirty grey tin roofs and blue tarpaulin it forms over a vast area of prime land in the city centre. From the ground, Dharavi is a mixture of squalor and bustling activity, a symbol of both all that is wrong with India's financial capital and the city's great potential if only its infrastructure could be cleaned up and the industriousness of its poorest inhabitants harnessed. Now that potential is about to be tested. In a project unprecedented in its scale and ambition, the government of the state of Maharashtra, which controls Mumbai, has invited expressions of interest from the world's developers to redevelop the entire land area underlying the slum and rehouse its inhabitants. The stakes are enormous. If what is expected to be a six- to- seven-year project succeeds, it could pull 600,000 people out of poverty and create a new modern business district equivalent in area to the city's existing central business district in southern Mumbai. If it is done poorly, however, it could lead to social tensions on a scale rarely seen and set back the city's aspirations to recreate itself as a modern financial centre. A former fishing village, Dharavi is one of a multitude of slums in Mumbai that house more than half the city's population, estimates for which reach 18m six years after the last census. With India's middle and upper classes enjoying unprecedented prosperity on the back of economic growth of more than 8.0 per cent, the continued existence of the slums underlines rising income disparity in the country. Last week, even as prime minister Manmohan Singh chastised the country's corporate leaders for their high salaries, it was revealed that Mukesh Ambani, the country's most powerful businessman, was planning to build a 60-storey palace for his family in affluent south Mumbai at a reported cost of £500m ($990m). But removing the city's slums has proven to be a difficult task. Mumbai has had some successes, with a number of new developments built on land formerly encroached by slums, most notably the city's new Four Seasons luxury hotel. But the Dharavi project will be the most ambitious such project so far. Under the plan, the government will split the 144-hectare site into five different parcels of land, each of which will be auctioned to a different developer or consortium of investors. The developers will be required to demolish a total of 57,000 slum structures and to rehouse the inhabitants and their businesses on the same site, free of charge. The project is expected to comprise 30m sq ft of new developments for the slum dwellers, 20m sq ft of luxury homes to be sold at market prices, and 20m sq ft of other commercial development. The government estimates the total cost at $2.3bn while the resale value of the developments will be many times that. The redevelopment will be done in stages, during which the inhabitants will be relocated. The project is already attracting fierce opposition from some quarters. Jockin Arputham, president of the National Slum Dwellers Association, a lobby group, calls it a land grab and claims locals have not been properly consulted. He has threatened to organise protests and to block two vital commuter railways running through the site if the project goes ahead. "If all the people living in Dharavi came out of their houses for half an hour and blocked the tracks, no train will work in the whole of Bombay," Mr Arputham says. Other critics argue that the flood of new supply on to Mumbai's housing market could send home prices spiralling downwards. But the architect of the plan and the consultant managing the project, Mukesh Mehta, says it is about empowering the slum's impoverished residents and providing them with modern amenities, such as schools and hospitals, in addition to proper housing. "I'm saying, the hard-working people coming here from the villages [elsewhere in India], instead of thinking of them as parasites, let's think of them as assets," Mr Mehta said. Within the slum itself, there are concerns among some about the future. Nagaji Govind Rathod, who runs a pottery business in Dharavi, shares his 1,200 sq ft house with 22 family members. He is concerned that, despite his large family, he will only get the standard 225 sq ft house under the rehabilitation plan and there will not be enough space to run his business. "I'm feeling very anxious. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," he says. ..................................... FT Syndication Service