Maximum Slum

Asia’s largest slum—a tag that refuses to go away although the shanty-sprawl is now pockmarked with numerous clusters of tightly packed-in apartment complexes and even a pair of under-construction 16-storey “towers”—is more upwardly mobile than ever before. The state government will, very soon, request Expressions of Interest from global big daddies of construction to participate in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP), an ambitious Rs 10,000-crore plan and part of Mumbai’s belated makeover scheme.

If—and that is a very big if—the DRP works according to design, Dharavi will be a brand ambassador of urban renewal in seven years: More than 500 acres of shanties and unremarkable buildings transformed into five organised, self-sustained sectors. Each sector will be the size of two Nariman Points, with plush housing, malls, multiplexes, pottery institutes, leather designing centres, a proposed cricket museum and stadium, gardens, parks and world class public transport.

“Not only will slumdwellers be rehabilitated in the same sector their homes are in, but they won’t even have to go to a neighbouring sector for a morning jog,’’ says Iqbal Singh Chahal, officer on special duty for DRP. From obtaining clearances from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for bid-winning developers to lay civic amenities, including sewers and water pipelines, in the Dharavi Notified Area to planning a Special Economic Zone on 16 per cent of the Dharavi triangular landmass, the lavish plans pull out all stops.

Of people, for them too?

“BUT residents have questions,” says Raju Korde, a Dharavi resident and leader of the Dharavi Bachao Samiti, formed two years ago. “And the officials have no answers.” World-class schools are a great idea, he says, but will students who’ve been in civic schools until now, many in Kannada, Urdu and Tamil-medium, get admission? The Samiti is demanding 80 per cent reservation for Dharavi’s children in the proposed schools.

Also very worried are Kumbharwada’s potters, who had a barrage of uneasy questions for project management consultant Mukesh Mehta when he visited last week. Large drying yards, kilns, warehousing for their goods are all crucial, and nobody’s quite impressed with the idea of a community kiln.

Mehta—he conceived the ambitious project more than five years ago—says the detailed land use plan accommodates everyone who’s eligible. (That’s a contested, startlingly low figure of 52,000 families; residents say the cutoff date of January 1995 is unfair.) “We have been transparent about our plans from the start,” he says, after making a presentation to BMC leaders, including the mayor, on Thursday. The BMC owns 69 per cent of land in the notified area and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has asked the Slum Rehabilitation Authority to seek the civic body’s nod for suggested alterations to the Development Control Regulations, including a plan for a first world-style, colour-coded underground utilities duct, a first for India.

“We have decided on a land use plan,” explains Mehta. “So for each sector, we know where a park, school, hospital will be located. Also, detailed specifications for buildings will be given to the developers.” That will include art deco buildings and mandatory eco-housing criteria—including rainwater harvesting, water recycling, renewable energy systems etc—being worked upon simultaneously by the BMC and USAID. “It will be world class.”

From polyclinics to rehabilitation buildings, the standards will not be lowered for any construction. In fact, amenities like lifts and exterior paint will have to be guaranteed by the developer for 15 years. Residents of each building will form a cooperative society to supervise maintenance.

Tolls and Taxes

ALREADY, Dharavi has completed chapter one of the transformation story: Chivda and chakli manufacturing, done entirely through smallscale household units, have spawned food barons. Computer institutes, jewellery shops, coaching classes and beauty salons dot every lane.

“There’s nothing that’s not made in Dharavi,” says Sandeep Bagade, who owns Shivom Leather, one in a row of over 100 boutiques retailing leather goods. In 1986, a survey by the National Slum Dwellers Federation recorded 244 small manufacturers and 43 big industries. There were 152 units making chikki, papad and other food items, 111 restaurants, 722 scrap and recycling units, 25 bakeries and 85 export-oriented units. Over 20 years, the numbers could only have multiplied and diversified.

In Sahadev Bagade’s leather sweatshop, designs from Chloe and Fendi are exactingly duplicated. At a fraction of the designer price, they’re still too dear for the average Dharavi shopper. “For export only,” says Bagade, “to Dubai.” Orders for the calf leather and buck leather pieces—”almost as good as the original companies’ quality”—also come from Goa, especially now that the tourist season is around the corner.

Every second leather manufacturer in the shanty town now has an export licence, ensures his leather is certified according to stringent requirements abroad, and there’s a much sharper need to keep designs moving with the trends. Almost all of them pay Rs 6 lakh to Rs 7 lakh in taxes annually.

The political equations have changed too. In the Dharavi Rahivashi Sangh’s office on 90-Feet Road, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai and Dr Ambedkar feature in a row of framed photos, alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. In 1978, Dharvi even had a Communist MLA, Comrade Satyendra More, but the balance of power tilted long ago. Today, all six corporators belong to the Congress, as do the local MLA and the local MP.

Plus Size

THE Dharavi Bachao Samiti is negotiating pragmatically. “We want change too,” says Korde, “but in a positive way.” From the earlier blanket decision to give all eligible families 225 sq foot tenements, the stiff opposition has effected a climbdown by the authorities. Now, slumdwellers can pay a percentage of the construction cost for extra area. “At an investment of about Rs 5 lakh,” says Korde, “a family can have a carpet area of about 700 sq foot in addition to the 225 sq foot.”

In view of real estate prices in Dharavi—Rs 3,500 per sq ft for buildings that do not even face the main road, a figure certain to skyrocket once the DRP kicks off—this makes good business sense.

Yet, there are other words of caution and admonition. The state government-appointed fact-finding committee investigating the 26/7 deluge says the project proposes “too-intense” density of population: ‘’In no city in the world are densities of occupation as high…” reads the Madhavrao Chitale committee report, accepted in principle by the Deshmukh government.

Dharavi houses 700 people per hectare. Once flats for the open market are occupied and footfalls multiply at the malls, cricket museum and SEZ, that number will escalate rapidly. Litigations from private landowners, environmentalists’ concern over the FSI of 4 (the highest permissible in Mumbai) have only just begun to be expressed.

The SRA claims that all these concerns are being addressed carefully. Environmental impact assessment studies, one for each of the five sectors, will kick off soon.

All the transferable development rights (TDR, certificates that allow a holder to develop elsewhere to the north of a given plot) generated will be used within Dharavi itself, promises Mehta, detailed calculations have been done. “That’s why we urged the government to okay the FSI of 4,” he says. “We don’t want to spoil Andheri or Bandra with congestion due to TDR from Dharavi.”

If Dharavi’s redevelopment looks at rehabilitating approximately 52,000 slum-dwelling families over seven years, there’s one proximate example for some comparisons and tough lessons. Some 53,000 families are being shifted by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) under three mega-projects: The Mumbai Urban Transport Project, the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project and the Mithi River Development and Protection Plan. Already, 33,000 families have shifted, albeit many unwillingly, from shanties to rehabilitation “townships”.

Metropolitan Commissioner T Chandrashekhar says the challenges will be many: Interference from politicians who don’t want to lose their votebanks, resistance from shopkeepers who occupy prime locations and won’t move into buildings and the legal battles. At last count, the MMRDA was fighting nearly 200 separate cases filed after the launch of the three projects.