Mumbai slum nears its end -
perhaps By Sudha
Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Dharavi, home
to about a million people in the heart of Mumbai
in western India, is attracting a growing number
of well-healed visitors, even though it is one of
Asia's largest slums.
Initially it lured
poor folk keen to establish a foothold near the
country's booming financial center. Then it was
tourists with an urge to see what real-life
squalor could look like. The latest arrivals are
less disinterested - these are representatives of
the local authorities, bankers and big-time
developers preparing to give the slums a makeover
and throw up buildings more in line with Mumbai's
standing as a global capital of finance.
Spread over 212 hectares, life in Dharavi
is a crush, with a population density 11 times
that of Mumbai as a whole, itself
the
world's most densely populated
city. Hindus, Muslims and Christians live
cheek-by-jowl, as Marathis, Tamils, Telugus,
Bengalis and Biharis, indeed people from all over
India, throng to the place.The average dwelling is
a one- or two-room tenement with no natural
ventilation, running water or sanitation. Sheets
of tarpaulin or tin serve as roofs. Outdoors is
little better, a maze of narrow, garbage-strewn
lanes and open sewers. There are public taps and
toilets, but these are sparse, at one toilet for
every 1,440 people.
Yet it is not just
stench and squalor that define Dharavi. It is also
known for its remarkable entrepreneurial spirit
and flourishing economy.
Dharavi's annual
turnover is estimated at anywhere between US$700
million and $1 billion. Amid the cramped housing
are an estimated 15,000 single-room factories and
workshops that turn out garments, leather goods
(17% of India's leather exports are from Dharavi),
pottery, jewelry, food products and much else. The
township is home to a flourishing recycling
industry, which employs about 200,000 people.
For all its drawbacks, in a city where
rents are among the highest in the world, Dharavi
offers a roof over heads for a rent as low as $4
per month. Just as remarkably, foreign tourists
are increasingly drawn to the place to get a feel
of life in the slums, making it a hotspot for
"reality tourism".
The latest arrivals are
also moneyed, but have other concerns -
speculation, investment and construction. The
government of Maharashtra (of which Mumbai is the
capital) proposes to redevelop Dharavi and
transform it into a modern township, complete with
proper housing and sanitation, malls, hospitals
and schools.
The Dharavi Redevelopment
Project (DRP) was first conceived in 1995. It took
the government eight years to give the go-ahead
and in June last year it invited bids to execute
the $2.3 billion project. The advertisement
inviting bids described the project as "the
opportunity of the millennium" and a "perennial
source of income". With that the scramble for a
slice of the Dharavi pie began.
Twenty six
consortiums, several including international
realty companies, put in bids in the first round
and 19 made the short list for final bidding. The
last date for submission, initially April 26 then
April 30, is now May 30.
Those in the
final bidding round include Dubai-based Limitless
(part of the Dubai World conglomerate) and Housing
Development & Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL), which
is partnering the New York-based Lehman Brothers,
a global financial services firm.
Indian
real estate major, DLF, which has partnered
Limitless in building a $15 billion township at
Bidadi in Bangalore to house 750,000 people, is
linking up with Bangalore-based Akruti Builders
& Developers for the Dharavi bid.
Other big Indian companies in the running
include Mumbai-headquartered Larsen & Toubro
and Reliance Engineering Associates, while
Indiabulls Real Estate, one of the country's
largest listed real estate companies, is hoping
for success with US-based Shea Homes. Africa
Israel Investment Ltd, which has extensive real
estate investments in Israel, Russia and the
United States, is also in the hunt, as is
Dubai-based Emaar MGF.
At stake are five
contracts to match the five sectors into which the
development plan has divided Dharavi, with each
winning bid to be allotted a sector to develop.
Dharavi is a potential goldmine. Located
in the heart of Mumbai, it is sandwiched between
Bandra-Kurla, the city's swanky new business
district where current real estate prices are
about $1,000 per square foot (.0929 square meter),
and Sion, a residential neighborhood. Dharavi is
just 10 kilometers south of Mumbai's international
airport and is located between the city's two main
suburban railway lines.
The actual project
area is about 144 hectares. About 70 million
square feet of construction is envisaged. Under
the plan, Dharavi residents will be provided 225
square foot of housing free of cost in high-rise
buildings. For every square foot provided to
rehabilitate residents, developers will be
entitled to 1.33 square feet of commercial space.
That means builders will have the right to develop
43.5 million square feet and put it up for sale.
As the neighboring Bandra-Kurla Complex commands
the highest commercial real estate values in
India, developing Dharavi should be a great
business proposition, for government as well as
developers and their associates.
Builders
are expected to pay the government a minimum of
$10 per square foot for the saleable component of
the redevelopment. The minimum price quoted by
developers in their bids is around $100 per square
foot, according to reports.
Others who
hope to make a killing on the redevelopment are
speculators. They are buying up slum structures
from their owners to cash in on the coming boom.
Since bidding began last year, land prices in
Dharavi have risen 30-40%.
Analysts,
agreeing that the DRP looks great on the drawing
board, say it will be hard to execute, given the
fierce resistance from residents, activists and a
section of politicians. The opposition Shiv Sena,
under whose rule the DRP was first conceived, has
shifted positions as it sees the potential for
power-winning votes, moving away from backing the
builders at one point to projecting itself now as
the messiah of the residents, the leader of
resistance against the project.
An Indian
builder who wished to remain anonymous said that a
project of this size should have attracted more
international players. "It hasn't because foreign
players are wary of the difficulties in a
public-private partnership in a notoriously
corrupt system. Besides the project is clouded in
confusion," he said. "The government has not done
its homework before inviting the bids."
Bangalore-based Sobha Developers is one
company that has pulled out of the race. "Our firm
amply qualifies but the current business judgement
... is that the returns may not be worth the
effort," a spokesman of Sobha Group said.
Dharavi's residents say they are not
against the redevelopment project but oppose the
way this is happening and for whom it is being
redeveloped. The current plan, they say, is too
generous to builders and does not provide enough
for the residents. The size of houses being
provided to residents is far too small.
"It is evident that both the government
and builders think that the poor, who make up half
of the city of Mumbai, should not live on such
valuable land. The vision of a slum-free Mumbai
appears to be a city free of the urban poor,"
writes Kalpana Sharma, author of Rediscovering
Dharavi: Stories from Asia's Largest Slum.
Critics point out that the government has
no idea how many families live in Dharavi. Based
on a random estimate, 57,000 families will be
provided with housing under the DRP, when it seems
there are over 90,000 families. Those who aren't
provided housing under DRP, that is roughly
300,000 people, will be rendered homeless, without
compensation.
Relocation of people and
their businesses will also strike at the economic
security of thousands of families. Most residents
are self-employed. There is concern that Dharavi's
redevelopment will destroy the famed
entrepreneurial spirit of its community.
Mumbai's chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh
has promised to make the city another Shanghai and
to this end has spearheaded a series of
infrastructure projects in Mumbai. A redeveloped
Dharavi, his government believes, will remove
Mumbai's biggest eyesore and take the city a big
step towards achieving its Shanghai dreams.
Yet the DRP could end up fueling the
problems it claims to address. It might take out a
sprawling slum but in the process is likely to
result in a sharp spurt in the number of homeless
people. This would mean new slums and expansion of
other existing ones in the city.
Dharavi's
remarkable recycling powers could come to an end
with the redevelopment, so that in the name of
cleaning up Mumbai, of garbage if not of people,
the government will end up dismantling a system
that takes out at least some of waste off the
city's streets.
The DRP has seen many
delays and deferred deadlines so far.
Redevelopment is scheduled to be completed by
2013. But the confusion around the project
indicates that the promised facelift for Dharavi
will not happen anytime soon, or worse, could
remain on paper. Speculators and builders could be
counting their chickens before they are hatched.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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