Half of Mumbai’s more than 15 million people live in slums. Most Mumbaikars consider the slums worthless but to others they are priceless real estate. Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum, is next to the emerging corporate hub, the Bandra-Kurla complex. Land in the complex costs as much Rs 30,000 per sq m, and 535-acre Dharavi is worth Rs 6,500 crore. Dharavi is every property developer’s dream and they are achieving it in the name of slum rehabilitation.
S S Tinaikara, a retired IAS officer, was asked by the state to investigate slum rehabilitation schemes and his verdict was this: “all slum rehabilitation plans are meant to encourage corruption.” HNN team went undercover in Dharavi and rented a room. The objective was to meet the slum mafia and prove that the slum rehabilitation scheme is a scam and slum dwellers rarely get flats built for them.
The most prized piece of paper in a slum is a ration card, for owning it makes a person eligible for one of the 100,000 free flats to be built in Dharavi. And the mafia can get you a card for you. “The ration officers have piles of old, clear ration cards. They have touts who get customers for these ration cards. It doesn't matter if you are a Pakistani, Nepali, Bangladeshi, anybody can buy a ration card proving residence from any date.
You just have to pay the right amount of money,” says social worker N R Paul. People who can prove that they are residents of a slum on or before 1995 are eligible for flats under the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme. The slum mafia, for Rs 15,000, got HNN a ration card dated before 1995. Mafia rehabilitation scheme: When they couldn’t block the slum rehabilitation scheme, the mafia, corrupt builders, politicians and bureaucrats converted it converted into a massive scam.
The scam is simple: build and allot flats to people who are dead or are fictitious. Builders then sell the flats at market rates, instead of handing them over free of cost to slum dwellers. Of the 65,000 flats for slum rehabilitation, it is estimated that builders have earned Rs 5,000 crore through the scam. The scheme rewards builders for building slum rehabilitation flats by allotting them to develop a portion of the original slum. Dharavi’s slums for instance, would earn a builder as much Rs 40,000 per square foot.
Tinaikar’s report ripped apart the scheme. It alleged that crores were spent on building Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) Office, but the authority’s meetings were held at the Housing Minister's residence Tinaikar said there was no credible process to distinguish a squatter or an encroacher from a slum dweller. Which left slum dwellers entirely at the builder's mercy. “Every page of the report is stinking with the fraud but everyone from the present government to the Opposition is involved so everyone is quiet,” alleges Tinaikar. Tinaikar’s allegations have merit. The next part of HNN investigation was meeting property developers and politicians allegedly involved in the scam.
A property broker told HNN on hidden camera he had “sold 40 percent of slum rehabilitation flats and there has never been a problem.” The slums were not sold to slum dwellers though. Between 1995 and 2000, Mumbai's Slum Rehabilitation Authority was to build 4 million low-cost houses of 225 square feet each, for the city's seven million slum dwellers. Everyone living in a Mumbai slum before 1995 was eligible for a free home. Barely 65,000 flats are ready today and even fewer have reached slum dwellers. Slum dwellers who protested the fraud were harassed and beaten up. Chandrashekhar Prabhu, a former board member of the SRA, admits the scheme is a huge scam. “Pay off slum dwellers and then create fake identities. Everyone is paid off and documents are forged—stamp paper, land records, consent letters. People who have never given consent are shown as having given consent,” says Prabhu. SRA flats by law cannot be sold for 10 years after allotment but in reality they are up for sale.
Here is what real estate agent Raj, “a SRA specialist”, told HNN in Goregaon. HNN: “We have been told that it is very difficult to get SRA flats?” Raj: “Who told you? We have sold 40 percent of the flats here and there's never been a problem, how can there be a problem with you. Can you show me any flat where there has been an issue? Ask anyone around here.” HNN: “How does this happen? What is the process?” Raj: “There is an allotment letter that is given (to slum dwellers). The letter will be given to you. You can get an affidavit done on this basis of that letter. Then you can get a ration card made.” The present target set for slum rehabilitation is 40 lakh homes. If that target is met, the profits that builders would make from illegal sales would be Rs 33 lakh crore—more than 400 times Mumbai's annual civic budget. To learn more about the scam, HNN approached a politician as newspaper reporters. Waqar Khan is reportedly on the new list of board members of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority. On hidden camera, he said this: “The money is going everywhere from the CM to Baba Siddique (of the Congress). Do you know what a big racket you are talking about? I can't go into all that. I'll have to work with all the MHADA people… names and projects just disappear from MHADA lists,” said Khan. Posing as builders, the HNN team met a group of slum dwellers who paid money to builders and their architects.
They said the builders had assured them that they would bribe SRA officials to push their project through. Bulldozers in Mumbai on Saturday started removing slums on roads and footpaths --- the second such campaign in two years. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has got clear instructions from Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to clear the encroachments from all main roads and footpaths immediately.
The government tried a similar campaign two years ago, but was forced to stop when Congress chief Sonia Gandhi intervened on behalf of slum dwellers. Over 8,000 slums were cleared in Ambhojwadi in Malad in December 2004, but they reappeared in just a few weeks. The BMC learnt a lesson from that and will follow a ‘go-slow-and-steady’ mantra during the new campaign. "People demonstrated at the Churchgate Azad Maidan two years ago and the BMC had to stop. But this time the BMC will demolish encroachments in a planned manner and it won't fail," said Congress Corporator Aslam Shaikh. The BMC won't bulldoze big plots for the time being; the priority will be to clear roads encroached upon by slums. But after its failure at Ambhojwadi, the BMC will have to figure out how to do that. "Its an ongoing process. We will keep going back and will keep a check on them. It is the ward officer's responsibility (to keep roads clear). If they fail, they will be suspended," said Municipal Commissioner Johny Joseph. The demolition is supposed to make footpaths and main roads free, but it's only a matter of time before the bulldozers begin their clean up act clearing big plots like Ambhojwadi, which have been completely encroached.
The Maximum City is bursting at the seams and along with the average Mumbaikar, the high-end customer is also facing the heat in his quest for an upmarket flat in a swanky area. In fact a recent report by HR body ECA International suggests that Mumbai is the seventh most expensive city in the world for an expat manager looking for top class housing. The study compared rental prices for unfurnished three bedroom apartments in prime locations and found that Hong Kong is the costliest at a huge $8600 per month, Tokyo is second at $7360 and Mumbai takes the seventh spot at $5500 per month. "When compared with other cities with practically no FSI, Mumbai has FSI of around 1.3 which is restrictive. Also the urban land ceiling act has not been repealed which is blocking land further. All of these restrictions are pushing up prices further,” says Deputy MD, Cushman & Wakefield Sanjay Dutt. Other experts also blame the rising rupee and say at least a part of the upsurge in prices on the Indian currency which has moved up by 10 percent in the last year is responsible for the surge in prices. So in a dollar denominated survey, Mumbai has jumped a few ranks.
"The rising rupee is also an important factor. Mumbai has been at lower rank when rupee was at 48 (compared to the dollar),” says Chairman-Knight Frank Pranay Vakil. The state government's long announced plans of repealing the urban land ceiling act have so far come to nought and unless the act is scrapped chances of land opening up for development will remain slim. The words clean and slum don't go together, do they? But a small revolution set in the slums of Mumbai is changing that perception. So, if you associated slums with dirty cramped spaces, your opinion will soon change. Slums in Mumbai are doing some serious garbage management and getting a facelift. At Hanumannagar slum area in the eastern suburbs, garbage carts from one house to the other every morning to collect garbage. Vanita, a slum dweller tells she is doing now what she wouldn't have bothered doing a year ago—dumping dry and wet garbage separately. And her neighbours too are following her, thanks to a garbage disposal system that's turned their lives around.
“Our area is a lot cleaner than before,” says Vinita. Another slum dweller says, “Our standard of living has improved.” With support from NGOs, people living in the slum areas of Mumbai have adopted vermin composting to process the garbage locally. “Dumping garbage in a pit helps reduce cost of transport. It also avoids the pollution at landfill sites,” said Rishi Aggarwal, Program Director, NGO United Way. Wet garbage collected from homes is sprayed with microorganisms or EM solution, which helps in processing of the biodegradable garbage. A bed of sugarcane waste and cow dung is prepared and earthworms are added to speedup the processing. The garbage is transferred and covered with a layer of sand and a month later you get fine odorless manure rich in nutrients. Perfect for plants in the backyard. According to the municipal corporation slums contribute over 35% of the city's total waste. So far only a handful of the many slums in Mumbai have adopted this technique. It's a small step in the right direction giving way to cleaner living spaces and shining faces.
And unless this happens, there is very little that can cool the overheated rental market for upmarket properties. Its tough-as-iron commerce and enterprise have spawned mini-industrialists winning global contracts. Three sunny days after the last pre-monsoon shower, Sanaullah Compound is still mucky. That’s partly because the road was never really constructed, and partly because the marshy past of Dharavi’s geography resurfaces every monsoon. Oblivious to that and to the din of a driver revving unsuccessfully to get his vehicle’s rear wheel out of the muck, Aqil Ahmed scrubs away at a 4-ft plastic barrel, threadbare industrial gloves telling the tale of how caustic his soda mix is. Ahmed is a supplier of recycled drums—from huge sorbitol containers to metal barrels of anonymous chemicals, he washes the residue off, fits it with a pipe if you like, or a metal clasp around the rim for a neat old-goods storage drum.
A few hundred metres away, in 13th Compound, deals are struck for recycled cardboard goods, touched up television sets, refrigerators and computer monitors. From deeper inside 13th Compound come the sounds of tin cans being beaten into shape and the rattle of machines. There are about 150 units here—Mumbai’s biggest recycling industry. Not far away, young men turn squares of cardboard into packaging boxes, women string beads industriously, row upon row of bare-chested tailors hunch over whirring sewing machines, fried snacks are packed and sealed. At 2 pm, the humidity plastering their ganjis to their backs, the smells of sweat and gutkha mingling, Dharavi is at work, as if possessed—by a djinn of industry perhaps. Or perhaps they’re racing to keep up with the change.
For, the 144-hectare sprawl that will soon see global developers tearing down the shanties to make way for highrise apartments and offices will see no more “routine, government type of designs” in the words of IAS officer Iqbal Singh Chahal, the bureaucrat on special duty for the Rs 9,300-crore Dharavi Redevelopment Project. He says the new college buildings must look like IIM Ahmedabad; for the tailoring and leather industry that Dharavi is known for, the Government is talking to apex institutes like the National Institute of Design, the Central Leather Research Institute, the Footwear Design Council, the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, all to be invited to set up centres of excellence here, to give Dharavi’s famed industry and enterprise new direction and growth. The planners are applying what project management consultant Mukesh Mehta calls his ‘HIKES’ formula—Health, Income generating opportunity, Knowledge economy, Education and Socio-cultural growth—to create an “upwardly mobile class of slumdwellers, a new middle class” that enjoys better amenities than the middle classes ever did.
Actually, Round One of Dharavi’s big gentrification is over. Chivda, chakli and papad manufacturers are almost impossible to count, an army of food moguls inspired by the Ghasitaram factory housed in one corner of the slum. There are still doctors’ clinics with dubious degrees offering miracle cures for venereal disease, but there are also path-labs, computer classes, coaching classes for students and beauty salons. Even the jewellery shops in the Tamil quarters wear smart new signboards and banners displaying branded gold and diamond pieces. There are still sweatshops in every alleyway, but in the seven-storey commercial complex along the main road, right opposite the leather goods stores, at least a couple of hundred jeans and T-shirts manufacturers have set up shop. With recycling units, tanneries and metal smelting all set to go, Round Two could see the service industry take root in the country’s biggest slum—BPO, KPO units, office space, world class retail units, that’s what the planners say is in store for Dharavi’s commercial space. Still, not all of Dharavi’s industrialists are convinced. “I have a 3,000 sq ft home,” says Ramkrishna Keni, a self-styled leader of the fisherfolk Kolis, believed to be the original residents of Mumbai and among the first to take up residence at Dharavi. A matchbox home on the sixth or seventh floor is no good for his refrigerator, television set, washing machine, cupboard and cot.
“What about my fishing nets and implements?” he asks. Keni promised those gathered at a recent protest meeting that local developers could be persuaded to give Dharavi’s residents “400 sq ft each, why 225?” Officials point out calmly that Koliwada is not even in the project area. Chahal details the new industrial policy for Dharavi. Hazardous units will have to go, as will polluting units. That doesn’t render these residents ineligible for rehabilitation, assure officials; they must simply pick a non-polluting enterprise. Set to go: tanneries and scrap recycling. “Acchha,” says Aqil Ali when told of the plan, “So where will all of Mumbai’s juna purana samaan (waste) go?” His masters at this 20-year-old recycling unit taught him his most fundamental business theory well: Look for a demand, then supply it. “I’m going nowhere madam,” he says. “Come back whenever.”
After Chloe Ripoffs, what next? Not long ago, Dharavi’s leather entrepreneurs were garrulous; displaying Fendi, Chloe and Valentino catalogues whose designs were meticulously reproduced in their sweatshops. “For export only,” one owner of a series of leather goods manufacturing and retail units had said, showing pieces that would never make it to the display windows of the 100-odd retail stores lined up in Dharavi. After all, retailers from Dubai and other cities in the Middle East with significant tourist footfalls regularly place orders here for calf leather and buck leather articles that boast a quality and finish almost akin to the big brands. Every other leather manufacturer in Dharavi has an export licence, plus receipts showing tax payments running into lakhs. This enterprise is almost completely legit, design duplications apart. Now, the Central Leather Research Institute has been approached to set up a branch in the new Dharavi, to tap the rich potential and give it direction.
Dharavi’s own brands can make a mark, say planners. Still, though business is brisk like always, there is a now sudden disquiet under the harsh glare of global camera crews, an unwillingness to talk. “What about rents?” asks S Bagade, one store owner. Many leather goods factories here are located in rented properties, some in sub-let properties. “Will everybody be able to afford the new rents?” The Kumbharwada Question: “Community kiln? And how exactly will that work?” asks Dhansukh Parmar, president of the Prajapati Samaj Association in Kumbharwada, a colony of potters living in spacious homes along a winding lane and a warren of bylanes just off Dharavi’s main 60 Feet Road (the other is the 90 Feet Road).
It’s an odd question, since the 300-odd families who live in Kumbharwada exemplify community living so well, complete with their own balwadi and a rationing office that trades in cotton waste to fire the kilns, all of which are used by several families, often together. “The 225 sq ft space is just not enough,” Parmar says. “What about our drying yards, stacking space and ditches to store mud?” Mostly from Saurashtra and Kutch, the Prajapatis are a potter community, named after who they say is the Lord of Progeny or the Maker. With business slow except in the festival season which floods them with orders for kulhads, dahi haandis and diyas, many families are not full-time potters any longer. And those not engaged in pottery will simply get 225 sq ft of residential space, officials of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority have clarified, fuelling more discontent among the kumbhars. “Entire families, including college-going daughters, help out when there are large orders,” says Nanji Devalia, a community member who contested the recent corporation elections unsuccessfully. His key promise had been to reform the redevelopment plan for the potters.
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