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This is a city of striking contrasts. A city fissured into two distinct worlds. One, of the rich and aspiring - beneficiaries of India's booming economy - inhabiting high-rises dotting this cluttered metropolis.
And the other, of the poor - bypassed by the same booming economy - living in gnawing destitution, scrambling for space in a labyrinth of slums. Dharavi, a grubby shanty town, is Asia's largest slum. Noisy and bustling with life, Dharavi, in Mumbai, is home to over one million people. Its denizens, mostly migrants, dwell in a warren of corrugated tin shacks and huts.
Cutting through its squalid quarters are a tangle of slender, garbage-choked lanes. Stench permeates from open sewers besieged by mosquitoes. Water and sanitation facilities in Dharavi are scarce. Life here is unforgiving. Dharavi has been an eyesore for Mumbai's elite, many of whom have long harboured a dream to transform the city into "India's Shanghai".
Now that dream might come true. A mega-budget plan - worth nearly $1.3 billion - to make Mumbai a slum-free city is under way. The federal government is entering into deals with private industry to redevelop Dharavi. Shanties, according to the plan, will be flattened and new multi-storey apartment blocks built by private developers will be given to slum-dwellers free of charge. In return, private developers can earn their profit by developing the remaining space freed from the razed shanties. "This plan not just promises housing and a better life to the poor who can't afford it, but also promises great returns and business for private developers," says Debashish Chakrabarty, an official from the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, the nodal agency co-coordinating the plan. "It's a win-win plan."
So far, more than 50,000 apartments, each 25 square feet, have been built for slum dwellers in Mumbai. Such redevelopment is rare in slums the world over. Every year, millions of people around the world leave the countryside for cities, hoping to find a better life. The United Nations estimates that there are nearly 100 million slum dwellers worldwide. By 2020, 40 per cent of the world's population will be slum-dwellers in urban areas.
Mumbai is a city bursting at the seams, cramming 16,000 people into each square mile. For want of space in Mumbai, a whopping 60 per cent of the population lives in slums, many in abominable conditions. This redevelopment is expected to give them a new life. Although this plan looks utopian, it is riddled with complexities, making its implementation tedious.
A slum can be resettled if 60 per cent of the households agree to be rehabilitated. Dissenters who remain are removed forcibly. Slum dwellers, who arrived in Mumbai after 1995 are excluded from the resettlement programme in an effort to discourage continuing migration. But they too can be ejected when the slums are eventually cleared.
Sukumar, 39, a local activist who's lived in Dharavi since birth, is unwilling to give up his hut. It is spacious - about 600 square feet, which is more than twice the floor-area being offered under the government plan. His neighbours from nearby shanties have packed up and left for transit camps fearing eviction.
Their shanties are being razed and a building is under construction for them on a patch of the vacated land. But his ramshackle hut is the only dwelling in the area. Sukumar is taking the authorities head-on.
"This is my land," he says, adding sarcastically, "In that apartment, I might have to sleep with my family of five standing up."
"This scheme only benefits builders, not the poor like us," he says jabbing his finger at the building being built for slum-dwellers. "If they give me more space, I'll move there."
Plot of gold
As slum-dwellers are moved from horizontal shanties into vertical towers, it frees nearly three-quarters of the land. The Dharavi slums are a realty goldmine. Billions are pouring in from firms like Goldman Sachs to build an urban jungle of malls, high-rise apartments and offices on the cleared land.
The moves reflect a surge of enthusiasm for Indian real estate, attracting large amounts of foreign capital. The redevelopment of Dharavi is expected to propel a real estate boom in Mumbai and over the next decade, the industry is projected to grow from $14 billion to $102 billion.
Mukesh Mehta, the head of a private architectural firm, MM consultants, who drew the blueprint of this rehabilitation plan, reveals that a section of the land freed would be used to develop a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), attracting large investments. The SEZ will house industries ensuring higher productivity and creation of jobs, Mehta explains. Those slum dwellers who have had to vacate their lands for such development, however, complain that they aren't being offered enough in return for their land that's worth gold.
Many accuse developers of substandard construction. Several families also complain that they have been made to wait for years in transit camps. Authorities didn't keep their tall promises to hand over possession of their apartments in 18 months after clearing their shacks.
Crumbling dreams
After three years of languishing in a rat-infested transit camp, Malia Selvan, a 40-year-old taxi driver, got possession of his 225 square foot apartment in a complex called VOC Towers. He moved in with his family of eight into his promised ‘dream home' a few weeks ago. It's a tiny, one-room apartment. His bedroom doubles as a living room every time he has a visitor. His toilet roof leaks. The walls peel off distemper paint. To add to his chagrin, his apartment overlooks a crematorium and the sight of dead bodies is hard to contend with everyday, he says.
"I was happier in my flimsy shack," Selvan says. "This is not my dream home. They took our prized land. They should ask us what kind of houses we want." Many who've moved into new apartment blocks that were meant to elevate their social status also complain of drastic civic and lifestyle changes. Squabbles among neighbours over maintenance of apartments, something slum-dwellers aren't used to, are common.
"Slum dwellers aren't used to apartment life," says Arputam Jockin, the head of the National Slum Dwellers Federation. "The intentions of the plan are good. The implementation is bad. Locals weren't consulted well. Their needs weren't properly looked into." Though the implementation of the plan is slow, developers like Mehta promise that in a few years, New York and Shanghai will see their reflection in Mumbai's skyline.
For slum dwellers like Sukumar, however, for whom a home is still an elusive dream, that's little consolation.
Hard living
The number of people living in slums in India is 150 million.
The percentage of people living in shanty towns, open spaces or pavements in Mumbai, India's largest city, is nearly 60 per cent of Mumbai's 13 million people.
Dharavi is Asia's largest slum - spread over 530 acres of land, all of which is a realty goldmine.
The number of people living in Dharavi is over 1 million. Dharavi's makeover plan is worth $1.3 billion. The average size of new apartments being constructed for Dharavi's slum dwellers is 225 square feet.
Dharavi accounts for the endemic cholera in Mumbai. The reasons are overcrowding, lack of safe drinking water, contamination of water by sewage and that of the open drainage system.
Dharavi's economy comprises some 100,000 people producing goods worth over $500 million a year. These businesses are carried on in sheds and include bakeries, metal workshops and recycling discarded plastic goods from medical syringes to telephones.
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