An offer of partnership or a promise of conflict in Dharavi, Mumbai?

ABSTRACT

The first part of this paper, by Sheela Patel, provides a backdrop to Jockin’s letter about the current government plans to redevelop Dharavi, a large inner-city township within Mumbai with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and tens of thousands of enterprises. The second part is the text of an open letter by Jockin Arputham from the National Slum Dwellers Federation to the government and private developers that was released to the press in June 2007 and that received widespread coverage in newspapers and other media around the world. This open letter is an offer of partnership in such redevelopments from the organizations and federations of slum dwellers in Mumbai and elsewhere to government agencies and developers. But it is also a warning of the disruptions that the slum dwellers
will bring if they are not involved in the planning and implementation of such redevelopments.

KEYWORDS city redevelopment / evictions / grassroots / resettlement / social movements

DHARAVI’S REDEVELOPMENT – SHEELA PATEL

Dharavi in Mumbai, often said to be one of Asia’s largest slums, is to be
redeveloped once more. This is the second time that the state government
of Maharashtra has sought to redevelop Dharavi in the last 25 years. The
last time, in 1985, the then prime minister of India, Rajeev Gandhi, gave
the city of Mumbai 1 billion rupees to improve its infrastructure as part
of the centenary celebrations of the Indian National Congress; 350 million
rupees of this were given to Dharavi(1) and, between 1986 and 1996, a
separate unit called the Prime Minister’s Grant Project (PMGP) was set
up within the Maharahstra Housing and Area Development Authority
(MHADA) with special planning authority to undertake this process.
During this period, the leather industry, including the majority of the
leather curing done in Dharavi, was relocated. While some improvements
were made and some housing construction did take place, the process
failed to change the nature and overall character of Dharavi.
The current redevelopment plan is much the most ambitious – it
divides Dharavi into sectors and is to be implemented by international
companies who will bid for the right to develop each sector. For those
who live and work in Mumbai, the manner in which this redevelopment
is organized has great signifi cance because it is likely to set a precedent for
future redevelopment of other major slums in Mumbai and is also being
projected as the “Dharavi model” for redevelopment of large settlements
in other major Indian cities.

Past struggles by those whose homes and settlements were bulldozed
to make way for new city developments or highways have established
that the government has to ensure some provision for those who have to
move – what are termed in India “project-affected persons”. But being
classifi ed as a project-affected person does not mean that they are automatically
consulted in any way on what provisions are made for them
and about where they are to be relocated – or on when they have to leave
their homes. There are also many ways in which the government or the
developer can reduce the number of project-affected persons to cheapen
the costs – for instance, by only providing this entitlement to those who
have lived there for a number of years, or demanding proof of residence,
which many residents cannot produce. It is only when communities of
those affected by such developments get organized and develop a capacity
to negotiate what they want that some critical elements to ensure
participation emerge in the process. Unfortunately, such organized communities
and those who can support them are few, while the kind of
sustained organizational processes that need to be in place have not yet
become common practice in cities.

Will Dharavi’s redevelopment be done in partnership with its
hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and tens of thousands of enterprises?
Or will it be imposed on them, without their involvement, without consultation?
Will the needs of the resident homes and businesses be the
basis for redevelopment? This is not a fi ght “for or against” Dharavi’s
development – as shown in the open letter below by Jockin Arputham
from the National Slum Dwellers Federation. Jockin’s letter to the government
and to the developers interested in redeveloping Dharavi makes
clear that the people who live and work in Dharavi accept the need for
redevelopment. They recognize that this must include new residential
buildings with units for sale to outsiders and some commercial developments
as a way of helping fi nance Dharavi’s redevelopment – all they are
asking is to be fully involved in its design and implementation.
Dharavi is part of the approximately 6 million other inhabitants of
Mumbai who also live in informal settlements or areas characterized as
“slums”. They too are watching, because if Dharavi’s redevelopment can
be designed and implemented without their inhabitants’ involvement
or consent, their own settlements will be more at risk. Already, as Jockin’s
letter makes clear, around half a million people living on land close to
Mumbai’s international airport are as much at risk from redevelopment
plans as the inhabitants of Dharavi. They are also demanding that they be
consulted. Again, the inhabitants of these settlements recognize the need
for airport development, but they want to be consulted and engaged in the
decision-making process of when and how this is to be done and to where
those who have to move will be moved.

The future of hundreds of millions of “slum” dwellers in India’s other
urban centres is also likely to be infl uenced by the form that Dharavi’s
redevelopment takes. The city government, the state government of
Maharashtra and the developers have the possibility to show how city
redevelopment should take place in collaboration with the inhabitants
and their representative organizations. They can produce new strategies
for creating redevelopment plans and implementation schedules together.
Our collective challenge is to produce a framework that recognizes the
aspirations and entitlements of the wide spectrum of work and residential
arrangements that currently exist in Dharavi and to create a process for its
formalization that enhances this for the neighbourhood and the city. Can
the state and the residents co-create a mechanism that respects the present
small neighbourhoods in Dharavi, working through how redevelopment
can accommodate local businesses and not disrupt livelihoods? Can they
explore transparently how to build homes that serve and suit the lowincome
inhabitants? . . . How to work with the 400 or more cooperative
societies within Dharavi? . . . How to improve infrastructure and all
services – including schools, health centres and provision for children’s
play and all inhabitants’ recreation? . . . And how to help the residents
manage their lives during the 5–10 years of the redevelopment process?
This can help set precedents that can inform other city redevelopments –
not only in India but also in other nations.

Indian politicians are fond of trying to copy other cities in their envisioning
of how they want cities in India to be transformed. Chicago,
Singapore and now Shanghai are touted as role models, but all of them
fail to be proud of the one thing that makes Mumbai special . . . it still
has the character of a resilient city, where rich and poor co-exist, where
women are by and large safe, and its pride is that it is a people’s city. If any
city in the world can produce a new way forward to demonstrate a peoplecentred
redevelopment in the face of some of the world’s highest real
estate prices, this city can . . . because it has nascent social movements
that will work in collaboration with the state and with the private sector
to make this happen. But to do that, the state has to develop a framework
that arbitrates between the interests of the private developers and the
residents. This is a deeply political process and needs mature political
leadership that the city can invoke if the state moves in that direction.
At present, there is little sign of such a process. The state government
hired an architect to prepare Dharavi for redevelopment by international
companies. Dharavi covers around 2.4 square kilometres, of which
1.44 square kilometres are divided into sectors for which international
companies are bidding for the right to develop. In theory, all the residents
will be re-housed within Dharavi – but state and city governments in
India have a very poor record in actually meeting their promises for serving
project-affected persons. Furthermore, before starting the project, no
surveys were undertaken to record who lives and works in Dharavi to
ensure that all those who reside there at present will get the entitlements
currently being provided. This is all left for the developers to do later.
And Dharavi is so well located within Mumbai that every developer will
be seeking to minimize the space allocated to “the residents” and their
enterprises, and maximizing the space that can be commercially developed
or sold. The government has also said that as Dharavi is on state land, no
consultation with its residents is needed. Yet Dharavi is not some recently
formed squatter settlement but a lively and very diverse township with
a long history. Almost every industry in Mumbai has some linkage with
enterprises in Dharavi or the people who live there. It is also one of the
very few central locations where accommodation can be found that is
relatively cheap – even if it is very overcrowded and of poor quality.
Both the local and the international media have been covering the
plans for Dharavi’s redevelopment for the last year or so, and when reviewing
each article or report an interesting trend becomes evident. When the
reporter/journalist comes to visit Dharavi and interviews those of us who
support the process or are directly involved in it, they leave convinced of
the logic of what we are seeking to advocate. Many of them send us their
draft texts to check that they have accurately reported our statements. Yet
when the article actually appears in the newspaper, journal or magazine,
the write-up is very different. It is as though the journalist just stated our
position but had no opinion about it. It is almost as if there was “due
diligence” to report the opposition but that no opinion or perspective was
needed, while the “need to redevelop and involve private sector in what
the state does” is stated as a need or a given. Initially, we thought this was
because the mainstream media had a problem with slum dwellers and
their aspirations. But increasingly, we see this as editorial intervention,
watering down articles and reports. We hope this is not the case, because
the creation of stable and robust institutional frameworks requires a
strong and independent press that has the capacity and maturity to have
opinions and take a stand.

This struggle over how Dharavi will be developed provides the context
for Jockin’s letter, the text of which is reproduced below.
The homes and livelihoods of a million slum dwellers are threatened by
development plans in Mumbai. These include the current development
plans for Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, and for Mumbai’s international
airport (close to which nearly to half a million people live in informal
settlements). But these slum dwellers do not oppose redevelopment.
Everyone in Dharavi wants improvements. They themselves have invested
in improvements that they could afford and manage and they have
high expectations that the state should also make similar investments.
Those who live closest to the airport runways recognize that they will
have to move but they want to be consulted and involved in the design
and implementation of the redevelopment and resettlement plans. The
airport settlements have around 100,000 households and thousands of
local businesses.
]

This is not asking much. Offi cial plans for developing Dharavi and
the international airport acknowledge that they must re-house or resettle
the slum dwellers. So the issue is how this re-housing is organized –
and for those who have to be resettled, the chosen location. Slum dweller
organizations have shown how they can be good partners in the design
and management of such redevelopments. The federation of slum
dwellers living alongside the railway tracks in Mumbai worked with
the Railway Authorities and the state government of Maharashtra to
move 20,000 households in order to allow improvements in the railway
– without any confl ict. The households who moved did not have to be
forced off their land; they packed up their belongings and moved on
the designated day. The key here was that they had been involved in
all aspects of the redevelopment – in deciding who was entitled to be
included, how the process would be designed, helping to choose the
site to where they were moved, when they were moved and with whom
they moved. Their own community organizations – especially women’s
savings groups – helped manage the settlements to which they moved.(3)
The savings groups formed by pavement dwellers are also working in
partnership with the government towards moving, in order to allow road
and traffi c improvements. So the community leadership at the airport and
in Dharavi ask a question: how can the same government that worked so
closely with the communities and NGOs to produce this highly effective
partnership in relocating households for improving the railway not use
the same strategy for the airport and for Dharavi?

The slum dwellers in Dharavi and on the airport lands are not being
involved in the redevelopment plans but they offer both the private
companies and the government agencies involved in these plans a real
partnership. The involvement is not just agreeing with what the government
wants but a real partnership to produce what works for communities
and gives the government solutions that are sustainable and viable. The
government and private companies may see participation by communities
as delaying the development, as adding costs, but our experience to date
shows that it can reduce costs and speed up implementation. If this offer
of partnership is ignored, it often forces slum communities to resort to
the usual and easier option of protest. The slum dwellers have some easy
ways to make their opposition felt. Two of Mumbai’s main railway lines
run along Dharavi’s borders. These can easily be blocked – and this would
bring chaos to Mumbai as such a high proportion of the workforce relies
on these railways to get to and from work. The airport runways can also
be blocked – and the slum dweller federations will inform all the airlines
that operate there as to when and where this will happen. We do not want
to resort to this; we want a partnership in making both these development
plans and other plans in Mumbai a success.

a. The redevelopment of Dharavi

Today, the government of Maharashtra is looking to redevelop Dharavi
without a clear and detailed idea of how many people live and work
there and how its large and diverse economy functions. Estimates for
its population vary from 350,000 to 600,000 but within its 223 hectares
are concentrated an extraordinary range of industries and other enterprises
– producing embroidered garments, export quality leather goods,
pottery, soap, cutlery, food and a great range of recycling enterprises. It
certainly has an annual turnover worth several hundred million dollars.
It probably contributes far more to the Indian economy than most special
economic zones. It also provides incomes and livelihoods for hundreds
of thousands of Mumbai citizens who would otherwise have no employment.
It also provides cheap accommodation. Conditions may be poor
and most housing very overcrowded but Dharavi is one of the few central
locations in Mumbai with cheap accommodation – even if this is renting
a bed in a room shared with many others.

Dharavi is not a new “squatter settlement” formed by recent migrants
(as it is sometimes portrayed). It has a long history. Many of its residents
were born there. Dharavi was already listed on maps of Mumbai more
than 100 years ago. Originally a fi shing village on the edge of Mumbai,
as the city grew so new trades developed there – potters, tanners and
garment workers. Walking through Dharavi, it is also possible to see the
kinds of redevelopments that can work – careful in-situ developments
that expand living and working areas – for instance, moving from one- to
three-storey buildings with piped water and toilets installed. There are
also grassroots organizations in each of the 85 neighbourhoods within
Dharavi, which can help design and manage such redevelopments.
There is a very ambitious US$ 2 billion offi cial plan for Dharavi’s
redevelopment. It claims that it will re-house all residents, transform the
quality of life in Dharavi (with good quality provision for water, sanitation,
drainage, health care and schools) and at no cost to the government.
Indeed, the proposed scheme suggests that government will receive
hundreds of millions of dollars from this redevelopment, which will be
undertaken by international companies who win a competitive bidding
process for the right to redevelop different parts of Dharavi. The incentive
for them is that they will be allowed to build many residential and commercial
units for sale. Dharavi is very close to Bandra Kurla, the new
fi nancial district, which is what makes its redevelopment so attractive.
However, the residents and entrepreneurs of Dharavi have not
been involved in the redevelopment plans. It is not clear that everyone
who lives in Dharavi will be re-housed. Any commercial developer will
want to restrict the number of people they have to re-house – which is
easily done by only re-housing those who have “proof of residency”,
which many Dharavi dwellers cannot produce. Even if they do re-house
everyone, they are not likely to allow the residents much say in what
kind of housing it will be and where. It is very unlikely that the housing
they get will make provision for their livelihoods. It is also diffi cult to see
how the residents’ needs will be accommodated in what is already one
of the world’s most dense settlements, when the redevelopment plans
will greatly increase the number of residential units. Every company
redeveloping Dharavi will try to maximize the space for units they can
sell to outsiders and minimize the space and cost of accommodating
Dharavi residents and enterprises. At best, they will try to cram as many
poor households as possible into multi-storey tenements that ill-suit their
needs and whose maintenance costs they cannot afford.

There is another way. This can include many new commercial developments
to help pay for the redevelopment – for instance, offi ce buildings
and high-rise apartments for middle- and upper-income groups. The
residents of Dharavi recognize the need for this. But they demand that
the planning and its implementation must involve them. There needs to
be a detailed enumeration of all households and enterprises in Dharavi –
something that the grassroots organizations there along with the National
Slum Dwellers Federation and many professionals supporting this process
can do with government agencies. Then careful plans need to be developed
with the residents of each of Dharavi’s 85 neighbourhoods. New housing
will have to be developed – but to re-house the current population, most
of this will have to be in three- or four-storey buildings – with provision
also made to accommodate enterprises. This must also be done in-situ and
incrementally, with careful provision for housing close by for those who
have to move to allow this redevelopment. Again, grassroots organizations
can manage this. We have also worked with architects from the Kamla
Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and students from the Centre
for Environmental Planning and Technology (Ahmedabad) to show how
this can be done . . . how high-density redevelopment for residents can be
achieved without high-rises.

b. The airport settlements

Around half a million people live in informal settlements on land around
Mumbai’s international airport – some of them very close to some of the
runways. The private company that now manages the airport wants to
expand the runways and this will require many households to move. This
company is also obliged by law to provide alternative accommodation
for those who are moved. Again, the residents of these settlements and
their organizations, including the Mumbai Airport Slum Dwellers Federation,
are offering this company and the government a partnership.
They recognize that many households will have to move but just like the
residents of Dharavi, they want to be involved in what is planned and
how it is implemented. So they have some simple requests:

• please make public your plan for the airport expansion and
requirements;

• explain what land you need cleared and how this land will be used –
so as to minimize the number of people who have to be relocated;

• tell us your plans for resettlement – for example, how many households
will have to move; to where (for instance, will this be close to the
nearby railway station); what support will they receive; what kinds of
homes will they get; when is this planned; and what provisions will
be made for infrastructure and services (resettlement programmes in
India are notorious for dumping poorer groups in very poor quality
locations with very inadequate provision for services such as public
transport, health care and schools);

• what plans do you have for in-situ redevelopment for those who do
not have to be relocated – which is obviously the residents’ preferred
option; and

• include slum dwellers in the development plans.

Every city needs its cheap labour force. City planners and administrators
look upon Dharavi and the airport settlements as “slums”, as
problems, as eyesores – even, as housing people who should not be in
Mumbai. Although government regulations on “rehabilitation” seem
progressive and require all “project-affected” persons to be re-housed,
every government agency tries to limit the number of people who get
re-housed, push the resettlement to the cheapest peripheral location
and minimize costs. But Mumbai needs its slum dwellers – these are the
labour force that keeps Mumbai prosperous, that provides higher-income
groups with their drivers, gardeners, guards and maids and that provides
enterprises with their workforce and with sub-contractors and services.
Dharavi is a central part of Mumbai’s economy.

Why is it that “city development” plans almost always impoverish
slum dwellers? India has the world’s largest slum population. It needs
to modernize its cities, to keep its economic success going. This can be
done with or against its slum dwellers. To date, it has mostly been done
against slum dwellers. We, the National Slum Dwellers Federation and
Mahila Milan (the federation of savings groups formed by women slum
and pavement dwellers) offer governments and private companies in
all Indian cities another way – a partnership. We have shown what is
possible – in the many housing projects and community toilet projects
that we have already undertaken in partnership with governments. We
recognize the need for such developments to include new commercial
and residential developments that help cover the costs. We do not want
to oppose offi cial plans – but we will do so if you ignore our needs and
priorities. We have the right to benefi t from city development plans too.

Jockin Arputham became
a community organizer in
the 1960s when the slum
where he lived, Janata
colony, was threatened
with demolition. When
Janata was bulldozed,
despite offi cial assurances
that this would not happen,
he realized that slum
dwellers would never
be able to stop forced
evictions and infl uence
government policies unless
they were organized. He
founded India’s National
Slum Dwellers Federation
and, working with Mahila
Milan (a federation of
savings groups formed
by women slum and
pavement dwellers) and
SPARC (a Mumbai-based
NGO), has offered city and
state governments all over
India partnerships for slum
redevelopment – and many
successful partnerships are
underway. He also helped
found Slum/Shack Dwellers
International (SDI), through
which federations of slum
and shack dwellers in more
than 20 countries support
each other and learn from
each other. In 2001, he
was awarded the Ramon
Magsaysay Award.
Address: Slum/Shack
Dwellers International (SDI),
PO Box 9389, Mumbai 400
026, India.
Sheela Patel was one of
the founders of SPARC, the
Indian NGO set up in 1984
to explore innovative ways
of working in partnerships