Will Dharavi redevelopment take off this time around?

In a city like Mumbai that teems with high-rises, Dharavi is an exception. Ahorizontal sprawl spread across 300 hectare, it’s a case study on survival driven by free enterprise, with residents engaged in manufacturing leather goods, pottery, clothes and even medicines. Needless to say, much of this is legally illegitimate! Back in the 1980s when socialist fervour in India was at a high, Dharaviserved as a valiant example of how poor migrants akin to ‘mortals of a lesser god’ had battled all the oddsto stay afloat. In contemporary times, many want to redraft the narrative as celebrating poverty is no longer in vogue. For a long time, many NGOs, urban plannersand policymakers have come together to highlight the problems in Dharavi. Globally, too, philanthropists have been pouring in money to usher in a change. But still there have been deadlocks to overcome. Experts believe much of it also has to do with the mindset of the tenants. “In any SRA [Slum Rehabilitation Authority] project involving relocation and rehabilitation, there are a number of unseen challenges,” says Gulam Zia, Executive Director, Knight Frank. “In a rehabilitation project undertaken by Tata Housing in Latur, the tenants were reluctant to move into homes made for them. The homes were fully constructed and one could just walk in. Still, people whose homes were destroyed by a massive earthquake were reluctant to occupy the ready-to-move-in homes.” Though this may seem bizarre, there is a similar example in the city of Mumbai itself. As part of the Mumbai Airport Slum Rehabilitation Project, 17,000 houses were constructed by private developer HDIL in exchange for transfer of development rights (TDR) to accommodate the eligible project-affected of the 85,000 families settled on 276 acre of the Mumbai airport. People did not move in and now talks are on to utilise a few of these to accommodate slum dwellers impacted by the 33.5-km Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ Metro. Apart from tenants unwilling to occupy rehabilitated homes, a number ofbuilders found themselves in an economically non-viable mode after the SRA projects they were involved in did not take off as envisaged, leading to their decline. Hence, even though this time around a reputed builder like Adani Developers has bagged the project, cynicism refuses to die down. Further, the scale of the project itself is a challenge. Getting consensus for the rehabilitated project from different tenants and individuals involved in diverse businesses is another challenge. To read the full report, CLICK HERE.