Outlook Magazine | Jan 31, 2005
MUMBAI
Aamchi Soweto?
72,000 slums razed; 3.5 lakh homeless. In short, some Mumbaikars are outcastes in their own city.
SMRUTI KOPPIKAR
"Mumbai—The Apartheid City," whispered Miloon Kothari. He isn't the latest wordsmith off the block but the special rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. On a windy afternoon, he stood amid the rubble of buildings and slums taking notes. His task: to document and intervene against mass displacement caused by one of the largest demolition drives that Mumbai, and perhaps India, has ever seen. "They are now refugees in their own city. The new ghettoisation is between the rich and poor. It's new urban apartheid," he warned as he surveyed the wasteland before him.
Backing the massive and ongoing demolition drive is the recently elected state government's diktat that all illegal construction and all post-1995 slums must go.
'There is enough land to rehouse all slums, the problem is that it's worth thousands of crores.'
A corrupt and sloth-ridden Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which had officially or otherwise presided over such illegal constructions, suddenly decided to get sprightly. The result: in a matter of weeks, nearly 72,000 slums and shanties were reduced to rubble,
about 300 acres of the city's most prized asset was "freed" and top officials congratulated themselves on a task niftily done.
Security guards keep watch over the "freed land" to keep it free. Each day, bulldozers hunt new grounds, the mild winter air is laced with the smug satisfaction of a few men who proved a point—Mumbai is not a dharamshala that everyone can come to and make his own; that some slums are welcome but others are not; that the government of the day and its well-heeled advisors will determine the golden cutoff year—moved from 1980 to 1985 and then to 1995—to bestow legitimacy.
The coldly doled out statistics missed out on a crucial piece of data: close to 3.5 lakh people—porters, drivers, hawkers, domestic help, cooks, tailors, kulfi-vendors and such, along with their families—are now without a roof over their heads. That's not all. The bulldozers flattened their bamboo poles and wood, ripped apart their makeshift chulhas and earthenware, broke their plates and TV sets.
There's more—children lost their toys, schoolbooks were torn, precious uniforms became part of the debris the demolition squads left behind. Most families managed to save a couple of sheets and vessels, if that, and that vital kitschy plastic bag of papers full of ration
'The new ghettoisation is between the rich and poor. it's the new apartheid.'
cards, birth certificates, bills, slum photo-identification passes proving their validity as citizens serviced by the same civic body.
After howls of class discrimination, the BMC turned its bulldozers and demolition squads to other illegal constructions—terrace restaurants owned or operated by the Page 3 set, illegal extensions of ultra-chic watering holes, garages converted into extra kitchen space by hotels, shops and commercial establishments that had encroached upon pavements, extensions of small factories, etc. So far, 75 such constructions have been demolished. Some slivers of middle-class Mumbai felt the tremors of the bulldozers but it's a tiny fraction compared to the slum population.
Going up the class ladder, the BMC's demolition drive appears to have lost steam. Most of the 30-odd plush bungalows on the idyllic Madh-Marve beaches that were served demolition notices for illegal construction managed to get a stay. Officials reveal the legal departments in the corporation and state government have been particularly lackadaisical in getting the court stays vacated. Then, there is a clutch of high-rise buildings across the city with illegal floors. The demolition process has been quite tardy—either notices have not been served on these buildings or notices haven't been followed up. And then there is the list of 154 high-rise apartment complexes where builders have violated the floor space index (FSI) allotted to them.
January 31, 2005
January 30, 2005
Tsunami-Like Devastation Hits Mumbai Slum Dwellers
by Sandhya Srinivasan
[Inter Press Service, January 30, 2005]
MUMBAI, India, Jan 30 (IPS) - The scene left behind once the bulldozers had plowed through the slums, here, resembled the devastation wrought by last month's Indian Ocean tsunami. The slum dwellers were not forewarned and they just ran, grabbing anything they could save from the destruction - a schoolbag here, a cooking pot there.
When he visited ground zero on Jan. 17, Miloon Kothari, the independent special rapporteur on adequate housing for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, described it as the ''most brutal demolition drive in recent times.''
Some 300,000 people in Mumbai, including up to 100,000 children, have been made homeless by the drive against the slums that had become accepted as a feature of this port city -- regarded as the financial capital of India.
More than 50 percent of Mumbai's 12.5 million inhabitants live in slums and pavement dwellings spread all over the metropolis. Slum communities occupy about 10 per cent of the city land.
When Mumbai hosted the World Social Forum (WSF), in January 2004, row upon row of squalid slums reaching right up to the international airport served to give visitors a ready view of India's glaring disparities.
Much was then was said and written about how globalisation and development projects were widening those disparities and killing off livelihoods in India's vast rural hinterland.
This was forcing an endless stream of farmers and impoverished rural folk to the cities in search of jobs. Many were willing to do anything just to earn a pittance in order to survive.
But, a year later, the authorities have found a quick and simple solution: demolish the slums ruthlessly and like the tsunami, give no warning to the victims.
Nobody is holding fund-raising concerts for this colossal man-made tragedy. Instead, the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) has requested the chief electoral officer to delete from the voters' list the names of those slum dwellers whose illegal shanties had been razed.
According to BMC estimates, some 70,000 families have been evicted so far. ''If the BMC can prove it, we are looking at more than 100,000 people losing their right to vote,'' said an official.
The demolitions, which started early December, are being carried out to make way for a 3.1 billion rupee (71 million U.S. dollar) development project announced by state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to ''turn Mumbai into another Shanghai''.
Up to three million people will be made homeless if all shanties built after 1995 are actually demolished as announced.
''What is going on is a patent violation of human rights,'' said Hosbet Suresh, a retired Bombay High Court judge and a panel member of the Indian People's Tribunal that is examining the demolitions.
''The government may need the land but India is a signatory to the 1993 United Nations Resolution on Human Rights. Under international humanitarian law they can't demolish people's homes without giving them alternate accommodation,'' Suresh told IPS.
The former judge said the cut-off date was fundamentally wrong. ''It only implies that rich people can come and stay here, and the poor must stay out.''
Early this month, an army of municipality employees used bulldozers and dumper vans to demolish more than 75,000 shanties in order to clear more than 350 acres of prime land, with heavy police protection.
Cleared areas are being fenced off by barbed wire and guards stationed to prevent reoccupation, even as the homeless linger outside with nowhere else to go.
In response to criticism that the poor were being targeted, the BMC carried out some token demolitions of illegal extensions constructed by a few up market restaurants but owners of expensive real estate managed to get temporary stay orders from the courts.
Authorised slums have been demolished, as have official rehabilitation settlements, such as the homes of 6,000 victims of the 1992-93 Hindu-Muslim riots.
In one area, families had documentation that they were settled in the area in 1994 by dalit (India's 'untouchable' caste) leader Ramdas Athavale of the Republican Party of India.
Slum dwellers are particularly furious because Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's Congress Party government came to power, last May, on the promise that all huts built before 2000 would be regularised.
''This government came into power on our votes - they have destroyed our houses, let them give our votes back,'' said Kaushalaya, a social worker from Shehar Vikas Manch relief group, at a public hearing on the demolitions.
According to Amrita Goswami of Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action, an NGO working with slum dwellers, more than 39,000 of the 42,000 demolished huts were built between 1995 and 2000.
Indeed, it is now evident that slum dwellers are not a powerful vote bank as suggested by some. Rather, they have been forced to vote for the politically powerful in order not to be evicted - only to find that promises were made to be broken later.
But the demolitions have been supported by a section of the middle class that views slum dwellers as criminals who deprive tax-paying citizens of public services. Some months ago, public interest litigation filed by eminent artists and writers argued that those settled on land illegally should be disenfranchised.
Prominent urban planning activist Darryl D' Monte has hit out against these cruel assertions.
''All those who criticise the homeless for being a drain on the city ought to remember how many services these hapless people perform for the well-off,'' said D'Monte, referring to the extensive household labour as well as the vendors, from whom the middle class purchase goods at an affordable price. (END/2005)
[Inter Press Service, January 30, 2005]
MUMBAI, India, Jan 30 (IPS) - The scene left behind once the bulldozers had plowed through the slums, here, resembled the devastation wrought by last month's Indian Ocean tsunami. The slum dwellers were not forewarned and they just ran, grabbing anything they could save from the destruction - a schoolbag here, a cooking pot there.
When he visited ground zero on Jan. 17, Miloon Kothari, the independent special rapporteur on adequate housing for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, described it as the ''most brutal demolition drive in recent times.''
Some 300,000 people in Mumbai, including up to 100,000 children, have been made homeless by the drive against the slums that had become accepted as a feature of this port city -- regarded as the financial capital of India.
More than 50 percent of Mumbai's 12.5 million inhabitants live in slums and pavement dwellings spread all over the metropolis. Slum communities occupy about 10 per cent of the city land.
When Mumbai hosted the World Social Forum (WSF), in January 2004, row upon row of squalid slums reaching right up to the international airport served to give visitors a ready view of India's glaring disparities.
Much was then was said and written about how globalisation and development projects were widening those disparities and killing off livelihoods in India's vast rural hinterland.
This was forcing an endless stream of farmers and impoverished rural folk to the cities in search of jobs. Many were willing to do anything just to earn a pittance in order to survive.
But, a year later, the authorities have found a quick and simple solution: demolish the slums ruthlessly and like the tsunami, give no warning to the victims.
Nobody is holding fund-raising concerts for this colossal man-made tragedy. Instead, the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) has requested the chief electoral officer to delete from the voters' list the names of those slum dwellers whose illegal shanties had been razed.
According to BMC estimates, some 70,000 families have been evicted so far. ''If the BMC can prove it, we are looking at more than 100,000 people losing their right to vote,'' said an official.
The demolitions, which started early December, are being carried out to make way for a 3.1 billion rupee (71 million U.S. dollar) development project announced by state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to ''turn Mumbai into another Shanghai''.
Up to three million people will be made homeless if all shanties built after 1995 are actually demolished as announced.
''What is going on is a patent violation of human rights,'' said Hosbet Suresh, a retired Bombay High Court judge and a panel member of the Indian People's Tribunal that is examining the demolitions.
''The government may need the land but India is a signatory to the 1993 United Nations Resolution on Human Rights. Under international humanitarian law they can't demolish people's homes without giving them alternate accommodation,'' Suresh told IPS.
The former judge said the cut-off date was fundamentally wrong. ''It only implies that rich people can come and stay here, and the poor must stay out.''
Early this month, an army of municipality employees used bulldozers and dumper vans to demolish more than 75,000 shanties in order to clear more than 350 acres of prime land, with heavy police protection.
Cleared areas are being fenced off by barbed wire and guards stationed to prevent reoccupation, even as the homeless linger outside with nowhere else to go.
In response to criticism that the poor were being targeted, the BMC carried out some token demolitions of illegal extensions constructed by a few up market restaurants but owners of expensive real estate managed to get temporary stay orders from the courts.
Authorised slums have been demolished, as have official rehabilitation settlements, such as the homes of 6,000 victims of the 1992-93 Hindu-Muslim riots.
In one area, families had documentation that they were settled in the area in 1994 by dalit (India's 'untouchable' caste) leader Ramdas Athavale of the Republican Party of India.
Slum dwellers are particularly furious because Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's Congress Party government came to power, last May, on the promise that all huts built before 2000 would be regularised.
''This government came into power on our votes - they have destroyed our houses, let them give our votes back,'' said Kaushalaya, a social worker from Shehar Vikas Manch relief group, at a public hearing on the demolitions.
According to Amrita Goswami of Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action, an NGO working with slum dwellers, more than 39,000 of the 42,000 demolished huts were built between 1995 and 2000.
Indeed, it is now evident that slum dwellers are not a powerful vote bank as suggested by some. Rather, they have been forced to vote for the politically powerful in order not to be evicted - only to find that promises were made to be broken later.
But the demolitions have been supported by a section of the middle class that views slum dwellers as criminals who deprive tax-paying citizens of public services. Some months ago, public interest litigation filed by eminent artists and writers argued that those settled on land illegally should be disenfranchised.
Prominent urban planning activist Darryl D' Monte has hit out against these cruel assertions.
''All those who criticise the homeless for being a drain on the city ought to remember how many services these hapless people perform for the well-off,'' said D'Monte, referring to the extensive household labour as well as the vendors, from whom the middle class purchase goods at an affordable price. (END/2005)
January 23, 2005
The Other Half: Mumbai's tragedy (Kalpana Sharma)
Magazine / The Hindu
Jan 23, 2005
THE OTHER HALF
Mumbai's tragedy
KALPANA SHARMA
The reality of course is that a new Mumbai cannot be built on the corpses of its poor, the very people who hold up the city.
IN the much-talked about film "Amu" by Shonali Bose, the Censor Board decided to make some cuts. It cut some words spoken by widows from the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in New Delhi following Indira Gandhi's assassination by her personal bodyguards. The shot could not be edited. So the women mouth the words but no sound emerges. In many ways, the shot has been rendered more powerful. For the desire of the State even today, over 20 years after that entirely man-made tragedy, to stifle the truth of those killings speaks louder than the words of those women.
In Mumbai, the story of the anti-Sikh riots and the absence of justice is a reminder of the killings of 1992-93 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. As in 1984, the police and politicians were complicit. And as then, neither police nor politicians have been booked for their crimes of omission and commission. The irony is further compounded by the fact that Mumbai has been chosen as the place to try two important cases from the more recent Gujarat killings of 2002 where, once again, the role of the police and of politicians was central.
Part of contemporary history
These tragedies are a part of our contemporary history. They cannot and should not be forgotten. But every day there are other tragedies in many of our cities that we virtually erase by not even recognising them. One such has occurred in Mumbai even as we grieved for the thousands who died in the tsunami. For while the latter was an unexpected natural disaster, Mumbai has witnessed an unnatural "tsunami", one that has flattened thousands of homes and left an estimated two lakh people homeless.
Made homeless
Maniabai Dahade, an old woman of indeterminate age from a slum in northeast Mumbai, spoke in a quivering voice at a public hearing last week. She said, "I stood with a flag in my hand to stop the bulldozers but they did not stop." She is just one of the growing number of people who are homeless thanks to earthmovers and bulldozers of Mumbai's Municipal Corporation.
In this massacre of the homes of thousands of poor people, the politicians have been complicit, politicians of all hues. They have dangled the promise of security of tenure to the poor while condoning the destruction of their shelters. While those in power claim helplessness, those out of power wait for an opportunity to exploit the justifiable anger of these poor people. Neither is really interested in finding a solution to the problem.
The middle class argue that these slum dwellers live in hovels that cannot be called "homes", that these structures are "illegal" and, therefore, deserve to be demolished and that if these people are thereby rendered homeless, they should just pack their bags and go back to their villages. They forget that even the smallest of spaces becomes a home when it is filled with memories and dreams of the people who inhabit them.
For the poor slum dweller, the 60 sq. ft hovel is a home. Those who have had their homes demolished in the recent war against slums in Mumbai, tell you how they built their huts in a swamp, how they filled up the land with construction debris and how, in the end, they had a house that was their home. Said Kaserbai Wankhade from Maharashtra Nagar in Mankhurd, "I had a very nice home. I feel like crying." She works as a domestic, has lived in Mumbai since her childhood and has nowhere to go. Yet today, she is one of those who is told that there is no place for her in this city.
The voices of these women, and others like them, have been silenced not by the Censor, as in "Amu", but by an insensitive public that has come to accept violations of poor people's rights as routine. There is no outrage. On the contrary, there is considerable support for the demolishers. Finally, the government is getting its act together, think a good number of Mumbai's upper crust. This is the only way Mumbai can become another Shanghai, another world-class city that will bring investors flocking from all over the world.
Not just about `rights'
The reality of course is that a new Mumbai cannot be built on the corpses of its poor, the very people who hold up the city. The issue is not simply the "rights" of the poor but the duties of the government. For decades now, Mumbai's urban poor have been duped into believing that something will be done for them. Successive governments have promised houses and facilities while fixing a magical "cut-off" date. Anyone who falls within this date, decided arbitrarily without any logic, is promised the moon. Those outside the circle are told to wait patiently. In time the "cut-off" date will change, and another swathe of the poor will come within the magic circle.
By doing this, successive governments have wormed out of the urgent need to devise a housing policy that will produce affordable houses for the poor. They have refused to tackle land ownership or land-use patterns. They have justified unworkable laws like the antiquated Rent Control Act that has ruined the city's rental housing stock. They have allowed private builders to flout all laws and build for the rich and the loaded.
And under the benign gaze of such governments, the poor have filled up marshland, resurfaced uneven land, all with their own labour, and built their homes. Only to find that the State is not permanently benign. Right now, it has decided that regardless of its promises, it wants at least some poor people out. There is no offer of even a basic humanitarian alternative for these thousands of people turned out of their homes.
For such "man-made tsunamis", there is no sympathy, no concerts, no appeals for funds. "We are illiterate but don't want to keep our children illiterate. Just as you have a right to live, so do we who are poor. People should get the right to shelter," said an impassioned Kadvi Wagri, another one of the growing stream of homeless in Mumbai. These voices should not be silenced.
Jan 23, 2005
THE OTHER HALF
Mumbai's tragedy
KALPANA SHARMA
The reality of course is that a new Mumbai cannot be built on the corpses of its poor, the very people who hold up the city.
IN the much-talked about film "Amu" by Shonali Bose, the Censor Board decided to make some cuts. It cut some words spoken by widows from the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in New Delhi following Indira Gandhi's assassination by her personal bodyguards. The shot could not be edited. So the women mouth the words but no sound emerges. In many ways, the shot has been rendered more powerful. For the desire of the State even today, over 20 years after that entirely man-made tragedy, to stifle the truth of those killings speaks louder than the words of those women.
In Mumbai, the story of the anti-Sikh riots and the absence of justice is a reminder of the killings of 1992-93 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. As in 1984, the police and politicians were complicit. And as then, neither police nor politicians have been booked for their crimes of omission and commission. The irony is further compounded by the fact that Mumbai has been chosen as the place to try two important cases from the more recent Gujarat killings of 2002 where, once again, the role of the police and of politicians was central.
Part of contemporary history
These tragedies are a part of our contemporary history. They cannot and should not be forgotten. But every day there are other tragedies in many of our cities that we virtually erase by not even recognising them. One such has occurred in Mumbai even as we grieved for the thousands who died in the tsunami. For while the latter was an unexpected natural disaster, Mumbai has witnessed an unnatural "tsunami", one that has flattened thousands of homes and left an estimated two lakh people homeless.
Made homeless
Maniabai Dahade, an old woman of indeterminate age from a slum in northeast Mumbai, spoke in a quivering voice at a public hearing last week. She said, "I stood with a flag in my hand to stop the bulldozers but they did not stop." She is just one of the growing number of people who are homeless thanks to earthmovers and bulldozers of Mumbai's Municipal Corporation.
In this massacre of the homes of thousands of poor people, the politicians have been complicit, politicians of all hues. They have dangled the promise of security of tenure to the poor while condoning the destruction of their shelters. While those in power claim helplessness, those out of power wait for an opportunity to exploit the justifiable anger of these poor people. Neither is really interested in finding a solution to the problem.
The middle class argue that these slum dwellers live in hovels that cannot be called "homes", that these structures are "illegal" and, therefore, deserve to be demolished and that if these people are thereby rendered homeless, they should just pack their bags and go back to their villages. They forget that even the smallest of spaces becomes a home when it is filled with memories and dreams of the people who inhabit them.
For the poor slum dweller, the 60 sq. ft hovel is a home. Those who have had their homes demolished in the recent war against slums in Mumbai, tell you how they built their huts in a swamp, how they filled up the land with construction debris and how, in the end, they had a house that was their home. Said Kaserbai Wankhade from Maharashtra Nagar in Mankhurd, "I had a very nice home. I feel like crying." She works as a domestic, has lived in Mumbai since her childhood and has nowhere to go. Yet today, she is one of those who is told that there is no place for her in this city.
The voices of these women, and others like them, have been silenced not by the Censor, as in "Amu", but by an insensitive public that has come to accept violations of poor people's rights as routine. There is no outrage. On the contrary, there is considerable support for the demolishers. Finally, the government is getting its act together, think a good number of Mumbai's upper crust. This is the only way Mumbai can become another Shanghai, another world-class city that will bring investors flocking from all over the world.
Not just about `rights'
The reality of course is that a new Mumbai cannot be built on the corpses of its poor, the very people who hold up the city. The issue is not simply the "rights" of the poor but the duties of the government. For decades now, Mumbai's urban poor have been duped into believing that something will be done for them. Successive governments have promised houses and facilities while fixing a magical "cut-off" date. Anyone who falls within this date, decided arbitrarily without any logic, is promised the moon. Those outside the circle are told to wait patiently. In time the "cut-off" date will change, and another swathe of the poor will come within the magic circle.
By doing this, successive governments have wormed out of the urgent need to devise a housing policy that will produce affordable houses for the poor. They have refused to tackle land ownership or land-use patterns. They have justified unworkable laws like the antiquated Rent Control Act that has ruined the city's rental housing stock. They have allowed private builders to flout all laws and build for the rich and the loaded.
And under the benign gaze of such governments, the poor have filled up marshland, resurfaced uneven land, all with their own labour, and built their homes. Only to find that the State is not permanently benign. Right now, it has decided that regardless of its promises, it wants at least some poor people out. There is no offer of even a basic humanitarian alternative for these thousands of people turned out of their homes.
For such "man-made tsunamis", there is no sympathy, no concerts, no appeals for funds. "We are illiterate but don't want to keep our children illiterate. Just as you have a right to live, so do we who are poor. People should get the right to shelter," said an impassioned Kadvi Wagri, another one of the growing stream of homeless in Mumbai. These voices should not be silenced.
January 22, 2005
Housing: Demolition Drive (Editorial, EPW)
Economic and Political Weekly
January 22, 2005
Editorial
Housing: Demolition Drive
It took Maharashtra's Democratic Front government barely a few weeks after an unexpected election victory to renege on a vital poll promise. In its campaign run-up, the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance had promised to regularise slums that dated up to 2000, as against the earlier earmarked date of 1995. However, a spate of slum demolitions began from December 8 onwards as the government set itself to reclaiming nearly 306 acres of land, clearing over 70,000 shanties in the process and rendering over three lakh homeless.
In its efforts to initiate Mumbai's metamorphosis into a new Shanghai, not only have several acres of land been cleared, proposals to implement extensive infrastructure projects and upgrade the city's severely stretched transport network are being speedily pushed through. While the World Bank has expressed its willingness to finance Mumbai-specific projects through a $1 billion loan assistance, the state is expected to raise over Rs 6,000 crore from the market to finance its development projects. Strangely, the business plan will be overseen by a group of five bank officials, business leaders and bureaucrats from Maharashtra. There is no representation from the people, who, constituting almost 62 per cent of the city's population, will form vast sections of the displaced once this makeover plan gets underway.
As with the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance that preceded it, the DF government's attitude towards the builder lobby has been marked by a similar laxity. Recent months have seen substantial revisions made to the mill development plans, as land allotted for recreational purposes and affordable public housing have been progressively reduced. Civic groups such as Bombay First have also proposed a scrapping of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) to free land for slum redevelopment needs. As precedents go, it is the builders who will reap full advantage of such relaxation of rules. Slums take up just 12.85 per cent of Mumbai's land, but this fraction of the city's land is real estate said to be worth Rs 80,000 crore.
Any solution that links beautification and redevelopment with the bulldozing away of slums appears simplistic. Migrants have been responsible for much of the city's dynamism; most migrant slum dwellers also provide much of the cheap informal labour that sustains the city. The government admits that it does not really have plans of rehabilitating the evicted. The Indian Tribunal on Human Right and Environment has suggested that slum dwellers, to ease to some extent the disruption in their lives, be allowed to remain until alternate sites are provided, and the constitution of a broadly representative (that is, no builders) committee, to ascertain the 'true' reasons behind the demolitions. It appears that the move to also target illegal construction of high-rises in the more expensive locations of the city is an attempt to appease the NCP. The NCP, with an eye on 2007's civic elections, has been wooing the slum votebank to wrest control of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation from the Shiv Sena. Civic groups have also warned that ad hoc demolitions could threaten the social fabric of the city, as political heat can be stirred up, always and easily, by vested interests. Proposals that do exist on constructing affordable housing for the urban poor, complete with adequate recreational space, have gathered dust over the years. On the other hand, groups such as the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) have succeeded in involving women's groups in slum areas to bring about a qualitative improvement in civic amenities.
As with Delhi a few years back when slum dwellers were evicted to beautify the city, the state government appears to have forgotten its responsibilities towards most of its citizens. The Supreme Court in its Shantistar Builders (1990) and Chameli Singh (1996) judgments had ruled that housing constituted a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution ? the right to life. The court had held that the right to housing includes adequate living spaces, decent structures and clean surroundings. In a later judgment in 1997, the apex court specified that it was the state's duty to construct houses at reasonable rates and make them easily accessible to the poor. 'The state has the constitutional duty to provide shelter to make the right to life meaningful'. But governments all over have neglected to provide for this right, at least not to the poor.
January 22, 2005
Editorial
Housing: Demolition Drive
It took Maharashtra's Democratic Front government barely a few weeks after an unexpected election victory to renege on a vital poll promise. In its campaign run-up, the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance had promised to regularise slums that dated up to 2000, as against the earlier earmarked date of 1995. However, a spate of slum demolitions began from December 8 onwards as the government set itself to reclaiming nearly 306 acres of land, clearing over 70,000 shanties in the process and rendering over three lakh homeless.
In its efforts to initiate Mumbai's metamorphosis into a new Shanghai, not only have several acres of land been cleared, proposals to implement extensive infrastructure projects and upgrade the city's severely stretched transport network are being speedily pushed through. While the World Bank has expressed its willingness to finance Mumbai-specific projects through a $1 billion loan assistance, the state is expected to raise over Rs 6,000 crore from the market to finance its development projects. Strangely, the business plan will be overseen by a group of five bank officials, business leaders and bureaucrats from Maharashtra. There is no representation from the people, who, constituting almost 62 per cent of the city's population, will form vast sections of the displaced once this makeover plan gets underway.
As with the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance that preceded it, the DF government's attitude towards the builder lobby has been marked by a similar laxity. Recent months have seen substantial revisions made to the mill development plans, as land allotted for recreational purposes and affordable public housing have been progressively reduced. Civic groups such as Bombay First have also proposed a scrapping of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) to free land for slum redevelopment needs. As precedents go, it is the builders who will reap full advantage of such relaxation of rules. Slums take up just 12.85 per cent of Mumbai's land, but this fraction of the city's land is real estate said to be worth Rs 80,000 crore.
Any solution that links beautification and redevelopment with the bulldozing away of slums appears simplistic. Migrants have been responsible for much of the city's dynamism; most migrant slum dwellers also provide much of the cheap informal labour that sustains the city. The government admits that it does not really have plans of rehabilitating the evicted. The Indian Tribunal on Human Right and Environment has suggested that slum dwellers, to ease to some extent the disruption in their lives, be allowed to remain until alternate sites are provided, and the constitution of a broadly representative (that is, no builders) committee, to ascertain the 'true' reasons behind the demolitions. It appears that the move to also target illegal construction of high-rises in the more expensive locations of the city is an attempt to appease the NCP. The NCP, with an eye on 2007's civic elections, has been wooing the slum votebank to wrest control of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation from the Shiv Sena. Civic groups have also warned that ad hoc demolitions could threaten the social fabric of the city, as political heat can be stirred up, always and easily, by vested interests. Proposals that do exist on constructing affordable housing for the urban poor, complete with adequate recreational space, have gathered dust over the years. On the other hand, groups such as the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) have succeeded in involving women's groups in slum areas to bring about a qualitative improvement in civic amenities.
As with Delhi a few years back when slum dwellers were evicted to beautify the city, the state government appears to have forgotten its responsibilities towards most of its citizens. The Supreme Court in its Shantistar Builders (1990) and Chameli Singh (1996) judgments had ruled that housing constituted a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution ? the right to life. The court had held that the right to housing includes adequate living spaces, decent structures and clean surroundings. In a later judgment in 1997, the apex court specified that it was the state's duty to construct houses at reasonable rates and make them easily accessible to the poor. 'The state has the constitutional duty to provide shelter to make the right to life meaningful'. But governments all over have neglected to provide for this right, at least not to the poor.
Mumbai's demolition marathon (Kalpana Sharma)
The Hindu
January 22, 2005
Mumbai's demolition marathon
By Kalpana Sharma
While the Government can have a tough policy on structures built illegally on public lands, it cannot have the same attitude towards the people living in those structures.
EVEN AS one half of Mumbai celebrates a special festival and the media applauds the successful Mumbai marathon, a tragedy has been unfolding that affects the other half of the city, the poorer half. In the course of eight weeks, over 60,000 slum houses have been razed to the ground rendering an estimated two lakh to three lakh people homeless. This is a part of the joint strategy by Mumbai's municipal corporation and the State Government to send out a message that "illegal" encroachers will not be tolerated any more. In reality, the only people not being tolerated are the very poor.
The demolitions are not just a gross violation of basic human rights, they illustrate the absence of a workable housing policy for the urban poor. Indeed, demolitions have become a substitute for a housing policy.
Mumbai is facing a genuine crisis. A city of commerce and enterprise, it has always been a magnet for those looking for work not only in Maharashtra but also from other parts of India. But while in the pre-Independence years this much needed labour to service the city could be absorbed and even housed, since Independence there has been no clear policy to deal with housing for the working class and the poor. Over time, vacant land has been encroached, marshland has been reclaimed and the homeless have occupied pavements, empty strips along railway lines and water pipes. Today, close to 60 per cent of the city's population of 12 million lives in these slums. By any measure, this situation cannot be allowed to continue.
Instead of getting to the bottom of the problem, which is that of finding ways to increase the affordable housing stock in the city, successive governments have resorted to piecemeal solutions. The most popular has been to set a "cut-off" date — that is a date after which no encroachment on public or private land will be tolerated. Except that the Government has been selectively tolerant even as this "cut-off" date has edged forward and now stands at January 1, 1995. The parties that form the present State Government in Maharashtra, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, promised that this date would be further extended up to 2000. But having won the election and formed the Government, they have hastily backtracked.
The "cut-off" date essentially means that the Government will not be responsible for people who have encroached on land after that date. Those who can establish that they set up house before that date are entitled to either alternative accommodation, free of charge, if that land is needed for any other public purpose or can bring in a developer to construct formal housing on that land. This was part of the Slum Redevelopment Scheme (SRS) brought in by the Maharashtra Government in 1998. It was premised on the recognition that slum dwellers had invested in developing the land and the structures. So the "free" house was notional as it was essentially to compensate for their labour in making the land on which the slum stands habitable. In any case, once the slum dwellers moved into their "free" house, they had to pay charges to the housing society. So the security of tenure came at a price.
On paper, the Government's stand on a cut-off date might sound reasonable if you argue that it is not the job of governments to provide houses for everyone. But in reality it translates into denying people basic rights just because they are poor. For while the Government can have a tough policy on structures built illegally on public lands, it cannot have the same attitude towards the people living in those structures. These are citizens of this country. They cannot be pushed out on the street, or forced to "return" to their so-called native place just because there is work available but nowhere to live in the city.
What is worse is the manner in which the demolitions occur. In the past, the demolition squad would come with sticks and axes and manually break down the structure. This gave the "encroacher" the time to save his or her belongings. Today, there is no such luxury. Bulldozers and earthmovers appear overnight aided by the police. Within a few hours, structures that have been built by the poor incrementally over years are flattened. There is little time to save anything. Sometimes even the papers that would establish that the hutment existed before the cut-off date are flattened with the structure.
The plots where the demolitions took place are being policed and slum dwellers say that even temporary structures, built with bamboo poles and plastic sheets, are being pulled down. Thousands of children have not been able to attend school because of the demolitions, parents are afraid to go to work and leave what little they have salvaged of their belongings in the open, and old people are suffering the cold nights without a roof over their heads.
Demolitions, of course, are not new to the urban poor. Go to any slum in the city and you will hear stories of how many times houses have been demolished and how many times people have been forced to rebuild on the same spot. The difference is that each time this happens, they have to pay more to the local officials.
The reason this spate of demolitions is particularly unacceptable is because of the complete absence of a plan about what to do. State Home Minister R. R. Patil was quoted in a newspaper saying, "When we launched the (demolition) drive, we never thought of their rehabilitation. Legally speaking, that is not the responsibility of the government."
The statement underlines the cavalier attitude of the State Government towards the urban poor, the very people whose votes are sought before an election and who are promised security of tenure. While "legally" the Government can claim it is not responsible to resettle those it has displaced, can it really turn its back on them. And what about the hundreds of acres of land ostensibly freed by the demolitions? At last count, over 300 acres have apparently fallen vacant, as slum settlements have been demolished in the northern and north-eastern suburbs of the city. The Government, however, has not announced what it plans to do with these lands. The reason they were encroached upon in the first place was precisely because the Government failed to develop them.
The only policy that can be considered a housing policy of sorts is the Slum Redevelopment Scheme. It has worked indifferently and has nowhere near achieved its target of rehousing 40 lakh slum dwellers. But at the very least it represents an approach towards housing the homeless.
The other so-called plan on the horizon is one devised by the private consulting firm McKinsey for Bombay First, an organisation representing the city's corporate sector. The report "Vision Mumbai: Transforming Mumbai into a world-class city," suggests constructing Special Housing Zones on the salt-pan lands in the north of Mumbai with 300,000 housing units for slum dwellers. They would have to pay between Rs.750 and Rs.1000 a month in addition to regular taxes. There is no plan to ensure that these lands will be made accessible to the livelihood sources of these poor people. Nor have ecological considerations been taken into account. Against the background of the tsunami tragedy, the importance of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules cannot be over-emphasised for in many areas the violation of these rules exacerbated the impact of the killer waves.
What we are seeing in Mumbai today is the culmination of decades of mismatch between precept and practice. Instead what we need is a step-by-step approach that places housing at the centre of all urban development policies. Changes are needed in antiquated laws that have stifled the growth of affordable rental housing. Vast lands in the heart of Mumbai's former textile mill area are waiting to be developed in an equitable and just manner. They would be ideal for low-cost rental housing. Instead, they are becoming home to shopping malls and high-end housing.
In the mid-1980s, the idea of sites and services to house the poor had been tried. This involved marking out plots in land that is provided with basic infrastructure by the state. The actual type of construction is left to the family. If in addition financial services are designed to help the urban poor build and develop such housing, we might arrive at a more sustainable model for housing the poor.
A "world-class" city cannot emerge if half the citizens of Mumbai are denied their rights. The problems are serious and complex. But surely the solutions do not lie in such a callous approach towards the very people who service the city.
o o o o
Gulf News Published: 5/1/2005, 06:46 (UAE)
Demolitions leave thousands homeless
Reuters
Mumbai : Recent slum demolitions in Mumbai have left tens of thousands of people without a home as the government tries to free up valuable space for development in India's crowded financial capital.
Local officials said that more than 45,000 shanties had been demolished in just over three weeks as police and state workers used earthmovers and bulldozers to clear 200 acres of illegally occupied government land.
The demolition comes as the state is rolling out an ambitious 260-billion-rupee (Dh21.6 billion) infrastructure plan to "turn Mumbai into Shanghai", with better roads and public transport and more green spaces.
Among the more than 200,000 people displaced, many are angry with the government for reneging on an election promise and excluding them from its grand plan for the city.
"This is an inhuman way to deal with the poorest of the poor," said Jockin Arputham, president of the National Slum Dwellers' Federation. "The government had falsely assured them and has not provided an alternative. Where will these people go?"
Distraught families have put up tents near where their flimsy tin and tarpaulin dwellings have been smashed, while others have started building again on the same spot with material salvaged from the wreckage. Others have simply moved to another slum.
More than half the city's 17 million people live in slums or on pavements below gleaming high-rises. Apartments are largely unaffordable for the many poor rural migrants seeking work in the wealthy commercial centre of Mumbai.
The Maharashtra state government said last month all slums built since 1995 would have to go. Of the estimated half a million shanties in the city, nearly 80 per cent are on municipal and government-owned land and pose a challenge to development plans.
"They have to leave Mumbai as they are staying on government land illegally," said Prakash Patil, the assistant municipal commissioner, admitting that demolition is expensive and not always effective, as shanties often reappear just as fast.
"We need to upgrade our slums, not demolish them, and develop the rest of the state, so we can stem the flow of migrants," said Sharit Bhowmik, a sociology professor at University of Mumbai, who helped draft a national policy on urban development.
"We don't need a Shanghai, just a liveable city for all."
January 22, 2005
Mumbai's demolition marathon
By Kalpana Sharma
While the Government can have a tough policy on structures built illegally on public lands, it cannot have the same attitude towards the people living in those structures.
EVEN AS one half of Mumbai celebrates a special festival and the media applauds the successful Mumbai marathon, a tragedy has been unfolding that affects the other half of the city, the poorer half. In the course of eight weeks, over 60,000 slum houses have been razed to the ground rendering an estimated two lakh to three lakh people homeless. This is a part of the joint strategy by Mumbai's municipal corporation and the State Government to send out a message that "illegal" encroachers will not be tolerated any more. In reality, the only people not being tolerated are the very poor.
The demolitions are not just a gross violation of basic human rights, they illustrate the absence of a workable housing policy for the urban poor. Indeed, demolitions have become a substitute for a housing policy.
Mumbai is facing a genuine crisis. A city of commerce and enterprise, it has always been a magnet for those looking for work not only in Maharashtra but also from other parts of India. But while in the pre-Independence years this much needed labour to service the city could be absorbed and even housed, since Independence there has been no clear policy to deal with housing for the working class and the poor. Over time, vacant land has been encroached, marshland has been reclaimed and the homeless have occupied pavements, empty strips along railway lines and water pipes. Today, close to 60 per cent of the city's population of 12 million lives in these slums. By any measure, this situation cannot be allowed to continue.
Instead of getting to the bottom of the problem, which is that of finding ways to increase the affordable housing stock in the city, successive governments have resorted to piecemeal solutions. The most popular has been to set a "cut-off" date — that is a date after which no encroachment on public or private land will be tolerated. Except that the Government has been selectively tolerant even as this "cut-off" date has edged forward and now stands at January 1, 1995. The parties that form the present State Government in Maharashtra, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, promised that this date would be further extended up to 2000. But having won the election and formed the Government, they have hastily backtracked.
The "cut-off" date essentially means that the Government will not be responsible for people who have encroached on land after that date. Those who can establish that they set up house before that date are entitled to either alternative accommodation, free of charge, if that land is needed for any other public purpose or can bring in a developer to construct formal housing on that land. This was part of the Slum Redevelopment Scheme (SRS) brought in by the Maharashtra Government in 1998. It was premised on the recognition that slum dwellers had invested in developing the land and the structures. So the "free" house was notional as it was essentially to compensate for their labour in making the land on which the slum stands habitable. In any case, once the slum dwellers moved into their "free" house, they had to pay charges to the housing society. So the security of tenure came at a price.
On paper, the Government's stand on a cut-off date might sound reasonable if you argue that it is not the job of governments to provide houses for everyone. But in reality it translates into denying people basic rights just because they are poor. For while the Government can have a tough policy on structures built illegally on public lands, it cannot have the same attitude towards the people living in those structures. These are citizens of this country. They cannot be pushed out on the street, or forced to "return" to their so-called native place just because there is work available but nowhere to live in the city.
What is worse is the manner in which the demolitions occur. In the past, the demolition squad would come with sticks and axes and manually break down the structure. This gave the "encroacher" the time to save his or her belongings. Today, there is no such luxury. Bulldozers and earthmovers appear overnight aided by the police. Within a few hours, structures that have been built by the poor incrementally over years are flattened. There is little time to save anything. Sometimes even the papers that would establish that the hutment existed before the cut-off date are flattened with the structure.
The plots where the demolitions took place are being policed and slum dwellers say that even temporary structures, built with bamboo poles and plastic sheets, are being pulled down. Thousands of children have not been able to attend school because of the demolitions, parents are afraid to go to work and leave what little they have salvaged of their belongings in the open, and old people are suffering the cold nights without a roof over their heads.
Demolitions, of course, are not new to the urban poor. Go to any slum in the city and you will hear stories of how many times houses have been demolished and how many times people have been forced to rebuild on the same spot. The difference is that each time this happens, they have to pay more to the local officials.
The reason this spate of demolitions is particularly unacceptable is because of the complete absence of a plan about what to do. State Home Minister R. R. Patil was quoted in a newspaper saying, "When we launched the (demolition) drive, we never thought of their rehabilitation. Legally speaking, that is not the responsibility of the government."
The statement underlines the cavalier attitude of the State Government towards the urban poor, the very people whose votes are sought before an election and who are promised security of tenure. While "legally" the Government can claim it is not responsible to resettle those it has displaced, can it really turn its back on them. And what about the hundreds of acres of land ostensibly freed by the demolitions? At last count, over 300 acres have apparently fallen vacant, as slum settlements have been demolished in the northern and north-eastern suburbs of the city. The Government, however, has not announced what it plans to do with these lands. The reason they were encroached upon in the first place was precisely because the Government failed to develop them.
The only policy that can be considered a housing policy of sorts is the Slum Redevelopment Scheme. It has worked indifferently and has nowhere near achieved its target of rehousing 40 lakh slum dwellers. But at the very least it represents an approach towards housing the homeless.
The other so-called plan on the horizon is one devised by the private consulting firm McKinsey for Bombay First, an organisation representing the city's corporate sector. The report "Vision Mumbai: Transforming Mumbai into a world-class city," suggests constructing Special Housing Zones on the salt-pan lands in the north of Mumbai with 300,000 housing units for slum dwellers. They would have to pay between Rs.750 and Rs.1000 a month in addition to regular taxes. There is no plan to ensure that these lands will be made accessible to the livelihood sources of these poor people. Nor have ecological considerations been taken into account. Against the background of the tsunami tragedy, the importance of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules cannot be over-emphasised for in many areas the violation of these rules exacerbated the impact of the killer waves.
What we are seeing in Mumbai today is the culmination of decades of mismatch between precept and practice. Instead what we need is a step-by-step approach that places housing at the centre of all urban development policies. Changes are needed in antiquated laws that have stifled the growth of affordable rental housing. Vast lands in the heart of Mumbai's former textile mill area are waiting to be developed in an equitable and just manner. They would be ideal for low-cost rental housing. Instead, they are becoming home to shopping malls and high-end housing.
In the mid-1980s, the idea of sites and services to house the poor had been tried. This involved marking out plots in land that is provided with basic infrastructure by the state. The actual type of construction is left to the family. If in addition financial services are designed to help the urban poor build and develop such housing, we might arrive at a more sustainable model for housing the poor.
A "world-class" city cannot emerge if half the citizens of Mumbai are denied their rights. The problems are serious and complex. But surely the solutions do not lie in such a callous approach towards the very people who service the city.
o o o o
Gulf News Published: 5/1/2005, 06:46 (UAE)
Demolitions leave thousands homeless
Reuters
Mumbai : Recent slum demolitions in Mumbai have left tens of thousands of people without a home as the government tries to free up valuable space for development in India's crowded financial capital.
Local officials said that more than 45,000 shanties had been demolished in just over three weeks as police and state workers used earthmovers and bulldozers to clear 200 acres of illegally occupied government land.
The demolition comes as the state is rolling out an ambitious 260-billion-rupee (Dh21.6 billion) infrastructure plan to "turn Mumbai into Shanghai", with better roads and public transport and more green spaces.
Among the more than 200,000 people displaced, many are angry with the government for reneging on an election promise and excluding them from its grand plan for the city.
"This is an inhuman way to deal with the poorest of the poor," said Jockin Arputham, president of the National Slum Dwellers' Federation. "The government had falsely assured them and has not provided an alternative. Where will these people go?"
Distraught families have put up tents near where their flimsy tin and tarpaulin dwellings have been smashed, while others have started building again on the same spot with material salvaged from the wreckage. Others have simply moved to another slum.
More than half the city's 17 million people live in slums or on pavements below gleaming high-rises. Apartments are largely unaffordable for the many poor rural migrants seeking work in the wealthy commercial centre of Mumbai.
The Maharashtra state government said last month all slums built since 1995 would have to go. Of the estimated half a million shanties in the city, nearly 80 per cent are on municipal and government-owned land and pose a challenge to development plans.
"They have to leave Mumbai as they are staying on government land illegally," said Prakash Patil, the assistant municipal commissioner, admitting that demolition is expensive and not always effective, as shanties often reappear just as fast.
"We need to upgrade our slums, not demolish them, and develop the rest of the state, so we can stem the flow of migrants," said Sharit Bhowmik, a sociology professor at University of Mumbai, who helped draft a national policy on urban development.
"We don't need a Shanghai, just a liveable city for all."
January 19, 2005
January 04, 2005
Two lakh deserted to turn Mumbai into Shanghai
Reuters : Tuesday, January 04
Two lakh deserted to turn Mumbai into Shanghai
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40309
Two lakh deserted to turn Mumbai into Shanghai
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40309
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