[www.sacw.net | 20 February 2005 ]
In perspective : Slum Demolitions in Mumbai
by Vidyadhar Date
The current controversy over the demolition of thousands of huts in Mumbai reminds me of Shakespeare's classic play King Lear. In one of the greatest scenes in world literature King Lear realizes the plight of the poor and the houseless in his kingdom when he himself is thrown out of the door by his daughters.
Lear discovers that there is a far bigger tragedy in the world than his own personal suffering He realizes that he has taken too little care of the poor in his kingdom. He wonders how the poor houseless heads were defending themselves in cruel weather.
The realism of the play is so stark and it disturbed the establishment so much that for nearly a century after 1661 the play's tragic ending was changed and a happy ending was provided during performances.
Lear undergoes a radical change in his outlook when he experiences suffering himself. King Lear is Shakespeare's most mature play with a wide social outlook. No other play of Shakespeare has such words as poor, beggar, wretch, bare, charity, houseless , at least not to any significant level..
Like Lear our rulers too need to understand the plight of the houseless. This is not to suggest that all encorachers should be given protection and allowed to live in Mumbai.What needs to be understood and emphasized is that people migrate to Mumbai because life is much worse in rural areas. But the ruling class does not want to admit its utter failure to solve problems in the villages where India still truly lives despite all the urbanisation.
So, the government should pay more attention to solve problems in rural areas, that would take care of problems in urban areas, there would be no or less migration. For those talking of converting Mumbai into Shanghai the latest issue of Time magazine should come as an eye opener and a setback. It depicts the brutal way the city is being built at the cost of the ordinary people and life. It quotes an architecture professor Mao Qizhi as saying that "if other cities copy Shanghai we would have disaster on our hands." More ironical is the fact that the city is being developed by the son of Albert Speer, the architect of Adolf Hitler who is notorious for ugly fascist architecture.
Our ministers need not themselves become houseless like Lear to realize the gravity of the problem of houselessness. But they could certainly start experiencing the problems of the people in other ways.
When the government was criticized recently for the move to buy Skoda luxury cars for ministerial use, chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh posed a counter question "are ministers to use buses or trains if not cars ?" The answer would be yes, at least on some occasions the ministers can do that.
Ministers is so many European countries are known to walk to work or travel by trains or bicycles. There is no earthly reason why this cannot be done here at least occasionally and not as a stunt. Vested interests always say such things cannot be done here, this is a different country but the same people think nothing of imitating the worst Western models here.
In the land of Mahatma Gandhi a simple life style should come naturally to most people. Gandhiji seldom used the motor car and when he travelled by train, he chose to travel by third class and he was not happy with trains too as he felt they travelled too fast and in a way did violence to nature.
His simple but architecturally excellent ashrams have inspired many architects and no history of Indian architecture can be complete without a detailed reference to the ashrams. Mr Nripen Chakraborty, former chief minister of Tripura, who died recently, had only a steel trunk for his possession when he started his tenure as chief minister and that was his only possession when he left office. He was a dedicated member of the Communist party of India (Marxist).
The leadership of most right-wing parties is far removed from people . In Mumbai state legislators think nothing of taking a special bus provided by the government to travel the short distance from the MLAs' hostel to Vidhan Bhavan, a distance of not more than 200 metres.
Many bureaucrats live bang opposite Mantralaya but take a car to travel that distance.There is so much talk of car pooling, which is a good idea, and there is no reason why this cannot be done occasionally in the case of ministers residing in their sprawling official bungalows at Malabar hill.
The two Congress parties have now woken up to the issue of slums because municipal elections are approaching. The problem is they look at people as vote banks and not as human beings, so it is better for the parties to keep people living in uncertainty and filth and threat of removal so that they can cash on their votes.
Mr Bhaskar Ghose, a retired IAS officer, former union secretary for cultural affairs and sensitive human being, recently wrote of the insulated lives bureaucrats live. Everything from their travel arrangements to household work and getting things repaired is taken care of by the state machinery. Mr Ghose said when he retired he realized what it means to live a life like ordinary people as he did not have any help in doing everyday chores and other jobs.
Ministers are in an even more privileged position. Far from setting an example in simple living, they are displaying wealth and celebrating marriages with pomp. The wedding of public works minister Chhagan Bhujbal's nephew at Bandra Reclamation ground recently is a pointer. Mr Bhujbal , an OBC, has suffered because he is not a Maratha. But as a follower of Mahatma Jotirao Phule, the social reformer, he has added responsibility of performing a marriage ceremony in the simple manner which was part of the the Satyashodak Samaj movement.
It is a pity that the progressive legacy of Phule has been negated by some of his followers. The most recent betrayal of this movement is the embracing of a new religion called Shiv Dharma by some people led by Mr A.H. Salunkhe, a scholar who had won considerable respect with his rationalism and writing which included the depiction of the subsidiary status given to women in India since ancient times.
The priorities for ministers are quite different. The union minister for civil aviation Praful Patel laments that our airports are neglected and there is absolute need to provide connectivity by air. That would be fine provided the basic needs of the common people are taken care of. Unfortunately, even basic infrastructure is ignored when it comes to the people. It is a scandal that the pedestrian bridge at Charni road station broke down recently and a major accident was averted. There is no proper connectivity even for walking for ordinary people.
I was in Shrirampur (formerly Serampore) in West Bengal famous for the work done by William Carey , a protestant missionary in the 19th century, in translating the Bible into several Indian languages and writing their grammars. This is a district town and I found at the railway station that it has no overhead bridge. As a result people are forced to cross railway tracks at great risk to their lives. Some people are worried about traffic jams and the inconvenience caused to motorists. Do they realize that there are major jams on railway bridges too because the space is so small and commuters are so many. That is the state of infrastructure in this country when it comes to the ordinary people. It is all right to have modern airports, but it does not mean you impose the most humiliating conditions on ordinary commuters.
Coming back to the housing question, last week I saw an excellent film 'A Raisin in the Sun' at the American Center featuring Sidney Poitier among others. The film made in 1961 shows among other things a black or rather Afro-American poor family's struggle in a white-dominated society. The family buys a house in a white locality and soon a white man comes to them talking sweetly and saying they should live among their own folk, it is much better for you guys. Moving to the white locality would create problems, the crafty fellow says.
Similar sorts of words are being used by some of the defenders of globalisation now to the urban poor. They are being told, you should not stay here, your are illegal and you should relocate yourselves. This city is only for us, the better off, the middle class and the like. The Mumbai high court showed some humanitarian concern when it observed earlier this week that night shelter should be provided to the poor, if not housing.
Recently, an architect made a sinister argument, blaming Medha Patkar and leftists for promoting the growth of slums in Mumbai.
All sorts of arguments are being invented to turn the attention from the real problem, government's failure to carry out its basic function to provide housing to the people or at least to ensure that ;prices of land and other sectors are checked ..
Slums and homelessness is not just a local problem confined to Mumbai. If it was the handiwork of a few people as some would argue, how is it that this is increasingly becoming a more and more acute global problem ? It is caused primarily by economic inequalities and the policies of globalisation. Let us face it.This comes from none else than the United Nations body UN Habitat in its exhaustive report. . But some people refuse to accept the bitter and harsh reality of the failure of governance.
Some people may not agree with Medha Patkar's agitation but it is a good sign that she has broadbased her struggle to include issues other than the displacement caused by the Narmada dam. She is already collaborating with activists involved in other struggles and heads the organization called National Alliance for People's Movements.
February 20, 2005
February 18, 2005
Slum Politics (James Westcott)
Slum Politics
By James Westcott, AlterNet. Posted February 18, 2005.
The squalid mini-city states known as slums now house at least one billion people across the world, living outside normal regulations. As their ranks swell, some are saying that it's time to start thinking of them a little differently.
In the last three months, the Bombay Municipal Corporation has demolished 80,000 shanties in a city where 3 million people are slum dwellers. The local government recently granted legal status to homes built before 1995, and bulldozed everything else. The devastation is "tsunami-like," according to the Indian Inter Press news agency. Three hundred and fifty thousand people have been made homeless but only 50,000 new apartments have been provided. The program is part of Bombay's plan to re-model itself on the ruthlessly prosperous Shanghai, which has tried to eradicate its slums.
But Shanghai's slums remain, as they do in other cities, as part of an inexorable global trend: 200,000 people a day are carrot-and-sticked from the countryside to cities that then refuse to accommodate them. In Bombay they end up in shacks by the road, on railway tracks and next to the airport – embarrassingly visible from landing planes. In Lagos, two-thirds of which is made up of slums, a shanty town has sprouted up on an enormous, slowly burning garbage dump. In Kibera, the slum surrounding Nairobi, raw sewage flows over the few water pipes, and latrines are so scarce that people simply defecate in plastic bags and then throw them as far away from their dwelling as possible – a phenomenon called "flying toilets."
Eighty-five percent of the developing world's urban population now lives in slums, and 40 percent of slum dwellers in Africa live in what the UN calls "life-threatening" poverty.
Elsewhere though, squatter communities are so well developed that they can't properly be called slums. With multi-story buildings, shops, businesses and offices – even a squatter town hall – Sultanbeyli in Istanbul is now almost indistinguishable from the adjacent "legal" city. Despite the varying conditions, the world's squatters hold certain things in common: they live in semi-sovereign, if squalid, mini-city states, paying no taxes and leaching services like water and electricity and, occasionally, some rights, from the legit world. They operate in an illegal or informal economy, and have only the most tenuous relationship with the state. According to the UN, by 2030 a quarter of the world's population will be living like this. In the midst of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe of slum-growth, we could be in for some major social, political and economic consequences that are only just starting to be discussed.
The rock star philosopher Slavoj Zizek has called the growth of slums the "crucial geopolitical event of our time," and an "opportunity" for a truly "'free' world." Slum dwellers, though in sore need of health care and minimal means of self-organization, are free in the double sense of the word, says Zizek, writing in the London Review of Books: "'free' from all substantial ties; dwelling in a free space, outside the regulation of the state." Zizek warns against idealizing squatters as a new "revolutionary class" – their freedom really is another word for nothing left to lose – but in the next breath he marvels at how beautifully squatters seem to fit into Marx's definition of a proletarian revolutionary subject.
With the apparent collapse of the anti-globalization carnival and the impotence of the anti-war movement, could the left be on to something, at last, with squatters – not the anarchists in developed cities who do it as a lifestyle choice, but the billion ex-peasants, entrepreneurs and derelicts who are starting to numerically dominate every city in the world outside of the northern and western hemispheres?
Two new books touch tentatively – inadvertently even – on this possibility, without endorsing it. It might seem pretty callous to speculate from the comfort of the West about political "opportunity" in third world slums when people don't have clean drinking water or flush toilets. Or is it utterly necessary to move beyond the standard pity and fear of slum-dwellers and start recognizing them as political agents, not just victims?
This seems to be Robert Neuwirth's aim in Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World (Routledge), although he doesn't actually note or promote the development of squatters' political capital. Neuwirth, a journalist based in New York, spent two years living in some of the world's burgeoning slums. He was dazzled by squatters' resourcefulness and doggedness, but these individualistic qualities don't seem to lend themselves to the building of co-operation within or between communities. While living among relatively prosperous squatters in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro's 150,000-strong shadow city, Neuwirth says that people hardly noticed the army's forced eviction of squatters in the capital, Brasilia – "Their solidarity did not extend much beyond their street."
The most interesting section of Shadow Cities isn't the reportage, which is often robotic and impatient, like a 30-second TV news piece. It's the chapter on "Proper Squatters, Improper Property," where Neuwirth discusses political scientists Hernando de Soto and Peter Marcuse's views on squatters, which represent the difficulties of grappling with the phenomenon of squatting in traditional ideological terms. De Soto, a free marketeer, wants to release the "dead capital" that squatters' property and entrepreneurship represents by immediately granting legal title deeds. Then the credit cards and consumerism will come. Marcuse, looking from the left, surprisingly seems to have rather less hope for squatters. As a result of their selfish pursuit of their own betterment, Marcuse says that squatters' communities – if they can be called that – are disorganized and inefficient, no model for a radical urban future.
There are further complications to the seductive idea of squatters harboring – or already enacting – some revolutionary potential. Rocinha, the largest of Rio's 600 favelas, now has all the trappings of normal urban life: grocery stores, banks, video rental stores, restaurants, a nightclub, even three health clubs and a postal service. Rocinha also has a small McDonald's, credit card companies, loan shops, and a cable TV supplier – there are more TVs than fridges in the favela.
This is asfaltizaçâo: the inevitable, probably welcome, gentrification of slums that will eventually happen everywhere if governments – made to feel insecure by people who apparently don't need them – can resist the temptation to tear down these rebellious neighborhoods. But does asfaltizaçâo mean that these lawless, propertyless rugged individualists simply can't wait to integrate their slums into Mall World, where the rest of us live? Who can blame them?
In Planet of the Slums (Verso), another new book (to be released in June) on the urban poor, sociologist Mike Davis is cautious about perceiving slums as bubbling political volcanoes: "the [l]eft [is] still largely missing from the slum," he says. Islam and Pentecostalism are the unifying forces in the slums of Morocco, Latin America and Africa, occupying "a social space analogous to that of twentieth-century socialism and anarchism." While squatters don't fit into old-fashioned categories, or demonstrate much political solidarity, Davis notes that slum dwellers are "the fastest growing, and most unprecedented, social class on earth." We didn't forecast the catastrophic growth of slums, and we may not be able to predict the political implications either – but there must be some.
Are we really seeing an accelerated version in the developing world of the slum stages that western cities went through, as Neuwirth intimates? Or are we seeing a humanitarian crisis of a different order, one caused by neo-liberal pressures on agriculture and simultaneous loss of jobs in cities? Planet of the Slums is a more foreboding book than Shadow Cities: Davis sees an under-recognized humanitarian catastrophe, and not much redeeming political opportunity, yet. Worse, it's a catastrophe that is irreversible under present conditions: "The labour-power of a billion people has been expelled from the world system, and who can imagine any plausible scenario, under neoliberal auspices, that would reintegrate them as productive workers or mass consumers?" The development of Rocinha offers one such scenario of integration – or appropriation – of the outside world into the (former) slum, but this is only a tiny sliver of the humanity that has been rendered surplus. Who knows if this model of slum gentrification will transplant itself, and should we care if it neuters the possibilities of new models of ownership and informal economic activity latent in the world's slums?
After speaking to Celine D'Cruz, one of the founders of Slum Dwellers International (Zizek would surely find the name encouraging), such intellectual and theoretical questions suddenly seemed frivolous in the face of the immediate and perpetual crisis her organization deals with. SDI was founded in South Africa in 1996 to give more than a token voice for the urban poor in the decisions made by lofty NGOs, development agencies, the UN, and local municipalities. There are now dozens of groups affiliated with SDI across the global south, but according to its web site, the primary focus of the group is "emphatically local."
I phoned D'Cruz in Bombay shortly after she had visited one of the freshly demolished slums. People had started to rebuild their homes, she told me, but that day the Municipal Corporation had paid another visit and attempted to remove the roofs of the hastily reconstructed shacks. "When the city comes with force like this it's very difficult to resist. People get pissed off," she said. "They sometimes throw chile powder in [city officials'] eyes, scream and shout, stand in front of their house. Today they had a big fight, the [corporation] guys got frightened and they left. But it's no fun guarding your house every day."
SDI is trying to negotiate the proper resettlement of Bombay's squatters. This means including them in the process – not, as has happened in the past, housing fishermen and vendors in high-rise new tenements where they can't carry their equipment up the stairs. When you don't ask squatters where and how they want to live, D'Cruz says, "you deliver and construct houses that aren't good enough for the poor." So it's no wonder they often just sell the property that was given to them and move to another shanty town where they can determine their own lives again.
Still, D'Cruz is wary about "romanticizing" the impressive defiance of the squatters (something Neuwirth occasionally lapses into in Shadow Cities). She insisted that none of them relish their place on the margins. "Speak to any woman: she doesn't want to live on the street or on railway tracks. She dreams of a better home for her children. She doesn't want to leave them plastic sheets when she's dead."
Eighty percent of the membership of SDI is women. "That's a big difference from conventional movements," said D'Cruz. "I think housing is something that's very important to women. A man can come to a city and live under a bridge, a sheet, anywhere. But if a city can't provide for a woman, she's extremely vulnerable. Women have a much greater stamina for dealing with the complexities" of securing housing rights.
The composition of SDI is one aspect of an unfamiliar but also unassuming radicalism. D'Cruz says that slum dwellers don't necessarily have a macro view of the neo-liberal conditions that shape their lives, "But they are surely able to make choices in their cities that work for them without holding the city to ransom." SDI seeks local and immediate solutions – they're don't seem to be interested in big rhetoric or new theories – and then shares their knowledge internationally: "Our point is if a Japanese businessman can go to the other side of the world to do business, what's to stop a slum dweller representing themselves in another part of the world?" With that, D'Cruz had to leave, with a delegation of slum dwellers and NGO representatives, to catch a plane to Kenya for an international SDI board meeting. On the agenda: AIDS, demolitions, the loss of a lot of their leadership in the tsunami, and resettlement of its living victims – the harrowing practicalities that come before theory.
By James Westcott, AlterNet. Posted February 18, 2005.
The squalid mini-city states known as slums now house at least one billion people across the world, living outside normal regulations. As their ranks swell, some are saying that it's time to start thinking of them a little differently.
In the last three months, the Bombay Municipal Corporation has demolished 80,000 shanties in a city where 3 million people are slum dwellers. The local government recently granted legal status to homes built before 1995, and bulldozed everything else. The devastation is "tsunami-like," according to the Indian Inter Press news agency. Three hundred and fifty thousand people have been made homeless but only 50,000 new apartments have been provided. The program is part of Bombay's plan to re-model itself on the ruthlessly prosperous Shanghai, which has tried to eradicate its slums.
But Shanghai's slums remain, as they do in other cities, as part of an inexorable global trend: 200,000 people a day are carrot-and-sticked from the countryside to cities that then refuse to accommodate them. In Bombay they end up in shacks by the road, on railway tracks and next to the airport – embarrassingly visible from landing planes. In Lagos, two-thirds of which is made up of slums, a shanty town has sprouted up on an enormous, slowly burning garbage dump. In Kibera, the slum surrounding Nairobi, raw sewage flows over the few water pipes, and latrines are so scarce that people simply defecate in plastic bags and then throw them as far away from their dwelling as possible – a phenomenon called "flying toilets."
Eighty-five percent of the developing world's urban population now lives in slums, and 40 percent of slum dwellers in Africa live in what the UN calls "life-threatening" poverty.
Elsewhere though, squatter communities are so well developed that they can't properly be called slums. With multi-story buildings, shops, businesses and offices – even a squatter town hall – Sultanbeyli in Istanbul is now almost indistinguishable from the adjacent "legal" city. Despite the varying conditions, the world's squatters hold certain things in common: they live in semi-sovereign, if squalid, mini-city states, paying no taxes and leaching services like water and electricity and, occasionally, some rights, from the legit world. They operate in an illegal or informal economy, and have only the most tenuous relationship with the state. According to the UN, by 2030 a quarter of the world's population will be living like this. In the midst of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe of slum-growth, we could be in for some major social, political and economic consequences that are only just starting to be discussed.
The rock star philosopher Slavoj Zizek has called the growth of slums the "crucial geopolitical event of our time," and an "opportunity" for a truly "'free' world." Slum dwellers, though in sore need of health care and minimal means of self-organization, are free in the double sense of the word, says Zizek, writing in the London Review of Books: "'free' from all substantial ties; dwelling in a free space, outside the regulation of the state." Zizek warns against idealizing squatters as a new "revolutionary class" – their freedom really is another word for nothing left to lose – but in the next breath he marvels at how beautifully squatters seem to fit into Marx's definition of a proletarian revolutionary subject.
With the apparent collapse of the anti-globalization carnival and the impotence of the anti-war movement, could the left be on to something, at last, with squatters – not the anarchists in developed cities who do it as a lifestyle choice, but the billion ex-peasants, entrepreneurs and derelicts who are starting to numerically dominate every city in the world outside of the northern and western hemispheres?
Two new books touch tentatively – inadvertently even – on this possibility, without endorsing it. It might seem pretty callous to speculate from the comfort of the West about political "opportunity" in third world slums when people don't have clean drinking water or flush toilets. Or is it utterly necessary to move beyond the standard pity and fear of slum-dwellers and start recognizing them as political agents, not just victims?
This seems to be Robert Neuwirth's aim in Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World (Routledge), although he doesn't actually note or promote the development of squatters' political capital. Neuwirth, a journalist based in New York, spent two years living in some of the world's burgeoning slums. He was dazzled by squatters' resourcefulness and doggedness, but these individualistic qualities don't seem to lend themselves to the building of co-operation within or between communities. While living among relatively prosperous squatters in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro's 150,000-strong shadow city, Neuwirth says that people hardly noticed the army's forced eviction of squatters in the capital, Brasilia – "Their solidarity did not extend much beyond their street."
The most interesting section of Shadow Cities isn't the reportage, which is often robotic and impatient, like a 30-second TV news piece. It's the chapter on "Proper Squatters, Improper Property," where Neuwirth discusses political scientists Hernando de Soto and Peter Marcuse's views on squatters, which represent the difficulties of grappling with the phenomenon of squatting in traditional ideological terms. De Soto, a free marketeer, wants to release the "dead capital" that squatters' property and entrepreneurship represents by immediately granting legal title deeds. Then the credit cards and consumerism will come. Marcuse, looking from the left, surprisingly seems to have rather less hope for squatters. As a result of their selfish pursuit of their own betterment, Marcuse says that squatters' communities – if they can be called that – are disorganized and inefficient, no model for a radical urban future.
There are further complications to the seductive idea of squatters harboring – or already enacting – some revolutionary potential. Rocinha, the largest of Rio's 600 favelas, now has all the trappings of normal urban life: grocery stores, banks, video rental stores, restaurants, a nightclub, even three health clubs and a postal service. Rocinha also has a small McDonald's, credit card companies, loan shops, and a cable TV supplier – there are more TVs than fridges in the favela.
This is asfaltizaçâo: the inevitable, probably welcome, gentrification of slums that will eventually happen everywhere if governments – made to feel insecure by people who apparently don't need them – can resist the temptation to tear down these rebellious neighborhoods. But does asfaltizaçâo mean that these lawless, propertyless rugged individualists simply can't wait to integrate their slums into Mall World, where the rest of us live? Who can blame them?
In Planet of the Slums (Verso), another new book (to be released in June) on the urban poor, sociologist Mike Davis is cautious about perceiving slums as bubbling political volcanoes: "the [l]eft [is] still largely missing from the slum," he says. Islam and Pentecostalism are the unifying forces in the slums of Morocco, Latin America and Africa, occupying "a social space analogous to that of twentieth-century socialism and anarchism." While squatters don't fit into old-fashioned categories, or demonstrate much political solidarity, Davis notes that slum dwellers are "the fastest growing, and most unprecedented, social class on earth." We didn't forecast the catastrophic growth of slums, and we may not be able to predict the political implications either – but there must be some.
Are we really seeing an accelerated version in the developing world of the slum stages that western cities went through, as Neuwirth intimates? Or are we seeing a humanitarian crisis of a different order, one caused by neo-liberal pressures on agriculture and simultaneous loss of jobs in cities? Planet of the Slums is a more foreboding book than Shadow Cities: Davis sees an under-recognized humanitarian catastrophe, and not much redeeming political opportunity, yet. Worse, it's a catastrophe that is irreversible under present conditions: "The labour-power of a billion people has been expelled from the world system, and who can imagine any plausible scenario, under neoliberal auspices, that would reintegrate them as productive workers or mass consumers?" The development of Rocinha offers one such scenario of integration – or appropriation – of the outside world into the (former) slum, but this is only a tiny sliver of the humanity that has been rendered surplus. Who knows if this model of slum gentrification will transplant itself, and should we care if it neuters the possibilities of new models of ownership and informal economic activity latent in the world's slums?
After speaking to Celine D'Cruz, one of the founders of Slum Dwellers International (Zizek would surely find the name encouraging), such intellectual and theoretical questions suddenly seemed frivolous in the face of the immediate and perpetual crisis her organization deals with. SDI was founded in South Africa in 1996 to give more than a token voice for the urban poor in the decisions made by lofty NGOs, development agencies, the UN, and local municipalities. There are now dozens of groups affiliated with SDI across the global south, but according to its web site, the primary focus of the group is "emphatically local."
I phoned D'Cruz in Bombay shortly after she had visited one of the freshly demolished slums. People had started to rebuild their homes, she told me, but that day the Municipal Corporation had paid another visit and attempted to remove the roofs of the hastily reconstructed shacks. "When the city comes with force like this it's very difficult to resist. People get pissed off," she said. "They sometimes throw chile powder in [city officials'] eyes, scream and shout, stand in front of their house. Today they had a big fight, the [corporation] guys got frightened and they left. But it's no fun guarding your house every day."
SDI is trying to negotiate the proper resettlement of Bombay's squatters. This means including them in the process – not, as has happened in the past, housing fishermen and vendors in high-rise new tenements where they can't carry their equipment up the stairs. When you don't ask squatters where and how they want to live, D'Cruz says, "you deliver and construct houses that aren't good enough for the poor." So it's no wonder they often just sell the property that was given to them and move to another shanty town where they can determine their own lives again.
Still, D'Cruz is wary about "romanticizing" the impressive defiance of the squatters (something Neuwirth occasionally lapses into in Shadow Cities). She insisted that none of them relish their place on the margins. "Speak to any woman: she doesn't want to live on the street or on railway tracks. She dreams of a better home for her children. She doesn't want to leave them plastic sheets when she's dead."
Eighty percent of the membership of SDI is women. "That's a big difference from conventional movements," said D'Cruz. "I think housing is something that's very important to women. A man can come to a city and live under a bridge, a sheet, anywhere. But if a city can't provide for a woman, she's extremely vulnerable. Women have a much greater stamina for dealing with the complexities" of securing housing rights.
The composition of SDI is one aspect of an unfamiliar but also unassuming radicalism. D'Cruz says that slum dwellers don't necessarily have a macro view of the neo-liberal conditions that shape their lives, "But they are surely able to make choices in their cities that work for them without holding the city to ransom." SDI seeks local and immediate solutions – they're don't seem to be interested in big rhetoric or new theories – and then shares their knowledge internationally: "Our point is if a Japanese businessman can go to the other side of the world to do business, what's to stop a slum dweller representing themselves in another part of the world?" With that, D'Cruz had to leave, with a delegation of slum dwellers and NGO representatives, to catch a plane to Kenya for an international SDI board meeting. On the agenda: AIDS, demolitions, the loss of a lot of their leadership in the tsunami, and resettlement of its living victims – the harrowing practicalities that come before theory.
Sit - in Demo (22 Feb) Bombay Joint Platform against Eviction
From: "Gautam Sen"
Subject: Programme on Eviction
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 10:30:51 +0530
Friends and comrades,
You all know that we have been taking various programmes against Eviction without rehabilitation and for Rehabilitation for all the evictees for more than three years. We have been doing this more or less consistently. But we are far away from getting our basic demands won, though here and there some concessions and relieves have been achieved. In spite of the clear-cut declaration in the Common Minimum programme of the UPA govt (which is ratified by the Left Front) both the Central and the State govt. have been continuing their eviction programme. Recently they have announced that they are going to evict thousands of families residing at Ballygung-Tollygung railway side jhupris in the first week of March, 2005. It may be added that the local jhupri residents are doing their best to continue and develop the resistance movement.
In this situation we are calling all concern citizens and organisations to join hands to strengthen the anti-eviction movement, in general and the ensuing railway colony eviction, in particular.
We also invite you to participate in the following programme toawrds the same.
14 February, 2005
Convenor
Joint Platform against Eviction
Sit-in Demonstration at Hazra Crossing
(The concern citizens along with the evicted and would-be-evicted persons will be present)
22 February, 2005 3 pm to 9 pm
Documentation films on the agony and protest of the affected people in Tolly Nullah, Beleghata and Rabindra Sarovar will also be shown.
Contact: 2465 2507, 94331 30349
Subject: Programme on Eviction
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 10:30:51 +0530
Friends and comrades,
You all know that we have been taking various programmes against Eviction without rehabilitation and for Rehabilitation for all the evictees for more than three years. We have been doing this more or less consistently. But we are far away from getting our basic demands won, though here and there some concessions and relieves have been achieved. In spite of the clear-cut declaration in the Common Minimum programme of the UPA govt (which is ratified by the Left Front) both the Central and the State govt. have been continuing their eviction programme. Recently they have announced that they are going to evict thousands of families residing at Ballygung-Tollygung railway side jhupris in the first week of March, 2005. It may be added that the local jhupri residents are doing their best to continue and develop the resistance movement.
In this situation we are calling all concern citizens and organisations to join hands to strengthen the anti-eviction movement, in general and the ensuing railway colony eviction, in particular.
We also invite you to participate in the following programme toawrds the same.
14 February, 2005
Convenor
Joint Platform against Eviction
Sit-in Demonstration at Hazra Crossing
(The concern citizens along with the evicted and would-be-evicted persons will be present)
22 February, 2005 3 pm to 9 pm
Documentation films on the agony and protest of the affected people in Tolly Nullah, Beleghata and Rabindra Sarovar will also be shown.
Contact: 2465 2507, 94331 30349
February 17, 2005
Immediate Relief for the State-initiated Tsunami Victims - Letter to Sonia Gandhi
To
Smt. Sonia Gandhi,
The President,
The Indian National Congress,
New Delhi.
Sub : Immediate Relief for the State-initiated Tsunami Victims in Mumbai
Madam,
It is rather heartening that, as it appears from various media reports, you have taken some time off from your busy schedule and opted to take note, even if somewhat belated, of the terrible human disaster that is at the moment tormenting Mumbai. It provides us a small consolation that the myriad protest struggles being waged by the hapless affected, and the numerous petitions sent to you, have eventually been able to draw your attention to the ongoing human tragedy of massive proportions.
As you are aware, around eighty thousand poor working class families, contributing their mites in a number of meaningful ways in building and running the megapolis, have been stripped of their ramshackle shelters at the peak of the winter season in the name of beautifying the city by literally bulldozing the ìillegalî hutments which allegedly came up after 31st December, 1994. In the process even those who were staying at the same place for well over a decade have lost their meager homes and means for survival.
The drive, as you know, was launched in early December by a government which had just come to power with an impressive show in the city in the assembly election held about six weeks back on the basis of the general promise that the Congress will stand with the common people and the specific commitment that all the hutments built till the end of 1999 will be regularised.
Madam, youíd surely remember, you yourself had actively participated in the election campaign, and road shows in the city, to lend credibility to these promises.
Consequently, this ongoing inhuman drive on the part of the State, to destroy the lives of a large number of its poor and vulnerable citizens instead of actively intervening to protect, spearheaded by a Chief Minister, who not so long ago had been publicly dallying with the Shiv Sena, is just not soiling the image of your party ñ it is a downright assault on your personal credibility as well, with an all-India and long term ramification.
There is a widespread belief that the ëbeautificationí drive is nothing more than a clever ploy to line the pockets of those occupying the high offices and their blood brothers in the building industry at the cost of the common citizenry. This impression gets further strengthened if one looks at the role of this government in gifting away precious mill lands, which had been leased out by the State for carrying out productive activities, to the mill owners again blatantly revising the government stands taken earlier to the detriment of all other stakeholders. The move towards scrapping the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) and active lobbying by this selfsame government to bring about relaxation of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification by the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), even in the teeth of the terrible tsunami experience, are pointers in the same direction.
Under the circumstances, you are once again requested to actively intervene in halting the devilish drive forthwith, ensure proper shelters for those whose homes have been destroyed, formulate a national housing policy and implement it expeditiously to provide affordable housing to urban and rural poor, and, the last but not the least, ensure participation of all sections of stakeholders in the process of town and city planning. Madam, saving the lives of lakhs must be considered far more important than saving the prestige of a Chief Minister of doubtful commitments and intentions.
Thanking you,
Sukla Sen
EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity),
Mumbai
Smt. Sonia Gandhi,
The President,
The Indian National Congress,
New Delhi.
Sub : Immediate Relief for the State-initiated Tsunami Victims in Mumbai
Madam,
It is rather heartening that, as it appears from various media reports, you have taken some time off from your busy schedule and opted to take note, even if somewhat belated, of the terrible human disaster that is at the moment tormenting Mumbai. It provides us a small consolation that the myriad protest struggles being waged by the hapless affected, and the numerous petitions sent to you, have eventually been able to draw your attention to the ongoing human tragedy of massive proportions.
As you are aware, around eighty thousand poor working class families, contributing their mites in a number of meaningful ways in building and running the megapolis, have been stripped of their ramshackle shelters at the peak of the winter season in the name of beautifying the city by literally bulldozing the ìillegalî hutments which allegedly came up after 31st December, 1994. In the process even those who were staying at the same place for well over a decade have lost their meager homes and means for survival.
The drive, as you know, was launched in early December by a government which had just come to power with an impressive show in the city in the assembly election held about six weeks back on the basis of the general promise that the Congress will stand with the common people and the specific commitment that all the hutments built till the end of 1999 will be regularised.
Madam, youíd surely remember, you yourself had actively participated in the election campaign, and road shows in the city, to lend credibility to these promises.
Consequently, this ongoing inhuman drive on the part of the State, to destroy the lives of a large number of its poor and vulnerable citizens instead of actively intervening to protect, spearheaded by a Chief Minister, who not so long ago had been publicly dallying with the Shiv Sena, is just not soiling the image of your party ñ it is a downright assault on your personal credibility as well, with an all-India and long term ramification.
There is a widespread belief that the ëbeautificationí drive is nothing more than a clever ploy to line the pockets of those occupying the high offices and their blood brothers in the building industry at the cost of the common citizenry. This impression gets further strengthened if one looks at the role of this government in gifting away precious mill lands, which had been leased out by the State for carrying out productive activities, to the mill owners again blatantly revising the government stands taken earlier to the detriment of all other stakeholders. The move towards scrapping the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA) and active lobbying by this selfsame government to bring about relaxation of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification by the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), even in the teeth of the terrible tsunami experience, are pointers in the same direction.
Under the circumstances, you are once again requested to actively intervene in halting the devilish drive forthwith, ensure proper shelters for those whose homes have been destroyed, formulate a national housing policy and implement it expeditiously to provide affordable housing to urban and rural poor, and, the last but not the least, ensure participation of all sections of stakeholders in the process of town and city planning. Madam, saving the lives of lakhs must be considered far more important than saving the prestige of a Chief Minister of doubtful commitments and intentions.
Thanking you,
Sukla Sen
EKTA (Committee for Communal Amity),
Mumbai
February 14, 2005
Letter to India's Prime Minister re Slum demolitions in Mumbai (Ammu Abraham)
To: Shree Manmohan Singh, The Prime Minister of India
and
Shreemati Sonia Gandhi, The UPA Chairperson and President, Congress Party,
Mumbai, 14-02-2005
Dear Sir / Madam,
As you know, the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, with the support of the BMC and the Govt of Maharashtra, have been on a spree of slum demolitions, of allegedly post-1995 habitations. Until now, the people who lived in these habitations have not been given any shelter, however temporary; their children cannot sit for exams, they cannot cook food and eat. They sit around all day long under the sun, hoping for something. Most of them are working people and they have been unable to go to work as they are sitting around guarding their belongings.
There is a conviction among the middle class in Mumbai that these people are a great strain on the infrastucture of the city. This is far from true. Thousands of acres of mill lands coming free and being sold in the old textile area of Parel etc are going to have huge high rises on 80 to 90% of it. That is going to put a great strain on the infrastructure and bare necessities of life in Mumbai, especially water. The slums cannot rise very high, and as such are not that much of a strain on infrastructure.
As for the 1995 cut off date, we are told that many people who lost their dwellings and whole bustees were there before 1995, some for a very long time. The Congress made a pre-election promise that the cut-off date will be moved to 2000; many slum dwellers who would have voted for a certain other party, voted for the Congress in the last Assembly elections on that promise. That is how the Congress has made such a come- back in Mumbai. By the sleight of hand of changing the Chief Minister, promises solemnly made should not be broken.
And irrespective of all this, these are citizens and citizenesses of India; they are being callously disenfranchized, struck off the electoral rolls. Soon they will not exist, for all legal purposes. Even illegal migrants, or even animals or any living thing should not be treated in this manner.
Apparently, all this is being done in furtherance of the "Shanghai-Mumbai" plan. But India is not China, and Mumbai is not Shanghai. It is not even Delhi, which has already been cleansed by chasing all the poor out. Mumbai has been the mother of all the displaced of India who are capable of working, but without a livelihood elsewhere.
We are not saying that people should be allowed to build habitations over crucial water pipes and so on; but that the demolitions should not be so indiscriminate, and that going ahead with this get rich scheme of builders in Mumbai will spell the end of Mumbai one of these days.
On Saturday, just 2 days ago, Medha Patkar of NBA, Prakash Reddy of CPI and a number of others have been also arrested, and incarcerated, in relation to a protest near Rafiq Nagar bustee, which had been demolished last December. 1000 families had been rendered homeless at one stroke. The women and children have been sleeping in a cemetery nearby since then. These are people who had homes, who had work, whose children were going to school. The government of Maharashtra and the Mumbai Municipal Corporation increased the number of homeless, jobless and school dropouts by 1000 families at one stroke. And we go begging every other day to the World Bank and ADB and IMF, for loans for development, especially of Mumbai. Where is all this money going? A lot of it was supposed to improve life for the suburban commuters of Mumbai, the miserable suburban population, spending an average of 4 hours packed into mind numbing misery daily. A whole lot of people squatting on railway lands have got new places; but has the commuters’ life improved? Not a jot. The bridges are higher; making physical exertion greater than ever, even for the ageing, the sick and the disabled; but the promise of one more line to separate out the outstation trains so that the commuters do not have to run up the stairs and down when locals are shifted to other platforms – even that has not been done; never mind Shree Govinda, Congress M.P. from Mumbai referring to his mother, taking a much advertized train ride pre-elections and challenging Shree Ram Naik of the BJP (quite rightly) etc.
If you cannot build for the people, alleviate their misery, at least do not demolish what they have already built, so heartlessly.
Stop the demolitions immediately.
Release all arrested persons immediately and call them for discussions about the demolitions and resettlement.
Put up some permanent camps in Mumbai for temporary shelters for the displaced, in every zone; do not leave people/children out on the streets.
Remove all the security guards - paid for by the builders’ lobby , from the demolished areas.
Compensate those whose homes have been illegally demolished.
Pay attention to the school-going children and make arrangements for them to continue to attend school
Make arrangements for the elderly and the sick; do a survey on how many are already dead due to the demolitions
Conduct an enquiry into how women are managing and arrange for counselling for those who are greatly distressed.
We are all crying for the Tsunami-hit people, calling for the establishment of democracy in Nepal.
These demolitions are violating several fundmental rights of the victimized people, according to the Constitution of India. What is the point of having a Constitution, if the most fundamental rights of the citizenry is violated, and the poor can be thrown out and not only their labour, but even their meagre possessions can be misappropriated any time by agencies of the state? Has some ledger been kept somewhere about what the belongings of each of these men, women and children are? Did someone keep track of how many notebooks, pencils, erasers of every child student in the demolished bustees were? If not, how can they even be compensated for personal property destroyed? Are they not human beings and are their dreams not as worthy as those of any of your children?
Please stop the demolitions immediately, and start taking stock of the destruction.
Yours truly,
Ammu Abraham for the Women’s Centre, Bombay.
and
Shreemati Sonia Gandhi, The UPA Chairperson and President, Congress Party,
Mumbai, 14-02-2005
Dear Sir / Madam,
As you know, the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, with the support of the BMC and the Govt of Maharashtra, have been on a spree of slum demolitions, of allegedly post-1995 habitations. Until now, the people who lived in these habitations have not been given any shelter, however temporary; their children cannot sit for exams, they cannot cook food and eat. They sit around all day long under the sun, hoping for something. Most of them are working people and they have been unable to go to work as they are sitting around guarding their belongings.
There is a conviction among the middle class in Mumbai that these people are a great strain on the infrastucture of the city. This is far from true. Thousands of acres of mill lands coming free and being sold in the old textile area of Parel etc are going to have huge high rises on 80 to 90% of it. That is going to put a great strain on the infrastructure and bare necessities of life in Mumbai, especially water. The slums cannot rise very high, and as such are not that much of a strain on infrastructure.
As for the 1995 cut off date, we are told that many people who lost their dwellings and whole bustees were there before 1995, some for a very long time. The Congress made a pre-election promise that the cut-off date will be moved to 2000; many slum dwellers who would have voted for a certain other party, voted for the Congress in the last Assembly elections on that promise. That is how the Congress has made such a come- back in Mumbai. By the sleight of hand of changing the Chief Minister, promises solemnly made should not be broken.
And irrespective of all this, these are citizens and citizenesses of India; they are being callously disenfranchized, struck off the electoral rolls. Soon they will not exist, for all legal purposes. Even illegal migrants, or even animals or any living thing should not be treated in this manner.
Apparently, all this is being done in furtherance of the "Shanghai-Mumbai" plan. But India is not China, and Mumbai is not Shanghai. It is not even Delhi, which has already been cleansed by chasing all the poor out. Mumbai has been the mother of all the displaced of India who are capable of working, but without a livelihood elsewhere.
We are not saying that people should be allowed to build habitations over crucial water pipes and so on; but that the demolitions should not be so indiscriminate, and that going ahead with this get rich scheme of builders in Mumbai will spell the end of Mumbai one of these days.
On Saturday, just 2 days ago, Medha Patkar of NBA, Prakash Reddy of CPI and a number of others have been also arrested, and incarcerated, in relation to a protest near Rafiq Nagar bustee, which had been demolished last December. 1000 families had been rendered homeless at one stroke. The women and children have been sleeping in a cemetery nearby since then. These are people who had homes, who had work, whose children were going to school. The government of Maharashtra and the Mumbai Municipal Corporation increased the number of homeless, jobless and school dropouts by 1000 families at one stroke. And we go begging every other day to the World Bank and ADB and IMF, for loans for development, especially of Mumbai. Where is all this money going? A lot of it was supposed to improve life for the suburban commuters of Mumbai, the miserable suburban population, spending an average of 4 hours packed into mind numbing misery daily. A whole lot of people squatting on railway lands have got new places; but has the commuters’ life improved? Not a jot. The bridges are higher; making physical exertion greater than ever, even for the ageing, the sick and the disabled; but the promise of one more line to separate out the outstation trains so that the commuters do not have to run up the stairs and down when locals are shifted to other platforms – even that has not been done; never mind Shree Govinda, Congress M.P. from Mumbai referring to his mother, taking a much advertized train ride pre-elections and challenging Shree Ram Naik of the BJP (quite rightly) etc.
If you cannot build for the people, alleviate their misery, at least do not demolish what they have already built, so heartlessly.
Stop the demolitions immediately.
Release all arrested persons immediately and call them for discussions about the demolitions and resettlement.
Put up some permanent camps in Mumbai for temporary shelters for the displaced, in every zone; do not leave people/children out on the streets.
Remove all the security guards - paid for by the builders’ lobby , from the demolished areas.
Compensate those whose homes have been illegally demolished.
Pay attention to the school-going children and make arrangements for them to continue to attend school
Make arrangements for the elderly and the sick; do a survey on how many are already dead due to the demolitions
Conduct an enquiry into how women are managing and arrange for counselling for those who are greatly distressed.
We are all crying for the Tsunami-hit people, calling for the establishment of democracy in Nepal.
These demolitions are violating several fundmental rights of the victimized people, according to the Constitution of India. What is the point of having a Constitution, if the most fundamental rights of the citizenry is violated, and the poor can be thrown out and not only their labour, but even their meagre possessions can be misappropriated any time by agencies of the state? Has some ledger been kept somewhere about what the belongings of each of these men, women and children are? Did someone keep track of how many notebooks, pencils, erasers of every child student in the demolished bustees were? If not, how can they even be compensated for personal property destroyed? Are they not human beings and are their dreams not as worthy as those of any of your children?
Please stop the demolitions immediately, and start taking stock of the destruction.
Yours truly,
Ammu Abraham for the Women’s Centre, Bombay.
Stop Further Demolitions - Press Note ZopadPatti Bachao Kriti Samiti
ZOPADPATTI BACHAO KRITI SAMITI
C/o Bhupesh Gupta Bhavan, Sayani Road, Prabhadevi, Mumbai-400025
Press Note/ 13.2. 2005
HUNDREDS OF EVICTED HUTMENT DWELLERS CONFRONT RULING PARTY IN MUMBAI: STOP FURTHER DEMOLITIONS, RELIEF & REHABILITATION FOR EVICTED
Hundreds of the evicted slumdwellers in Mumbai demanded the rulong Congress party that all the demolitions be stoppedc forthwith and the evicted people be allowed to resetle on the same land, and the state should provide food, shelter, clean water amnd compensation for the grave violation of human and democratic rights by the Maharashtra government, at the behest of the corporate powers. It called on the Congress party to stnad for the Œcommon people‚ as per its declared stance and restore, protect life and livelihoods of poor people.
Over five hundred representative men and women from over 15 hutment colonies and activists over 20 organizations comprising of the Zopadpatti Bachao Samyukta Kruti Samiti converged on front of the headquarters of Maharashtra State Congress Committee in Tilak Bhavan. Many women came with their children and many have left them behind to register their protest. Both the men and women had lost their livelihood and the older chidren and college-going youngsters had to face displacement and destitution when their examinations are nearing. Despite the destitution they have beewn facing for over two months, the people kept alive the fire to fight for their right to life. "We have no choice, but to fight for ourroght ti life. It seems that the Maharashtra government and the corporate and media elites care only for the rights of the rich people", said the agitated people. " The eviction of the hutment dwellers is a conspiracy against the Bahujan Samaj (the backward). We have brought these people to power; now they are serving the moneyed interests. We can drag them off the seat if power as well", announced the young Siddharth.
In the afternoon the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Comittee Chief, Mrs. Prabha Rau invited a 10-member delegation for discussion. It seems that Mrs. Rau and other Congress leaders were hesitant to assure the instant stippage of the eviction or relief to the already evicted. It was curious that the former ministerm Hussain Dalwai was non-commital about stoping the demolitions and was beating around the bush. He also blamed the previous Sena dominated Mumbai Metopolitan Corporation for ordering the demolitions and police atrocities! Another former minister Kripa Shanker Singh was at least apologetic but equally non-commital. They however insisted that the demolitions is a complicated issue.
In the end Medha Patkar made it clear that the state government should not wait for three days to stop the demolitions, provide relief if shelter, food, clean water, medical service and stoping the police teror and atrocity. She demanded that the Congress Party should make it clear whether it envisages any place for the poor people in the city development plan. " We would be watching what stance Mrs. Margater Alva and other Congress leaders take in the Mumbai-Vision seminar, sponsored by the builders and corporate powers".
Earlier the day, the delegation of the Samyukta Kriti Samiti met the General Secretary of All India Congress Committee amd the party in-charge of Maharashtra affairs, Mrs. Margate Alva. They gave a detailed memorundum and asked her to restrain the Maharashtra government. They criticised the so-caled development plam for Maharashtra prepared by the multinational McKinsey company. They pointed out that there has been unprecedented violation of the human rights of over 35 million people, by razing over 80,000 huts. It had adversely affected the education of about 10 million people. The people have been living on the dust, dirt and garbage, deliberately filled in by the Corporation to make it difficult for ti re-occupy the cleared land. There were large scale police atrocities, and still they are being harassed by the police. They asked Mrs. Alva to make the Congress party to honour the assurance made in the pre-election manifesto. They demanded that ˆ
Stop the inhuman demolitions, withdeaw the police and private security forces, respect electoral promises amd give the rights ti the hutment dwellers upto 2000; rehabilitate the already evicted at the same place giving them the land right, paying the compensation upto Rs. 30,000 for the damages. Th organizations asked for strictly enforcing the urban land ceiling act and free over 2500 hectares lamd from capotalists; they demanded the imediate and unconditional withdeawal of the cases against the hutment dwelers and the activists. They also demanded that the city development plan should have the plan for the housing of the poor people and that "separate land for slums, poor, and marginalized people" It made clear that while planning for the Mumbai the vision of poor 60% of the people‚s livelihods, shelter should be priotected and be given top priority.
Vidya Chavan
Vitthal Ghag
Raju Bhise
Sanjay Shinde
Dhruv Rerdkar
Vilas Rohimal
Anand Kamble
Shakil Ahmed others
C/o Bhupesh Gupta Bhavan, Sayani Road, Prabhadevi, Mumbai-400025
Press Note/ 13.2. 2005
HUNDREDS OF EVICTED HUTMENT DWELLERS CONFRONT RULING PARTY IN MUMBAI: STOP FURTHER DEMOLITIONS, RELIEF & REHABILITATION FOR EVICTED
Hundreds of the evicted slumdwellers in Mumbai demanded the rulong Congress party that all the demolitions be stoppedc forthwith and the evicted people be allowed to resetle on the same land, and the state should provide food, shelter, clean water amnd compensation for the grave violation of human and democratic rights by the Maharashtra government, at the behest of the corporate powers. It called on the Congress party to stnad for the Œcommon people‚ as per its declared stance and restore, protect life and livelihoods of poor people.
Over five hundred representative men and women from over 15 hutment colonies and activists over 20 organizations comprising of the Zopadpatti Bachao Samyukta Kruti Samiti converged on front of the headquarters of Maharashtra State Congress Committee in Tilak Bhavan. Many women came with their children and many have left them behind to register their protest. Both the men and women had lost their livelihood and the older chidren and college-going youngsters had to face displacement and destitution when their examinations are nearing. Despite the destitution they have beewn facing for over two months, the people kept alive the fire to fight for their right to life. "We have no choice, but to fight for ourroght ti life. It seems that the Maharashtra government and the corporate and media elites care only for the rights of the rich people", said the agitated people. " The eviction of the hutment dwellers is a conspiracy against the Bahujan Samaj (the backward). We have brought these people to power; now they are serving the moneyed interests. We can drag them off the seat if power as well", announced the young Siddharth.
In the afternoon the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Comittee Chief, Mrs. Prabha Rau invited a 10-member delegation for discussion. It seems that Mrs. Rau and other Congress leaders were hesitant to assure the instant stippage of the eviction or relief to the already evicted. It was curious that the former ministerm Hussain Dalwai was non-commital about stoping the demolitions and was beating around the bush. He also blamed the previous Sena dominated Mumbai Metopolitan Corporation for ordering the demolitions and police atrocities! Another former minister Kripa Shanker Singh was at least apologetic but equally non-commital. They however insisted that the demolitions is a complicated issue.
In the end Medha Patkar made it clear that the state government should not wait for three days to stop the demolitions, provide relief if shelter, food, clean water, medical service and stoping the police teror and atrocity. She demanded that the Congress Party should make it clear whether it envisages any place for the poor people in the city development plan. " We would be watching what stance Mrs. Margater Alva and other Congress leaders take in the Mumbai-Vision seminar, sponsored by the builders and corporate powers".
Earlier the day, the delegation of the Samyukta Kriti Samiti met the General Secretary of All India Congress Committee amd the party in-charge of Maharashtra affairs, Mrs. Margate Alva. They gave a detailed memorundum and asked her to restrain the Maharashtra government. They criticised the so-caled development plam for Maharashtra prepared by the multinational McKinsey company. They pointed out that there has been unprecedented violation of the human rights of over 35 million people, by razing over 80,000 huts. It had adversely affected the education of about 10 million people. The people have been living on the dust, dirt and garbage, deliberately filled in by the Corporation to make it difficult for ti re-occupy the cleared land. There were large scale police atrocities, and still they are being harassed by the police. They asked Mrs. Alva to make the Congress party to honour the assurance made in the pre-election manifesto. They demanded that ˆ
Stop the inhuman demolitions, withdeaw the police and private security forces, respect electoral promises amd give the rights ti the hutment dwellers upto 2000; rehabilitate the already evicted at the same place giving them the land right, paying the compensation upto Rs. 30,000 for the damages. Th organizations asked for strictly enforcing the urban land ceiling act and free over 2500 hectares lamd from capotalists; they demanded the imediate and unconditional withdeawal of the cases against the hutment dwelers and the activists. They also demanded that the city development plan should have the plan for the housing of the poor people and that "separate land for slums, poor, and marginalized people" It made clear that while planning for the Mumbai the vision of poor 60% of the people‚s livelihods, shelter should be priotected and be given top priority.
Vidya Chavan
Vitthal Ghag
Raju Bhise
Sanjay Shinde
Dhruv Rerdkar
Vilas Rohimal
Anand Kamble
Shakil Ahmed others
February 12, 2005
Sample Letter of Protest for Faxing (drwn up by NAPM activists)
SAMPLE LETTER OF PROTEST BELOW FOR FAXING.
To,
1) The Prime Minister of India - Fax : 011 - 23016857 / 23019817
2) Mrs. Sonia Gandhi - Fax : 011 - 23018651
3) The Chief Minister of Maharashtra -022 - 23631446
4) The Deputy Chief Minister, Maharashtra - 022 - 23631505
Dear Sir / Madam,
We are shocked and most perturbed to witness the most blatant human rights violations taking place in the enlightened and prosperous State of Maharashtra, committed by the State itself. I am sure that we need not spell out that all forced evictions destroy not just the families but also the communities, the livelihood of the residents, their culture and community life. Women and children are the worst affected. A number of children have died out in the winter, which has been exceptionally severe this year, their health, nutrition, security and sense of security, are lost for ever. Their education lies disturbed, their books lie crushed under the might of the bull- dozers sent by the State to turn its citizens into refugees in their own lands. Their parents take turns sitting guard ˆ night and day, over their limited belongings, instead of going to work.
The people thus bull dozed, live in slums for different reasons. Some are not even slums but „gaothans‰. Their families have lived there since four generations, some since 40 years, the trees they have planted are big and bear fruits which they offer the visitors, despite the dire straits they are in themselves. Originally, Bombay was a village of fisher ˆ folk, yet a place like Moragaon, a fisher folk's village, was bull- dozed and set fire to, destroying documentation and spreading terror.
Rafiq Nagar was bull ˆ dozed in December and about 1000 families had nowhere to go, so they have been sleeping amidst the graves in a cemetery. The residents of Rafiq Nagar had painfully filled in a " Nala" by their own hard labour and made land for their houses. Since yesterday, the original slum area is being converted into a dumping ground for garbage. When people peacefully protested, they were „lathi charged‰, arrested and locked up!! Even observers have been arrested.The police are ensuring that the "dirty slum dweller" is replaced permanently by Mumbai's " clean garbage ".
The story continues with very limited variations and 3 lakh Indian citizens are made homeless by a State which prefers to cater to the greed of a handful of rich at the expense and total destruction of the majority of the Indian population.
After coming into power on promises of legalising hutments built upto the year 2000, the Maharashtra government does not feel at all obliged to keep its promise. Infact the Municipal authorities have even asked that the people whose houses are demolished should be removed from the electoral rolls ! What a wonderful way of making sure that no backlash hurts the rulers even in the next elections !!!!!
Even at this very moment, more of the homeless and their sympathisers, including Medha Patkar, Raju Bhise,Prakash Reddy, Leena Joshi, Vijaya Chauhan, Kalpana Gowde from various peoples' movements and NGO's are being arrested.
* We demand that all further demolitions must stop immediately.
* All arrested persons should be released immediately.
* Remove all the security guards - paid for by the builders lobby , from the demolished areas.
* Compensate those whose homes are illegally demolished.
* Stop displacing people in the villages and destroying their resource bases if you do not want slums in the cities.
* Actively provide facilities in the villages, including employment - in the hinterlands.
* In your hurry to turn Mumbai into Shanghai, please do not make it into another Tianamen Square, Peking !!
It is the concept of „human dignity‰ that distinguishes humanity from the animal world. The Supreme Court of India has recognized that the Right to Life includes the Right to Food and Clothing, Right to Shelter and the Right to Livelihood. Deprivation of a single one of these leads to a loss of dignity, fundamental freedoms as also equality.
Kindly take immediate action and ensure that such attrocities never recur in our fair land.
To,
1) The Prime Minister of India - Fax : 011 - 23016857 / 23019817
2) Mrs. Sonia Gandhi - Fax : 011 - 23018651
3) The Chief Minister of Maharashtra -022 - 23631446
4) The Deputy Chief Minister, Maharashtra - 022 - 23631505
Dear Sir / Madam,
We are shocked and most perturbed to witness the most blatant human rights violations taking place in the enlightened and prosperous State of Maharashtra, committed by the State itself. I am sure that we need not spell out that all forced evictions destroy not just the families but also the communities, the livelihood of the residents, their culture and community life. Women and children are the worst affected. A number of children have died out in the winter, which has been exceptionally severe this year, their health, nutrition, security and sense of security, are lost for ever. Their education lies disturbed, their books lie crushed under the might of the bull- dozers sent by the State to turn its citizens into refugees in their own lands. Their parents take turns sitting guard ˆ night and day, over their limited belongings, instead of going to work.
The people thus bull dozed, live in slums for different reasons. Some are not even slums but „gaothans‰. Their families have lived there since four generations, some since 40 years, the trees they have planted are big and bear fruits which they offer the visitors, despite the dire straits they are in themselves. Originally, Bombay was a village of fisher ˆ folk, yet a place like Moragaon, a fisher folk's village, was bull- dozed and set fire to, destroying documentation and spreading terror.
Rafiq Nagar was bull ˆ dozed in December and about 1000 families had nowhere to go, so they have been sleeping amidst the graves in a cemetery. The residents of Rafiq Nagar had painfully filled in a " Nala" by their own hard labour and made land for their houses. Since yesterday, the original slum area is being converted into a dumping ground for garbage. When people peacefully protested, they were „lathi charged‰, arrested and locked up!! Even observers have been arrested.The police are ensuring that the "dirty slum dweller" is replaced permanently by Mumbai's " clean garbage ".
The story continues with very limited variations and 3 lakh Indian citizens are made homeless by a State which prefers to cater to the greed of a handful of rich at the expense and total destruction of the majority of the Indian population.
After coming into power on promises of legalising hutments built upto the year 2000, the Maharashtra government does not feel at all obliged to keep its promise. Infact the Municipal authorities have even asked that the people whose houses are demolished should be removed from the electoral rolls ! What a wonderful way of making sure that no backlash hurts the rulers even in the next elections !!!!!
Even at this very moment, more of the homeless and their sympathisers, including Medha Patkar, Raju Bhise,Prakash Reddy, Leena Joshi, Vijaya Chauhan, Kalpana Gowde from various peoples' movements and NGO's are being arrested.
* We demand that all further demolitions must stop immediately.
* All arrested persons should be released immediately.
* Remove all the security guards - paid for by the builders lobby , from the demolished areas.
* Compensate those whose homes are illegally demolished.
* Stop displacing people in the villages and destroying their resource bases if you do not want slums in the cities.
* Actively provide facilities in the villages, including employment - in the hinterlands.
* In your hurry to turn Mumbai into Shanghai, please do not make it into another Tianamen Square, Peking !!
It is the concept of „human dignity‰ that distinguishes humanity from the animal world. The Supreme Court of India has recognized that the Right to Life includes the Right to Food and Clothing, Right to Shelter and the Right to Livelihood. Deprivation of a single one of these leads to a loss of dignity, fundamental freedoms as also equality.
Kindly take immediate action and ensure that such attrocities never recur in our fair land.
Police Arrest and Lathi Charge Protesting Slum People - Press Statement by National Alliance of People's Movements
National Alliance of People's Movements
Haji Habib Building, Naigaon Cross Road
Dadar (E), Mumbai - 400014
-------------------------------------------------------------
PRESS STATEMENT
Mumbai | February 12, 2005
Police Arrest and Lathi Charge Protesting Slum People
Senior Activist including Medha Patkar, Prakash Reddy Held
In a daylong sequence of events, police lathi charged (cane beating) a
gathering of over 1200 people near the Deonar police station today
afternoon. The people were protesting the demolition of their houses in
Rafiq nagar slum area and were demanding the release of over 300 people who were arrested earlier the day. Most of them were released in the afternoon, but nearly 30 people, mainly senior activists, were re-arrested.
The people who are under arrest include, Medha Patkar, Prakash Reddy of
Communist Party of India, Raju Bhise of NAPM, Vijaya Chauhan, Kalpana Gowda of Asha Ankur, Leena Joshi of Apnalaya, Nitin More of Apli Mumbai, Shakil Ahmed of Nirbay Bano Andolan and others from Rafiq nagar. They are lodged in Shivaji nagar as well as Chirag nagar police stations.
They are booked under sections 147, 143, 447 which are relate to rioting,
illegal gathering etc.
The police mercilessly beat the people, who were trapped in the gullies,
near Deonar police station. The number of people injured in the lathi
charge in not known at the release of this statement.
Rafiq nagar slum was reclaimed from a marshy land in 1996. There were about 800 houses before demolition. The police, aided with bulldozers, demolished the houses in last December. Since then, the people were living in open and make shift locations.
Rafiq nagar is only one of the many slums, which was demolished by the
government in the past 2 months. Over 80,000 houses were demolished so far.
National Alliance of People‚s Movements condemn this undemocratic action of the government and demand that all further demolitions must stop
immediately and all arrested persons should be released immediately.
Further, if the government is serious about checking the growth of slums,
stop displacing people and provide facilities in the villages, including
employment - in the hinterlands.
Pervin Jehangir | Maju Varghese | Joe Athialy
Haji Habib Building, Naigaon Cross Road
Dadar (E), Mumbai - 400014
-------------------------------------------------------------
PRESS STATEMENT
Mumbai | February 12, 2005
Police Arrest and Lathi Charge Protesting Slum People
Senior Activist including Medha Patkar, Prakash Reddy Held
In a daylong sequence of events, police lathi charged (cane beating) a
gathering of over 1200 people near the Deonar police station today
afternoon. The people were protesting the demolition of their houses in
Rafiq nagar slum area and were demanding the release of over 300 people who were arrested earlier the day. Most of them were released in the afternoon, but nearly 30 people, mainly senior activists, were re-arrested.
The people who are under arrest include, Medha Patkar, Prakash Reddy of
Communist Party of India, Raju Bhise of NAPM, Vijaya Chauhan, Kalpana Gowda of Asha Ankur, Leena Joshi of Apnalaya, Nitin More of Apli Mumbai, Shakil Ahmed of Nirbay Bano Andolan and others from Rafiq nagar. They are lodged in Shivaji nagar as well as Chirag nagar police stations.
They are booked under sections 147, 143, 447 which are relate to rioting,
illegal gathering etc.
The police mercilessly beat the people, who were trapped in the gullies,
near Deonar police station. The number of people injured in the lathi
charge in not known at the release of this statement.
Rafiq nagar slum was reclaimed from a marshy land in 1996. There were about 800 houses before demolition. The police, aided with bulldozers, demolished the houses in last December. Since then, the people were living in open and make shift locations.
Rafiq nagar is only one of the many slums, which was demolished by the
government in the past 2 months. Over 80,000 houses were demolished so far.
National Alliance of People‚s Movements condemn this undemocratic action of the government and demand that all further demolitions must stop
immediately and all arrested persons should be released immediately.
Further, if the government is serious about checking the growth of slums,
stop displacing people and provide facilities in the villages, including
employment - in the hinterlands.
Pervin Jehangir | Maju Varghese | Joe Athialy
February 10, 2005
February 05, 2005
Mumbai's Expendable Poor (Anu Kumar)
The Economic and Political Weekly
February 5, 2005
Mumbai's Expendable Poor
The current demolition drive in Mumbai by the Congress-led coalition government pushes to the wayside the poor of Mumbai who live in 'illegal' shanties. The government action goes against the grain of successful experiments of community involvement in resettlement and appears to reverse the slum development policy of the 1990s. Development cannot proceed without taking into account the needs of the slum dwelling populace who make up substantial numbers of the city. Sustainable growth is possible only if all stakeholders in the process including slum dwellers and the poor are given a say in schemes that affect them.
by Anu Kumar
Slum: ·. a squalid and overcrowded urban area inhabited by very poor people.› a house in such a place.
– (Concise Oxford Dictionary,
Tenth Edition, 2000)
In a demolition drive that began on December 8, 2004 and still continues, the Maharashtra government and the Brihan Mumbai Corporation demolished 70,000 shanties they claimed were illegal, clearing in the process as many as 306 acres of land, dislocating over 3 lakh people and affecting thousands of others. It was a demolition that went against the grain of what the Congress promised in its election manifesto in the recent assembly elections – to protect slums built before 2000 – a promise widely believed to have garnered electoral support among Mumbai’s poor. At the same time, the government through its advertisements continues to make the ironical claim that its actions constitute a chance at freedom for slum dwellers – who comprise half of Mumbai’s population. “The Slum Rehabilitation Authority through its various projects has been constantly working towards the upliftment of these citizens of our metropolis’’, proclaims one advertisement. The spate of demolitions, however, is an apparent reversal of Maharashtra’s longstanding policy towards slums.
Maharashtra Policy
After independence, efforts were initially geared towards rehabilitating the population of slums and improving their conditions of living. Between 1943 and 1956, the government of the erstwhile Bombay state disbursed small grants to various municipal bodies for improvement of slums. In 1956, this changed when the central government approved a Slum Clearance Plan. Bombay was one of the six pilot cities covered under this scheme.
The strategy of demolitions that began with the plan was pursued till the 1970s. However, it did not work because people, after some time, simply re-built their huts at the same location or, if there was too much harassment, at another unoccupied location nearby. Moreover, land-owning agencies were ill equipped to police their lands and lower level officials often connived with middlemen to allow encroachments. Even when the state government did try to resettle the poor, they were unsuccessful. Resettlement proceeded erratically, dependant on the whims and fancies of local municipal officials and the poor were completely excluded from any decision-making.
In the 1970s, the state first recognised the need for some form of resettlement for slum dwellers, after slums were demolished. A Slum Improvement Board (SIB) was set up, slums began to be viewed as housing solutions and the state began to provide water, sanitation, electricity and other amenities to these areas. After a census of huts on public lands was conducted in 1976, photo passes were issued to all those found eligible according as to whether they could establish that they were living in the slum at the time of census. Thus, 1,680 settlements with a population of 28 lakhs were identified. This was the first time slum dwellers were given any form of security. However, none of these programmes ever involved the poor in any stage of planning or implementation. Moreover, slums on central government and privately owned lands – which accounted for the largest chunk of land in the city – were excluded from the exercise. A second enumeration was carried out in 1983. 1,930 settlements with a population of 43 lakhs were counted. In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that eviction was a disturbance to the right to livelihood and hence infringed on the fundamental right to life. However, the court accepted the state government’s use of the 1976 and 1983 Census exercises to identify those people whose resettlement was guaranteed if eviction was necessary for public purposes.
In the 1980s, the World Bank’s Rs 53 crore Bombay Urban Development Project (BUDP) came into being with two programmes – the Slum Upgradation Programme (SUP) and the Low Income Group Shelter Programme (LISP). SUP consisted of giving a 30-year renewable lease of land to cooperative societies of slum dwellers (where the lands were not needed for public purposes), providing civic amenities on a cost-recovery basis and giving loans to upgrade people’s houses. Under the LISP, the state provided subsidised land to Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low Income Groups (LIG) to build their own homes in accordance with a type design. Although 85,000 families benefited, conditions on the ground did not change significantly. With SUP, existing inequalities in size of holdings were left untouched. Under LISP, there was a shift in the role of the state from provider to facilitator but the scheme did not reach the really poor. Both programmes also suffered from an absence of genuine community participation. And again, the SUP could not be implemented on central government or private land. This has been a noticeable precedent in Mumbai – for in spite of the Slum Areas Act that enables local authorities to provide services in settlements already ‘declared’ slums, many government agencies still do not permit the BMC to carry out ‘improvement’ of slums on their land. Thus, central agencies do not give permissions for basic amenities, upgradation or resettlement and slum dwellers continue to live on these lands.
Community Participation
In recent years, the development agenda has moved away from merely making ever-increasing demands on the state, to sustained advocacy by organisations of the poor for the formulation of pro-poor strategies in which the poor and the state are identified as potential partners. Since the 1980s, organisations, such as Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) have been working towards ensuring some security of tenure and the importance of recognising the urban poor as partners in tenure and making shelter improvements at global, regional, national and local levels.
This initiative saw some success in 1997-98, when organised groups of slum dwellers were able with SPARC to reach an agreement with the Railroad Transport Authority, and municipal authorities to relocate and resettle several thousand households living in slum settlements located along side railway tracks in Mumbai (as part of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project). SPARC and the National Slum Dwellers Federation helped slum dwellers to organise and form cooperative housing societies. 12,000 families were rehabilitated in the suburb of Mankhurd. Except for an incident in February 2000, when railway authorities demolished 2,350 slum houses, the community-managed resettlement programme was orderly. The sudden eviction of settlers without compensation actually galvanised the government into action and it made available 2,000 apartments in Mankhurd and other land for transit settlements, where settlers were accommodated till the tenement blocks they were promised were completed. This solution was possible because the railway settlers were organised and able to stop the evictions.
Both the MUTP and Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) together accounted for the resettlement of 50,000 to 60,000 slum families. A small figure, yet standards of resettlement in these projects will serve as precedents for future resettlement. The key lesson that emerged was the importance for low-income households and their communities of being organised and of the necessity of their being able to engage in every step of the resettlement process from formulating relocation plans and determining the actual logistics of the move. The railway resettlement programme set several benchmarks – community organisations were ceded some of the powers traditionally enjoyed by government agencies in resettlement schemes, including the power to determine the eligibility of families and second, allocation of housing units in the resettlement area. It also stressed the importance of women-centred (‘Mahila Milan’ or women together) community participation, not merely on grounds of gender equity but also on the demonstration of their skills as household and community managers. Thus around the same time, 30,000 pavement families in Mumbai also formed Mahila Milan groups that succeeded in stopping repeated demolition of their shelters. The community was also mobilised to construct 5,000 toilet seats in the slums, in addition to the development of micro savings schemes for income generating activities.
The railway resettlement project established also the importance of a two-phase resettlement strategy. In the first phase where transit accommodation is provided, project authorities get quick access to the land that they need cleared, thereby avoiding delays and cost over-runs. The second advantage is that when people move to the new settlement, albeit temporarily but with the assurance of obtaining houses with secure tenure, they identify with the resettlement process and willingly become full participants in the next phase of resettlement, when permanent buildings are constructed.
Redevelopment Scheme of 1990s
Public projects such as MUTP or MUIP provided for free tenements of 225 sq ft for each family. The same norm was picked up by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) set up in the 1990s. The Slum Redevelopment Scheme of the SRA aimed to provide enough incentives – such as increasing the Floor Space Index (FSI) allowed in slum areas and the ability to transfer development rights to other areas of the city – for private developers and builders to redevelop slums. The theory was that by selling the extra space in the open market, tenements for slum dwellers would be cross-subsidised and made affordable to them. The state government also introduced legislation that protected slum dwellers who could establish that they were living at a particular place as of January 1, 1995. The homes of ‘eligible’ slum dwellers thus could not be demolished without their first being resettled [Burra 2001, 2003].
Redevelopment was a unique strategy taken up by the state government, radically different from the slum upgradation approach followed elsewhere. It was a scheme very unlike the 1987 play, ‘Redevelopment or Slum Clearance’, replete with political allegory by the Czech playwright and former president, Vaclav Havel. The play, set in a medieval castle in a historic town in eastern Europe, includes a state functionary, an emotionally chaotic project director, and a group of architects who struggle to come up with a high-rise building scheme that will destroy the ancient town’s character and incidentally clear away its slums.
For all its progressive features, the slum redevelopment scheme still did not contain proactive provisions to resettle families nor did it specify the nature of resettlement and the kinds of entitlements eligible slum dwellers would receive. The SRA promised to construct eight lakh tenements in five-six years. However, only a little over 19,000 tenements were completed in the mid-1990s. When a new government came to power in Maharashtra in 1995, one of its main election promises was to provide eight lakh free houses for 40 lakh slum dwellers in Mumbai. In August 1998, the Shiv Sena-BJP government set up the Shivshahi Punarvasan Prakalp Ltd (SPPL). The scheme was a rehash of the earlier slum redevelopment scheme. Slum land was to be handed over to builders for the construction of commercial complexes, with the builders in turn using part of their profits to build new houses for the residents of the slum. A Rs 600 crore loan to fund the SPPL was extracted from an extremely reluctant Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (MHADA) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) [Bavadam 1998].
Unlike the earlier redevelopment scheme (where the SRA was only a facilitating agency), the SPPL actively took on the role of a builder. Private builders themselves were given the role of contractors to get them to participate in the scheme. Under the earlier scheme, the builders were expected to make the capital investment without any input from the government, and there were no profit margins. Under the SPPL scheme, the builders as contractors could provide for profit margins. The state government also soon scaled down the size of the project from eight lakh units of 225 sq ft each to two lakh units of the same size. One of the main failings of the SPPL scheme was that it depended on public land as a resource, most of which was already occupied by squatters. By the time the Shiv Sena-BJP government was voted out of office in October 1999, not even a fraction of the number of flats it had promised to build had come up.
One of the criticisms of the SRA scheme was that it promoted high-rise, high density redevelopment as it relaxed FSI norms substantially – 2.5 against the normal FSI of 1.33 for the city and 1 for the suburbs and extended suburbs. High-rise buildings were more expensive to construct and also expensive to maintain. Moreover, they are not suitable for the life-styles of the urban poor engaged in the informal sector of the economy. And again, slum residents were not consulted about their housing needs before building plans were prepared. Experience reveals that inappropriate design often forces slum residents to sell their holdings and set up new tenements elsewhere.
However, the SRA scheme is the only way for the urban poor to get access to land and a subsidy from the market. For one thing, the price of land is not affordable to the poor, the SRA has made it affordable. Again, the SRA scheme has thrown open the doors for cooperative societies of slum dwellers to participate in their own redevelopment and provided a financial mechanism to do so. The challenge remains to create conditions where communities of the poor can determine the process themselves rather than being objects of private developers’ designs.
McKinsey Recommendations
In September 2003, in yet another effort at resolving the metropolis’ insurmountable problems, Bombay First, an organisation with representatives from the corporate world, asked the consulting firm McKinsey to prepare a comprehensive plan that would turn Mumbai into a ‘world-class’ city by 2013. Estimated to cost Rs 2,00,000 crore, the plan focused on six key areas: economic growth, transportation, housing, other infrastructure, financing and governance. The McKinsey report – ‘Vision Mumbai’ of 2003 – identifies housing and land availability as Mumbai’s most controversial problems. The plan envisages eight lakh low-income group houses to rehabilitate slum dwellers. The report has been severely criticised by several urban planners, environmentalists and civic activists as it comes across “as a report by the builders’ lobby; the recommendations scream: privatisation, corporatisation and build, build, build” [cited in Katakam 2003].
The report recommends increasing the availability of land by 50 to 70 per cent. This is possible by relaxing the Floor Space Index (FSI) further, opening up mill and port lands, relaxing Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) II and III for Mumbai, and building the trans-harbour link. Furthermore, the report suggests redesigning the Slum Rehabilitation Authority project; construction costs of low-income housing could be recovered by charging slum dwellers a rent of between Rs 750 and Rs 1,500 a month. The creation of special housing zones, on the lines of the Special Economic Zones, would also avoid rental problems and therefore, create more housing. “Rescind the Urban Land Ceiling Regulation Act (ULCRA) and the Rent Control Act, as well as reduce the time taken for building approvals”, and the bulk of the issues relating to housing will be solved, it suggests [Katakam 2003].
Many states have repealed land-ceiling legislation already because of difficulties of implementation and an apparent failure of the law to achieve its objectives. But the government of Maharashtra has not yet scrapped the ceiling law because, it is widely suspected, of pressure from a builders’ lobby that wishes to impede the flow of land into the market, thus artificially inflating its cost. Keeping the law on the statute books is an opportunity for venal politicians and bureaucrats to make money in exchange for granting permissions and exemptions while, at the same time, exercising their patronage to distribute the few flats ostensibly built for the poor to relatives, friends and political supporters.
The current demolitions will do little to solve the problem – slums still exist, many remain because they are ‘saved’ by a government specified cut off date, yet housing remains an issue that has not been clearly addressed by successive governments. As authorities of demolition drive over two decades ago admit, several times squads would demolish illegal structures but still the plot would not stay vacant (interview with G K Khairnar, Indian Express, January 18, 2005). In 1992, an army of officials spread across every civic ward were together making Rs 300 crore annually from illegal constructions. In demolition sites across Mumbai, slum dwellers ousted from their tin and tarpaulin homes in the demolition drive seen in recent weeks, still sit guarding the concrete squares they paid Rs 30,000 or Rs 40,000 for. In 1984, it cost the BMC Rs 1,000 to demolish a single hut. If even a small percentage of the current demolition ‘target’ of 44,000 shanties reappears, it’s simple arithmetic to calculate the losses. But in the rush to development as (defined by the current group of urban planners), the ‘human angle’ has become a peripheral concern.
Judicial Pronouncements
As judicial decrees go, however, maintaining the ‘human angle’ is something even the judiciary has forgotten to do in recent years [Ramanathan 2002]. In the early 1980s, the judiciary recognised the right of every person to constitutional relevance. 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 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.”
In the 1990s, however, where conflicting interests were perceived, a certain reordering of priorities followed – that affected marginal sections such as the slum dweller, the working classes and the dam-displaced. In some later judgments, slums were directed to be demolished. In February 2000, the court observed, “Rewarding an encroacher on public land with a free alternative site is like giving a reward to a pickpocket”. This characterisation of the poor as drawn by the court, the likening of a slum dweller to a pickpocket was a definitive departure from the acknowledgment of the fact that the poor too strive to survive, and that their struggles deserve respect and support.
Demolitions and the government’s consequent announcement of delisting these illegal settlers from electoral rolls is a way of effacing without recognition an entire category of citizens, some of whom are reluctant migrants from elsewhere who provide essential services to the city. According to state government data, around 60 per cent of Mumbai’s population live in slums; 73 per cent of its households live in one-room tenements, and 18 per cent in two-room structures. One must work at redeveloping Mumbai with these percentages in mind and with some perspective.
Also as many studies have already established, blame for the deteriorating quality of life in the city lies elsewhere and not in the mushrooming of slums, that in any case takes up only 12.85 per cent of land (this, however, is real estate worth over Rs 80,000 crore). The proliferation of slums has meant that civic services have been stretched; even as large stretches of land lie vacant in the city. In 1970, the state government had acquired 50,000 acres of land from farmers and small holders and handed it over to the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) for the development of Navi Mumbai (interview with Mrinal Gore in The Asian Age, January 29, 2005). 4,850 acres of land still lie vacant and can be used for rehabilitation; under the ULCRA, the state government can acquire these lands, but thus far, the latter has been hand-in-glove with the builders.
It is the slowdown in economic growth that has been largely responsible for the deterioration of Mumbai. Since the 1970s, when the city’s manufacturing sector began a steady decline, the bulk of Mumbai’s population has lost the ability to earn a steady income. Economic growth has to be generated for employment creation, and that can be done through development projects. This could be done in high- and low-end service sectors and by converting the hinterland into a manufacturing and logistics hub. It is time therefore to brush away the dust from old master plans for the city that already exist, which talked of development of the hinterland and in ‘peri-urban’ areas such as Navi Mumbai, or the Thane-Belapur section. Moreover, no plan will work unless it involves the city’s people.
Need for Inclusive Growth
In the 21st century, the challenge is how to make cities more inclusive; to give those who are usually excluded, the poor and marginalised, a say in how things are run. The poorest are forced to occupy land illegally and to live in appalling conditions that put their health and safety at risk.
An important step is to recognise the role which civil society, local community organisations, citizens groups and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can play. Community organisations can create a bridge between poor people and city authorities in planning urban developments that benefit the poor. In Naga city in the Philippines, for example, a people’s council works closely with the city council. As a result, new initiatives have been launched to clean up the Naga river, manage waste and revitalise the city hospital. In Porto Alegre in Brazil, groups of citizens scrutinise government spending, as well as deciding on priorities for the coming year in a participatory budgeting process. Urban planning and management can be made much more effective by devolving authority to the poor in their own areas. But the poor also need to gain access to finance and land. Banks and other lenders are waking up to the vast market for housing loans at the low-income end of the market and they are finding that the default rates on these loans are very low. In Thailand, the Urban Community Development Office, funded by the government, is providing loans directly to low-income community organisations and small informal sector enterprises [Patel et al 2002].
If squatters are given a sense of security of their tenure, their neighbourhoods become as good as any other neighbourhood. It may be a lot cheaper to live in a slum, but there is a different level of community interaction, a way of life, that is threatened whenever a resettlement project is discussed. Redevelopment in future, while providing for every facility of urban life, must ensure also a way of retaining networks of support that already exist among slum dwellers.
References
Bavadam, Lyla (1998): ‘A Controversial Scheme’, Frontline, Volume 15, Number 18, August 29-September 11.
Burra, Sundar (2001): ‘Resettlement and Rehabilitation of the Urban Poor: the Mumbai Urban Transport Project, A Case Study’, September, www.sparcindia.org.
– (2003): ‘Changing the Rules: Guidelines for the Revision of Regulations for Urban Upgrading’, www.sparcindia.org
Katakam, Anupama (2003): ‘A Blueprint for Mumbai’, Frontline, Volume 20, Number 24, November 22-December 05.
Patel, Sheela, Celine d’Cruz and Sundar Burra (2002): ‘Beyond Evictions in a Global City: People-Managed Resettlement in Mumbai’, Environment and Urbanisation, Volume 14, Number 1, April.
Ramanathan, Usha (2002): ‘Of Judicial Power’, Frontline, Volume 19, Number 06, March 16-29.
February 5, 2005
Mumbai's Expendable Poor
The current demolition drive in Mumbai by the Congress-led coalition government pushes to the wayside the poor of Mumbai who live in 'illegal' shanties. The government action goes against the grain of successful experiments of community involvement in resettlement and appears to reverse the slum development policy of the 1990s. Development cannot proceed without taking into account the needs of the slum dwelling populace who make up substantial numbers of the city. Sustainable growth is possible only if all stakeholders in the process including slum dwellers and the poor are given a say in schemes that affect them.
by Anu Kumar
Slum: ·. a squalid and overcrowded urban area inhabited by very poor people.› a house in such a place.
– (Concise Oxford Dictionary,
Tenth Edition, 2000)
In a demolition drive that began on December 8, 2004 and still continues, the Maharashtra government and the Brihan Mumbai Corporation demolished 70,000 shanties they claimed were illegal, clearing in the process as many as 306 acres of land, dislocating over 3 lakh people and affecting thousands of others. It was a demolition that went against the grain of what the Congress promised in its election manifesto in the recent assembly elections – to protect slums built before 2000 – a promise widely believed to have garnered electoral support among Mumbai’s poor. At the same time, the government through its advertisements continues to make the ironical claim that its actions constitute a chance at freedom for slum dwellers – who comprise half of Mumbai’s population. “The Slum Rehabilitation Authority through its various projects has been constantly working towards the upliftment of these citizens of our metropolis’’, proclaims one advertisement. The spate of demolitions, however, is an apparent reversal of Maharashtra’s longstanding policy towards slums.
Maharashtra Policy
After independence, efforts were initially geared towards rehabilitating the population of slums and improving their conditions of living. Between 1943 and 1956, the government of the erstwhile Bombay state disbursed small grants to various municipal bodies for improvement of slums. In 1956, this changed when the central government approved a Slum Clearance Plan. Bombay was one of the six pilot cities covered under this scheme.
The strategy of demolitions that began with the plan was pursued till the 1970s. However, it did not work because people, after some time, simply re-built their huts at the same location or, if there was too much harassment, at another unoccupied location nearby. Moreover, land-owning agencies were ill equipped to police their lands and lower level officials often connived with middlemen to allow encroachments. Even when the state government did try to resettle the poor, they were unsuccessful. Resettlement proceeded erratically, dependant on the whims and fancies of local municipal officials and the poor were completely excluded from any decision-making.
In the 1970s, the state first recognised the need for some form of resettlement for slum dwellers, after slums were demolished. A Slum Improvement Board (SIB) was set up, slums began to be viewed as housing solutions and the state began to provide water, sanitation, electricity and other amenities to these areas. After a census of huts on public lands was conducted in 1976, photo passes were issued to all those found eligible according as to whether they could establish that they were living in the slum at the time of census. Thus, 1,680 settlements with a population of 28 lakhs were identified. This was the first time slum dwellers were given any form of security. However, none of these programmes ever involved the poor in any stage of planning or implementation. Moreover, slums on central government and privately owned lands – which accounted for the largest chunk of land in the city – were excluded from the exercise. A second enumeration was carried out in 1983. 1,930 settlements with a population of 43 lakhs were counted. In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that eviction was a disturbance to the right to livelihood and hence infringed on the fundamental right to life. However, the court accepted the state government’s use of the 1976 and 1983 Census exercises to identify those people whose resettlement was guaranteed if eviction was necessary for public purposes.
In the 1980s, the World Bank’s Rs 53 crore Bombay Urban Development Project (BUDP) came into being with two programmes – the Slum Upgradation Programme (SUP) and the Low Income Group Shelter Programme (LISP). SUP consisted of giving a 30-year renewable lease of land to cooperative societies of slum dwellers (where the lands were not needed for public purposes), providing civic amenities on a cost-recovery basis and giving loans to upgrade people’s houses. Under the LISP, the state provided subsidised land to Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low Income Groups (LIG) to build their own homes in accordance with a type design. Although 85,000 families benefited, conditions on the ground did not change significantly. With SUP, existing inequalities in size of holdings were left untouched. Under LISP, there was a shift in the role of the state from provider to facilitator but the scheme did not reach the really poor. Both programmes also suffered from an absence of genuine community participation. And again, the SUP could not be implemented on central government or private land. This has been a noticeable precedent in Mumbai – for in spite of the Slum Areas Act that enables local authorities to provide services in settlements already ‘declared’ slums, many government agencies still do not permit the BMC to carry out ‘improvement’ of slums on their land. Thus, central agencies do not give permissions for basic amenities, upgradation or resettlement and slum dwellers continue to live on these lands.
Community Participation
In recent years, the development agenda has moved away from merely making ever-increasing demands on the state, to sustained advocacy by organisations of the poor for the formulation of pro-poor strategies in which the poor and the state are identified as potential partners. Since the 1980s, organisations, such as Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) have been working towards ensuring some security of tenure and the importance of recognising the urban poor as partners in tenure and making shelter improvements at global, regional, national and local levels.
This initiative saw some success in 1997-98, when organised groups of slum dwellers were able with SPARC to reach an agreement with the Railroad Transport Authority, and municipal authorities to relocate and resettle several thousand households living in slum settlements located along side railway tracks in Mumbai (as part of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project). SPARC and the National Slum Dwellers Federation helped slum dwellers to organise and form cooperative housing societies. 12,000 families were rehabilitated in the suburb of Mankhurd. Except for an incident in February 2000, when railway authorities demolished 2,350 slum houses, the community-managed resettlement programme was orderly. The sudden eviction of settlers without compensation actually galvanised the government into action and it made available 2,000 apartments in Mankhurd and other land for transit settlements, where settlers were accommodated till the tenement blocks they were promised were completed. This solution was possible because the railway settlers were organised and able to stop the evictions.
Both the MUTP and Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) together accounted for the resettlement of 50,000 to 60,000 slum families. A small figure, yet standards of resettlement in these projects will serve as precedents for future resettlement. The key lesson that emerged was the importance for low-income households and their communities of being organised and of the necessity of their being able to engage in every step of the resettlement process from formulating relocation plans and determining the actual logistics of the move. The railway resettlement programme set several benchmarks – community organisations were ceded some of the powers traditionally enjoyed by government agencies in resettlement schemes, including the power to determine the eligibility of families and second, allocation of housing units in the resettlement area. It also stressed the importance of women-centred (‘Mahila Milan’ or women together) community participation, not merely on grounds of gender equity but also on the demonstration of their skills as household and community managers. Thus around the same time, 30,000 pavement families in Mumbai also formed Mahila Milan groups that succeeded in stopping repeated demolition of their shelters. The community was also mobilised to construct 5,000 toilet seats in the slums, in addition to the development of micro savings schemes for income generating activities.
The railway resettlement project established also the importance of a two-phase resettlement strategy. In the first phase where transit accommodation is provided, project authorities get quick access to the land that they need cleared, thereby avoiding delays and cost over-runs. The second advantage is that when people move to the new settlement, albeit temporarily but with the assurance of obtaining houses with secure tenure, they identify with the resettlement process and willingly become full participants in the next phase of resettlement, when permanent buildings are constructed.
Redevelopment Scheme of 1990s
Public projects such as MUTP or MUIP provided for free tenements of 225 sq ft for each family. The same norm was picked up by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) set up in the 1990s. The Slum Redevelopment Scheme of the SRA aimed to provide enough incentives – such as increasing the Floor Space Index (FSI) allowed in slum areas and the ability to transfer development rights to other areas of the city – for private developers and builders to redevelop slums. The theory was that by selling the extra space in the open market, tenements for slum dwellers would be cross-subsidised and made affordable to them. The state government also introduced legislation that protected slum dwellers who could establish that they were living at a particular place as of January 1, 1995. The homes of ‘eligible’ slum dwellers thus could not be demolished without their first being resettled [Burra 2001, 2003].
Redevelopment was a unique strategy taken up by the state government, radically different from the slum upgradation approach followed elsewhere. It was a scheme very unlike the 1987 play, ‘Redevelopment or Slum Clearance’, replete with political allegory by the Czech playwright and former president, Vaclav Havel. The play, set in a medieval castle in a historic town in eastern Europe, includes a state functionary, an emotionally chaotic project director, and a group of architects who struggle to come up with a high-rise building scheme that will destroy the ancient town’s character and incidentally clear away its slums.
For all its progressive features, the slum redevelopment scheme still did not contain proactive provisions to resettle families nor did it specify the nature of resettlement and the kinds of entitlements eligible slum dwellers would receive. The SRA promised to construct eight lakh tenements in five-six years. However, only a little over 19,000 tenements were completed in the mid-1990s. When a new government came to power in Maharashtra in 1995, one of its main election promises was to provide eight lakh free houses for 40 lakh slum dwellers in Mumbai. In August 1998, the Shiv Sena-BJP government set up the Shivshahi Punarvasan Prakalp Ltd (SPPL). The scheme was a rehash of the earlier slum redevelopment scheme. Slum land was to be handed over to builders for the construction of commercial complexes, with the builders in turn using part of their profits to build new houses for the residents of the slum. A Rs 600 crore loan to fund the SPPL was extracted from an extremely reluctant Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (MHADA) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) [Bavadam 1998].
Unlike the earlier redevelopment scheme (where the SRA was only a facilitating agency), the SPPL actively took on the role of a builder. Private builders themselves were given the role of contractors to get them to participate in the scheme. Under the earlier scheme, the builders were expected to make the capital investment without any input from the government, and there were no profit margins. Under the SPPL scheme, the builders as contractors could provide for profit margins. The state government also soon scaled down the size of the project from eight lakh units of 225 sq ft each to two lakh units of the same size. One of the main failings of the SPPL scheme was that it depended on public land as a resource, most of which was already occupied by squatters. By the time the Shiv Sena-BJP government was voted out of office in October 1999, not even a fraction of the number of flats it had promised to build had come up.
One of the criticisms of the SRA scheme was that it promoted high-rise, high density redevelopment as it relaxed FSI norms substantially – 2.5 against the normal FSI of 1.33 for the city and 1 for the suburbs and extended suburbs. High-rise buildings were more expensive to construct and also expensive to maintain. Moreover, they are not suitable for the life-styles of the urban poor engaged in the informal sector of the economy. And again, slum residents were not consulted about their housing needs before building plans were prepared. Experience reveals that inappropriate design often forces slum residents to sell their holdings and set up new tenements elsewhere.
However, the SRA scheme is the only way for the urban poor to get access to land and a subsidy from the market. For one thing, the price of land is not affordable to the poor, the SRA has made it affordable. Again, the SRA scheme has thrown open the doors for cooperative societies of slum dwellers to participate in their own redevelopment and provided a financial mechanism to do so. The challenge remains to create conditions where communities of the poor can determine the process themselves rather than being objects of private developers’ designs.
McKinsey Recommendations
In September 2003, in yet another effort at resolving the metropolis’ insurmountable problems, Bombay First, an organisation with representatives from the corporate world, asked the consulting firm McKinsey to prepare a comprehensive plan that would turn Mumbai into a ‘world-class’ city by 2013. Estimated to cost Rs 2,00,000 crore, the plan focused on six key areas: economic growth, transportation, housing, other infrastructure, financing and governance. The McKinsey report – ‘Vision Mumbai’ of 2003 – identifies housing and land availability as Mumbai’s most controversial problems. The plan envisages eight lakh low-income group houses to rehabilitate slum dwellers. The report has been severely criticised by several urban planners, environmentalists and civic activists as it comes across “as a report by the builders’ lobby; the recommendations scream: privatisation, corporatisation and build, build, build” [cited in Katakam 2003].
The report recommends increasing the availability of land by 50 to 70 per cent. This is possible by relaxing the Floor Space Index (FSI) further, opening up mill and port lands, relaxing Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) II and III for Mumbai, and building the trans-harbour link. Furthermore, the report suggests redesigning the Slum Rehabilitation Authority project; construction costs of low-income housing could be recovered by charging slum dwellers a rent of between Rs 750 and Rs 1,500 a month. The creation of special housing zones, on the lines of the Special Economic Zones, would also avoid rental problems and therefore, create more housing. “Rescind the Urban Land Ceiling Regulation Act (ULCRA) and the Rent Control Act, as well as reduce the time taken for building approvals”, and the bulk of the issues relating to housing will be solved, it suggests [Katakam 2003].
Many states have repealed land-ceiling legislation already because of difficulties of implementation and an apparent failure of the law to achieve its objectives. But the government of Maharashtra has not yet scrapped the ceiling law because, it is widely suspected, of pressure from a builders’ lobby that wishes to impede the flow of land into the market, thus artificially inflating its cost. Keeping the law on the statute books is an opportunity for venal politicians and bureaucrats to make money in exchange for granting permissions and exemptions while, at the same time, exercising their patronage to distribute the few flats ostensibly built for the poor to relatives, friends and political supporters.
The current demolitions will do little to solve the problem – slums still exist, many remain because they are ‘saved’ by a government specified cut off date, yet housing remains an issue that has not been clearly addressed by successive governments. As authorities of demolition drive over two decades ago admit, several times squads would demolish illegal structures but still the plot would not stay vacant (interview with G K Khairnar, Indian Express, January 18, 2005). In 1992, an army of officials spread across every civic ward were together making Rs 300 crore annually from illegal constructions. In demolition sites across Mumbai, slum dwellers ousted from their tin and tarpaulin homes in the demolition drive seen in recent weeks, still sit guarding the concrete squares they paid Rs 30,000 or Rs 40,000 for. In 1984, it cost the BMC Rs 1,000 to demolish a single hut. If even a small percentage of the current demolition ‘target’ of 44,000 shanties reappears, it’s simple arithmetic to calculate the losses. But in the rush to development as (defined by the current group of urban planners), the ‘human angle’ has become a peripheral concern.
Judicial Pronouncements
As judicial decrees go, however, maintaining the ‘human angle’ is something even the judiciary has forgotten to do in recent years [Ramanathan 2002]. In the early 1980s, the judiciary recognised the right of every person to constitutional relevance. 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 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.”
In the 1990s, however, where conflicting interests were perceived, a certain reordering of priorities followed – that affected marginal sections such as the slum dweller, the working classes and the dam-displaced. In some later judgments, slums were directed to be demolished. In February 2000, the court observed, “Rewarding an encroacher on public land with a free alternative site is like giving a reward to a pickpocket”. This characterisation of the poor as drawn by the court, the likening of a slum dweller to a pickpocket was a definitive departure from the acknowledgment of the fact that the poor too strive to survive, and that their struggles deserve respect and support.
Demolitions and the government’s consequent announcement of delisting these illegal settlers from electoral rolls is a way of effacing without recognition an entire category of citizens, some of whom are reluctant migrants from elsewhere who provide essential services to the city. According to state government data, around 60 per cent of Mumbai’s population live in slums; 73 per cent of its households live in one-room tenements, and 18 per cent in two-room structures. One must work at redeveloping Mumbai with these percentages in mind and with some perspective.
Also as many studies have already established, blame for the deteriorating quality of life in the city lies elsewhere and not in the mushrooming of slums, that in any case takes up only 12.85 per cent of land (this, however, is real estate worth over Rs 80,000 crore). The proliferation of slums has meant that civic services have been stretched; even as large stretches of land lie vacant in the city. In 1970, the state government had acquired 50,000 acres of land from farmers and small holders and handed it over to the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) for the development of Navi Mumbai (interview with Mrinal Gore in The Asian Age, January 29, 2005). 4,850 acres of land still lie vacant and can be used for rehabilitation; under the ULCRA, the state government can acquire these lands, but thus far, the latter has been hand-in-glove with the builders.
It is the slowdown in economic growth that has been largely responsible for the deterioration of Mumbai. Since the 1970s, when the city’s manufacturing sector began a steady decline, the bulk of Mumbai’s population has lost the ability to earn a steady income. Economic growth has to be generated for employment creation, and that can be done through development projects. This could be done in high- and low-end service sectors and by converting the hinterland into a manufacturing and logistics hub. It is time therefore to brush away the dust from old master plans for the city that already exist, which talked of development of the hinterland and in ‘peri-urban’ areas such as Navi Mumbai, or the Thane-Belapur section. Moreover, no plan will work unless it involves the city’s people.
Need for Inclusive Growth
In the 21st century, the challenge is how to make cities more inclusive; to give those who are usually excluded, the poor and marginalised, a say in how things are run. The poorest are forced to occupy land illegally and to live in appalling conditions that put their health and safety at risk.
An important step is to recognise the role which civil society, local community organisations, citizens groups and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can play. Community organisations can create a bridge between poor people and city authorities in planning urban developments that benefit the poor. In Naga city in the Philippines, for example, a people’s council works closely with the city council. As a result, new initiatives have been launched to clean up the Naga river, manage waste and revitalise the city hospital. In Porto Alegre in Brazil, groups of citizens scrutinise government spending, as well as deciding on priorities for the coming year in a participatory budgeting process. Urban planning and management can be made much more effective by devolving authority to the poor in their own areas. But the poor also need to gain access to finance and land. Banks and other lenders are waking up to the vast market for housing loans at the low-income end of the market and they are finding that the default rates on these loans are very low. In Thailand, the Urban Community Development Office, funded by the government, is providing loans directly to low-income community organisations and small informal sector enterprises [Patel et al 2002].
If squatters are given a sense of security of their tenure, their neighbourhoods become as good as any other neighbourhood. It may be a lot cheaper to live in a slum, but there is a different level of community interaction, a way of life, that is threatened whenever a resettlement project is discussed. Redevelopment in future, while providing for every facility of urban life, must ensure also a way of retaining networks of support that already exist among slum dwellers.
References
Bavadam, Lyla (1998): ‘A Controversial Scheme’, Frontline, Volume 15, Number 18, August 29-September 11.
Burra, Sundar (2001): ‘Resettlement and Rehabilitation of the Urban Poor: the Mumbai Urban Transport Project, A Case Study’, September, www.sparcindia.org.
– (2003): ‘Changing the Rules: Guidelines for the Revision of Regulations for Urban Upgrading’, www.sparcindia.org
Katakam, Anupama (2003): ‘A Blueprint for Mumbai’, Frontline, Volume 20, Number 24, November 22-December 05.
Patel, Sheela, Celine d’Cruz and Sundar Burra (2002): ‘Beyond Evictions in a Global City: People-Managed Resettlement in Mumbai’, Environment and Urbanisation, Volume 14, Number 1, April.
Ramanathan, Usha (2002): ‘Of Judicial Power’, Frontline, Volume 19, Number 06, March 16-29.
The unbearable lightness of seeing (P. Sainath)
URL: www.thehindu.com/2005/02/05/stories/2005020500611000.htm
The Hindu
Feb 05, 2005
The unbearable lightness of seeing
By P. Sainath
How agonised we are about how people die. How untroubled we are by how
they live.
NUMBER OF homes damaged by the tsunami in Nagapattinam: 30,300. Number
of homes destroyed by the Congress-NCP Government in Mumbai: 84,000.
How agonised we are about how people die. How untroubled we are by how
they live.
Maharashtra's Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, says every Chief
Minister would like to leave behind a legacy. His own, he believes, will
be that of the man who cleaned up Mumbai. Mr. Deshmukh, in short, wishes
to be remembered.
He will be. His Government wiped out 6,300 homes on a single day. A
record the Israeli army would be proud to match on a busy afternoon in
the occupied territories. It is a figure their bulldozers, with tanks
and air force support, have not quite notched up yet.
The Mumbai mass evictions — now in pause mode — demolished a lot more
than slums. They reflected well an elite mindset towards the deprived
that fully matured in the 1990s. It is a lot about how we see the poor
today. About a view marked by contempt for the rights and suffering of
ordinary people. Unless that suffering is certified as genuine by the
rest of us.
Mr. Deshmukh now says the destruction of "some" houses was "an
accident." Not intended. Which perhaps places his Government in the
category of natural calamity. However, most of Mumbai's beautiful
people, some of whom attended `tsunami dinners' after expressing
satisfaction over the city's mass demolitions, are firmly with their
Chief Minister. No one from that fraternity has `adopted' a demolished
slum for adoring cameras. Nor organised relief operations for people,
including many babies shivering without shelter, in one of the coldest
winters.
Instead, Mumbai's elite now feels the need to carry the logic forward.
Last year, 11 prominent Maharashtrians moved the Bombay High Court to
bar slum dwellers from voting. This year, the city's Municipal
Corporation itself asked the Chief Electoral Officer to drop residents
of the demolished slums from the voters' lists. (A curious move in a
society contemplating voting rights for NRIs and PIOs.) No one uses the
real word — disenfranchisement. But it is what they mean. One way or the
other, take away their vote. That should teach them they cannot live
amongst us.
It would also blunt the one weapon ordinary Indians have and use.
Unlike, say, their American counterparts, the Indian poor have the
audacity to believe their votes can change things. They certainly did
that right here. Mumbai's slum dwellers played a critical role in
defeating the BJP-Shiv Sena in the 2004 Assembly polls. (Quite a few
local leaders of the Congress know this well and are fearful of a
backlash. What if slum folk attempt similar adventures the next time
around?)
Of course, excluding large numbers from voting involves minor problems
of constitutional rights. But the avant garde amongst the elite have
found the answer to that one: criminalise them. That would be a good
start. "Book them for trying to steal public property," is one bright
idea. The Mumbai police have obligingly promised criminal trespass cases
against dazed victims hanging around their razed homes. Satisfying, but
annoyingly it would still leave them with the right to vote.
Maybe India will move towards — as on most other things — the American
model. As a Human Rights Watch Sentencing Project report shows, 1.4
million African-American men — 13 per cent of their total number — are
denied voting rights because of their criminal records. As many as 15
American States bar former felons from voting even after they have
completed serving their sentences.
In Alabama and Florida, nearly one in every three African-American men
is permanently disenfranchised. In six other States the ratio is one in
four. All this in States with significant African-American minorities.
As the report notes, no other democracy denies as many people the right
to vote because of their criminal records. A feat that could be eclipsed
in India if the current mindset towards the poor goes the distance.
America has around two million human beings behind bars — more than any
other nation in the world. Of these, 63 per cent are African-American
and Hispanic. Consider that these two groups together form only 25 per
cent of the population. You are far more likely to go to prison — and
lose your vote — if you are African-American. Substitute poor for
African-American and it is an idea much of India's and Mumbai's elite
would go for.
Total disdain for even the foreseeable future is another element of this
mindset. According to a UN Habitat report, one in every three human
beings could live in a slum by 2030. Many of them Indians. Imagine how
many voters we could do away with by criminalising slum dwellers. Just
`reform' the laws. Adopt the Mumbai idea nationwide — and India will be
demolishing more homes than it has ever built.
"Many people will be inconvenienced and will have to make sacrifices if
the city has to develop..." says the Chief Minister. The city's builder
and real estate mafia will not be amongst those inconvenienced. The
sacrifices are to be made by the poor. The power of those driving the
process is immense. The protests and appeals of the slum folk themselves
are simply dismissed. Those of some 28 slum dwellers organisations,
housing rights and human rights bodies, political parties and trade
unions are sought to be played down. It was anxiety over the fallout (at
far higher levels of the Congress in New Delhi) that led to some slowing
down of the demolitions. And to Mr. Deshmukh's admission of "accidental"
evictions.
Class interests are asserting themselves across the major parties here.
The Congress elite is far more in tune with Bal Thackeray on this issue
than it is with its own panicking base. The Sena chief has praised the
Government for the terror visited on the slum populace. This is also one
issue that unites the otherwise bickering Nationalist Congress Party and
Congress. Hopefully, the coalition of a large number of organisations
protesting the action will create a basis for some relief and resistance.
A crucial part of the mindset is the idea that promises made to the poor
have no meaning. It matters little that millions of such people in
Mumbai helped the Congress win a State it would surely have lost. At the
Centre too, that party came to power riding a wave of popular anger
against the policies of the National Democratic Alliance Government. And
then quickly buried its anti-`India Shining' campaign. Today, a Montek
Singh Ahulwalia can signal moves towards the privatisation of water
without batting an eyelid. All earlier assurances on not making life
harder for the deprived mean nothing. That was an election. This is
reality.
That is why the better off — anyway miniscule in numbers — hardly bother
to vote. The rich run governments by other means. Not by electing them.
When governments have reneged on their most fundamental promises in the
past 15 years, the media have welcomed this as "pragmatic." It is
pragmatic to lie to the poor. It is also pragmatic to break your
commitment to the 1993 United Nations resolution which terms forced
evictions "a gross violation of human rights."
A vivid symbol of the pragmatic new world was the Sensex soaring to a
record peak — at the height of the tsunami damage. This phenomenon was
repeated across most of the tsunami-hit nations as "markets sensed" a
windfall in reconstruction spending.
The mindset is visible in our dealings with tsunami-hit citizens, too.
We are now in the process of converting people's entitlements into our
charity. Health care, access to clean water, sanitation, schools — all
these might now happen because of our generosity. Not because human
beings are entitled to them. You might get a house because we feel sorry
half your family was washed away. Not by right of your citizenship of a
decent nation and society.
There is one thing larger than Mr. Deshmukh's bulldozers: The process by
which millions are uprooted from the countryside and forced to seek a
living in the nearest city. What India is building is not an employment
guarantee but an unemployment guarantee. As agriculture collapses and
people vote with their feet, the Deshmukh Doctrine is the best we can
think of. Mopping the floors with the taps all open and running.
The Indian elite wants a society geared up to deal with disasters that
may or may not strike once in a hundred years but shows no urgency at
all when it comes to ongoing misery not caused by nature. Towards the
destruction of the livelihoods of millions by policy and human agency.
We want effective and advanced planning for events distant and hard to
predict. But reject planning for the near future in favour of `the
market', which alone should be the one true guide. We want to build
walls against the sea all along the coast after having done away with
nature's own — the mangroves and sand dunes. Maybe we will build walls
around Mumbai next to keep the plebeians out. Mr. Deshmukh's legacy
would then be forever secure.
The Hindu
Feb 05, 2005
The unbearable lightness of seeing
By P. Sainath
How agonised we are about how people die. How untroubled we are by how
they live.
NUMBER OF homes damaged by the tsunami in Nagapattinam: 30,300. Number
of homes destroyed by the Congress-NCP Government in Mumbai: 84,000.
How agonised we are about how people die. How untroubled we are by how
they live.
Maharashtra's Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, says every Chief
Minister would like to leave behind a legacy. His own, he believes, will
be that of the man who cleaned up Mumbai. Mr. Deshmukh, in short, wishes
to be remembered.
He will be. His Government wiped out 6,300 homes on a single day. A
record the Israeli army would be proud to match on a busy afternoon in
the occupied territories. It is a figure their bulldozers, with tanks
and air force support, have not quite notched up yet.
The Mumbai mass evictions — now in pause mode — demolished a lot more
than slums. They reflected well an elite mindset towards the deprived
that fully matured in the 1990s. It is a lot about how we see the poor
today. About a view marked by contempt for the rights and suffering of
ordinary people. Unless that suffering is certified as genuine by the
rest of us.
Mr. Deshmukh now says the destruction of "some" houses was "an
accident." Not intended. Which perhaps places his Government in the
category of natural calamity. However, most of Mumbai's beautiful
people, some of whom attended `tsunami dinners' after expressing
satisfaction over the city's mass demolitions, are firmly with their
Chief Minister. No one from that fraternity has `adopted' a demolished
slum for adoring cameras. Nor organised relief operations for people,
including many babies shivering without shelter, in one of the coldest
winters.
Instead, Mumbai's elite now feels the need to carry the logic forward.
Last year, 11 prominent Maharashtrians moved the Bombay High Court to
bar slum dwellers from voting. This year, the city's Municipal
Corporation itself asked the Chief Electoral Officer to drop residents
of the demolished slums from the voters' lists. (A curious move in a
society contemplating voting rights for NRIs and PIOs.) No one uses the
real word — disenfranchisement. But it is what they mean. One way or the
other, take away their vote. That should teach them they cannot live
amongst us.
It would also blunt the one weapon ordinary Indians have and use.
Unlike, say, their American counterparts, the Indian poor have the
audacity to believe their votes can change things. They certainly did
that right here. Mumbai's slum dwellers played a critical role in
defeating the BJP-Shiv Sena in the 2004 Assembly polls. (Quite a few
local leaders of the Congress know this well and are fearful of a
backlash. What if slum folk attempt similar adventures the next time
around?)
Of course, excluding large numbers from voting involves minor problems
of constitutional rights. But the avant garde amongst the elite have
found the answer to that one: criminalise them. That would be a good
start. "Book them for trying to steal public property," is one bright
idea. The Mumbai police have obligingly promised criminal trespass cases
against dazed victims hanging around their razed homes. Satisfying, but
annoyingly it would still leave them with the right to vote.
Maybe India will move towards — as on most other things — the American
model. As a Human Rights Watch Sentencing Project report shows, 1.4
million African-American men — 13 per cent of their total number — are
denied voting rights because of their criminal records. As many as 15
American States bar former felons from voting even after they have
completed serving their sentences.
In Alabama and Florida, nearly one in every three African-American men
is permanently disenfranchised. In six other States the ratio is one in
four. All this in States with significant African-American minorities.
As the report notes, no other democracy denies as many people the right
to vote because of their criminal records. A feat that could be eclipsed
in India if the current mindset towards the poor goes the distance.
America has around two million human beings behind bars — more than any
other nation in the world. Of these, 63 per cent are African-American
and Hispanic. Consider that these two groups together form only 25 per
cent of the population. You are far more likely to go to prison — and
lose your vote — if you are African-American. Substitute poor for
African-American and it is an idea much of India's and Mumbai's elite
would go for.
Total disdain for even the foreseeable future is another element of this
mindset. According to a UN Habitat report, one in every three human
beings could live in a slum by 2030. Many of them Indians. Imagine how
many voters we could do away with by criminalising slum dwellers. Just
`reform' the laws. Adopt the Mumbai idea nationwide — and India will be
demolishing more homes than it has ever built.
"Many people will be inconvenienced and will have to make sacrifices if
the city has to develop..." says the Chief Minister. The city's builder
and real estate mafia will not be amongst those inconvenienced. The
sacrifices are to be made by the poor. The power of those driving the
process is immense. The protests and appeals of the slum folk themselves
are simply dismissed. Those of some 28 slum dwellers organisations,
housing rights and human rights bodies, political parties and trade
unions are sought to be played down. It was anxiety over the fallout (at
far higher levels of the Congress in New Delhi) that led to some slowing
down of the demolitions. And to Mr. Deshmukh's admission of "accidental"
evictions.
Class interests are asserting themselves across the major parties here.
The Congress elite is far more in tune with Bal Thackeray on this issue
than it is with its own panicking base. The Sena chief has praised the
Government for the terror visited on the slum populace. This is also one
issue that unites the otherwise bickering Nationalist Congress Party and
Congress. Hopefully, the coalition of a large number of organisations
protesting the action will create a basis for some relief and resistance.
A crucial part of the mindset is the idea that promises made to the poor
have no meaning. It matters little that millions of such people in
Mumbai helped the Congress win a State it would surely have lost. At the
Centre too, that party came to power riding a wave of popular anger
against the policies of the National Democratic Alliance Government. And
then quickly buried its anti-`India Shining' campaign. Today, a Montek
Singh Ahulwalia can signal moves towards the privatisation of water
without batting an eyelid. All earlier assurances on not making life
harder for the deprived mean nothing. That was an election. This is
reality.
That is why the better off — anyway miniscule in numbers — hardly bother
to vote. The rich run governments by other means. Not by electing them.
When governments have reneged on their most fundamental promises in the
past 15 years, the media have welcomed this as "pragmatic." It is
pragmatic to lie to the poor. It is also pragmatic to break your
commitment to the 1993 United Nations resolution which terms forced
evictions "a gross violation of human rights."
A vivid symbol of the pragmatic new world was the Sensex soaring to a
record peak — at the height of the tsunami damage. This phenomenon was
repeated across most of the tsunami-hit nations as "markets sensed" a
windfall in reconstruction spending.
The mindset is visible in our dealings with tsunami-hit citizens, too.
We are now in the process of converting people's entitlements into our
charity. Health care, access to clean water, sanitation, schools — all
these might now happen because of our generosity. Not because human
beings are entitled to them. You might get a house because we feel sorry
half your family was washed away. Not by right of your citizenship of a
decent nation and society.
There is one thing larger than Mr. Deshmukh's bulldozers: The process by
which millions are uprooted from the countryside and forced to seek a
living in the nearest city. What India is building is not an employment
guarantee but an unemployment guarantee. As agriculture collapses and
people vote with their feet, the Deshmukh Doctrine is the best we can
think of. Mopping the floors with the taps all open and running.
The Indian elite wants a society geared up to deal with disasters that
may or may not strike once in a hundred years but shows no urgency at
all when it comes to ongoing misery not caused by nature. Towards the
destruction of the livelihoods of millions by policy and human agency.
We want effective and advanced planning for events distant and hard to
predict. But reject planning for the near future in favour of `the
market', which alone should be the one true guide. We want to build
walls against the sea all along the coast after having done away with
nature's own — the mangroves and sand dunes. Maybe we will build walls
around Mumbai next to keep the plebeians out. Mr. Deshmukh's legacy
would then be forever secure.
February 03, 2005
In Bombay Battle Over Slums (Scott Baldauf)
The Christian Science Monitor
February 03, 2005
[Photo Caption / Credits] HOMELESS: Suresh Laxmi is one of thousands of slumdwellers whose homes have been bulldozed by Bombay in an effort to move poor residents into apartments.
SOMA PAUL
IN BOMBAY, A BATTLE OVER SLUMS
City wants slum dwellers in apartments, but demolitions have left thousands homeless.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOMBAY – With government bulldozers idling outside his door, Suresh Laxmi and his family were given just one hour to clear away their belongings on the morning of Jan. 2. The bulldozers tore down in five minutes what it had taken 10 years to build, all in the name of modernizing Bombay and turning it into the next Shanghai.
Today, Mr. Laxmi keeps his belongings shoved under plastic sheets and bamboo poles. The government has built high-rise tenements for slum dwellers nearby, but Laxmi says government officials told him he doesn't qualify. So for now, Laxmi is staying put on the land he has called home for a decade.
"Society has abandoned us," he says. "But I'm not afraid. We'll fight for our rights. We have spent so much money to build our homes - do you think we'll just leave this place? We'll give a powerful resistance."
It is hard to imagine Bombay - or Mumbai, as the city is now called - without slums. Fly in to Bombay's Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, and you'll nearly scrape the roofs of Dharavi, the world's largest slum, before coming down on the airport's smooth tarmac. Take a train, and you'll pass by thousands of shacks built right up to the tracks. Today, nearly 55 percent of the city's residents live in slums.
The city has long given tacit approval and even some basic services to the illegal settlements. But now, city planners - mindful of pressure from Bombay's middle-class to gentrify the eyesore - say the slums are an unacceptable problem. Their proposed solution, however, is causing as much tumult as the slum issue itself.
Movin' on up?
The current dispute stems from the government's plan to give tenement apartments to slum dwellers who can prove that they have resided in Bombay since 1995 or earlier.
Previous efforts to confer ownership backfired when slum dwellers promptly sold units for cash, only to seek out another slum. As a result, this program requires residents to own an apartment for 10 years before they can sell.
The government says it has built 50,000 apartments of 225 square feet apiece to house people relocated from sites in Bombay.
But slum-dweller advocates argue that the city has already torn down 73,500 shacks and has thus rendered nearly 350,000 of the city's poorest residents homeless.
"Many people will be inconvenienced and will have to make sacrifices if the city has to develop," Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh told the Indian Express newspaper last week.
The chief minister admits that some of the slums have been razed by mistake, since those residing in Bombay since 1995 or before are protected from demolition. Yet he vowed to continue the campaign.
"The situation in Mumbai has deteriorated so much that there is hardly an inch of space left for migrants," he says.
Shabana Azmi, an actress and chairwoman of a slum dweller's advocacy group called the Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti (Protection for the Right to Shelter), says the city's demolition campaign is inhumane and will ultimately fail to rid the city of slums.
"What is important is not demolishing shanties, but upgrading them, giving them clean water, basic sanitation, and above all, giving them unconditional land tenure," says Ms. Azmi.
Azmi admits that it's difficult to build sympathy for the slum dwellers among Bombay's middle class, who mostly applaud the current antislum campaign.
But this same middle class, she comments, benefits from the cheap labor that slum dwellers provide in cleaning their homes, looking after their children, chauffeuring their cars, and cooking their food.
"The one thing I tell the middle class is, if you don't like slum dwellers, then the best way to get rid of them is to stop giving them employment," says Azmi with a smile. "Then your life will come to a grinding halt."
Campaign supporters
Riding a commuter train home to the Bombay neighborhood of Mankhurd, where most of the slum demolition has taken place, law student Rajesh Vartik says the demolition campaign should continue.
"What the government is doing is right," he says, as the train rides past stagnant ponds of sewage from a track-side slum. "For those who have come here illegally, I have no sympathy. They are trying to get something for free.
"But for those who came before 1995," he says, "they should be given compensation."
"All slum people should get an apartment," says friend and fellow law student Rajender Kumar, who also lives in Mankhurd. "But after there are no slums, it is the duty of government to prevent new slums from being built. The problem is that politicians are opportunists, and the slums are vote banks for them."
'Accidental' demolitions
In the slum of Ambedkar Nagar, part of a sprawling complex in Mankhurd district, most of the residents living in the ruins of their demolished shacks can point to photocopies of election voting cards, ration cards, and even land titles that prove residence here since 1995 or before.
By all appearance, they appear to be part of what the government of Maharashtra calls the "accidental" demolitions that have taken place in this campaign.
One of these slum dwellers is Raju Saroj, a migrant from rural Maharashtra who says that he has lost all faith in government officials, and particularly politicians.
Mr. Saroj says that Congress Party politicians came to power with the votes of slum dwellers by promising to protect their homes from demolition.
Now the Congress's promises have been dropped and the bulldozers have arrived.
"Okay, fine, we are here illegally," says Saroj, bitterly. "But why do you come to ask for our vote? If I am illegal, then my vote is illegal, and your election is illegal."
Om Prakash Jaishwar, another slum-dweller, carries the thought further.
"Now you want to take our names off the voting rolls," Mr. Jaishwar says. "Fine. So then can you give me my vote back?"
February 03, 2005
[Photo Caption / Credits] HOMELESS: Suresh Laxmi is one of thousands of slumdwellers whose homes have been bulldozed by Bombay in an effort to move poor residents into apartments.
SOMA PAUL
IN BOMBAY, A BATTLE OVER SLUMS
City wants slum dwellers in apartments, but demolitions have left thousands homeless.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOMBAY – With government bulldozers idling outside his door, Suresh Laxmi and his family were given just one hour to clear away their belongings on the morning of Jan. 2. The bulldozers tore down in five minutes what it had taken 10 years to build, all in the name of modernizing Bombay and turning it into the next Shanghai.
Today, Mr. Laxmi keeps his belongings shoved under plastic sheets and bamboo poles. The government has built high-rise tenements for slum dwellers nearby, but Laxmi says government officials told him he doesn't qualify. So for now, Laxmi is staying put on the land he has called home for a decade.
"Society has abandoned us," he says. "But I'm not afraid. We'll fight for our rights. We have spent so much money to build our homes - do you think we'll just leave this place? We'll give a powerful resistance."
It is hard to imagine Bombay - or Mumbai, as the city is now called - without slums. Fly in to Bombay's Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, and you'll nearly scrape the roofs of Dharavi, the world's largest slum, before coming down on the airport's smooth tarmac. Take a train, and you'll pass by thousands of shacks built right up to the tracks. Today, nearly 55 percent of the city's residents live in slums.
The city has long given tacit approval and even some basic services to the illegal settlements. But now, city planners - mindful of pressure from Bombay's middle-class to gentrify the eyesore - say the slums are an unacceptable problem. Their proposed solution, however, is causing as much tumult as the slum issue itself.
Movin' on up?
The current dispute stems from the government's plan to give tenement apartments to slum dwellers who can prove that they have resided in Bombay since 1995 or earlier.
Previous efforts to confer ownership backfired when slum dwellers promptly sold units for cash, only to seek out another slum. As a result, this program requires residents to own an apartment for 10 years before they can sell.
The government says it has built 50,000 apartments of 225 square feet apiece to house people relocated from sites in Bombay.
But slum-dweller advocates argue that the city has already torn down 73,500 shacks and has thus rendered nearly 350,000 of the city's poorest residents homeless.
"Many people will be inconvenienced and will have to make sacrifices if the city has to develop," Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh told the Indian Express newspaper last week.
The chief minister admits that some of the slums have been razed by mistake, since those residing in Bombay since 1995 or before are protected from demolition. Yet he vowed to continue the campaign.
"The situation in Mumbai has deteriorated so much that there is hardly an inch of space left for migrants," he says.
Shabana Azmi, an actress and chairwoman of a slum dweller's advocacy group called the Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti (Protection for the Right to Shelter), says the city's demolition campaign is inhumane and will ultimately fail to rid the city of slums.
"What is important is not demolishing shanties, but upgrading them, giving them clean water, basic sanitation, and above all, giving them unconditional land tenure," says Ms. Azmi.
Azmi admits that it's difficult to build sympathy for the slum dwellers among Bombay's middle class, who mostly applaud the current antislum campaign.
But this same middle class, she comments, benefits from the cheap labor that slum dwellers provide in cleaning their homes, looking after their children, chauffeuring their cars, and cooking their food.
"The one thing I tell the middle class is, if you don't like slum dwellers, then the best way to get rid of them is to stop giving them employment," says Azmi with a smile. "Then your life will come to a grinding halt."
Campaign supporters
Riding a commuter train home to the Bombay neighborhood of Mankhurd, where most of the slum demolition has taken place, law student Rajesh Vartik says the demolition campaign should continue.
"What the government is doing is right," he says, as the train rides past stagnant ponds of sewage from a track-side slum. "For those who have come here illegally, I have no sympathy. They are trying to get something for free.
"But for those who came before 1995," he says, "they should be given compensation."
"All slum people should get an apartment," says friend and fellow law student Rajender Kumar, who also lives in Mankhurd. "But after there are no slums, it is the duty of government to prevent new slums from being built. The problem is that politicians are opportunists, and the slums are vote banks for them."
'Accidental' demolitions
In the slum of Ambedkar Nagar, part of a sprawling complex in Mankhurd district, most of the residents living in the ruins of their demolished shacks can point to photocopies of election voting cards, ration cards, and even land titles that prove residence here since 1995 or before.
By all appearance, they appear to be part of what the government of Maharashtra calls the "accidental" demolitions that have taken place in this campaign.
One of these slum dwellers is Raju Saroj, a migrant from rural Maharashtra who says that he has lost all faith in government officials, and particularly politicians.
Mr. Saroj says that Congress Party politicians came to power with the votes of slum dwellers by promising to protect their homes from demolition.
Now the Congress's promises have been dropped and the bulldozers have arrived.
"Okay, fine, we are here illegally," says Saroj, bitterly. "But why do you come to ask for our vote? If I am illegal, then my vote is illegal, and your election is illegal."
Om Prakash Jaishwar, another slum-dweller, carries the thought further.
"Now you want to take our names off the voting rolls," Mr. Jaishwar says. "Fine. So then can you give me my vote back?"
India's 'biggest slum demolitions'
By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Mumbai [3 February, 2005]
Mehrunissa stands in the ruins of what was her home in the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) and loudly curses the men and machines that are pulling down her neighbourhood.
BBC News, Mumbai [3 February, 2005]
Mehrunissa stands in the ruins of what was her home in the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) and loudly curses the men and machines that are pulling down her neighbourhood.
February 02, 2005
Home Truths: Providing Shelter to Millions on the Street (Bharat Dogra)
The Times of India,
February 2, 2005
HOME TRUTHS: PROVIDING SHELTER TO MILLIONS ON THE STREET
by Bharat Dogra
No one remembers them during grand occasions like Republic Day. They are the homeless — people stretched on footpaths under torn blankets or less, on remorselessly cold and foggy nights. Discussions on improving urban infrastructure altogether negate their existence. Perhaps, their only consolation under this framework is to eke out a space below the flyovers littering the city landscape. They are taken note of only as undesirable elements that need to be weeded out of the city in order to improve its 'social infrastructure'. The Emergency happened only 30 years back, but today a Turkman Gate happens virtually each day all over the country without a murmur of disapproval. Have we really evolved as a strong, proud Republic?
Ironically, the callous neglect is visible in the very city that hosts the Republic Day parade. Despite the recent emphasis on poverty alleviation schemes, the existing night shelters in Delhi accommodate less than 5% of the city's 1,00,000 homeless, or 3,000 people. If the homeless go through hell in winter in Delhi, they face high water in the monsoon in Mumbai. The situation in smaller towns, away from public and policy focus, can well be imagined. It is an indication of the extent to which the urban homeless have been ignored that reliable estimates of their number are just not available. Census estimates have left out a big chunk of the homeless as they can only be contacted at night and not very easily.
Sporadic estimates suggest that the number of homeless is not less than three million, or about 1% of the urban population. The figures will rise if we include those who are precariously housed, or on the margin of homelessness. Some people are 'resettled' so far away from their place of work that they prefer to sleep in the open near the worksite despite the existence of a house or hut miles away. Shouldn't we consider them homeless?
Several studies have shown that it makes sense for the government to provide housing sites and basic services close to the place of livelihood. If only a few dwellings pose a problem — for example, to make way for a road or a drain — organisations of slum dwellers can help to find an alternative site nearby for these few. This was demons-trated by the Asha Abhiyan project in Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh).
Notwithstanding these facts, nearly three lakh people have been rendered homeless by a slum demolition drive in Mumbai in recent weeks. Chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh stands committed to changing the face of Mumbai, no matter what the human cost.
A two-pronged approach is needed to provide shelter on a large scale. The programme of creating night shelters should be stepped up significantly. Appeals should be made to make available buildings that are unused at night, so that these can provide shelter to the homeless, particularly in extremely cold weather. Such buildings can include religious and philanthropic places, schools and colleges. A means would have to be devised to link the organisations and people willing to donate space to those who actually need it. Voluntary organisations and citizens' groups can play an important role in establishing this link and ensuring that the homeless enter and leave buildings in an orderly way so that their day-use is not disturbed.
Ordinary citizens can play a more positive role. Their concerns at present only find limited expression — such as donation of an occasional blanket — due to lack of avenues to reach out to the homeless. However, if organisations dedicated to meeting many-faceted needs of the homeless emerge, these can facilitate a much more broad-based participation of citizens.
The Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan in Delhi has made an effort in this direction. It engages people in the needs of the homeless and provides spaces for them to link up with welfare activities. Many students have offered their voluntary services; some educational institutions have allowed their premises to be used as shelters at night; and commercial establishments as well as individuals have come up with job and training offers.
A move is afoot in Delhi and Chennai to provide the homeless with a voters' identity card. This would empower the unfortunate lakhs in their interactions with hafta -hungry policemen and hospital staff, while also bringing them into the reckoning when the government announces welfare measures.
The Tenth Plan document refers to according voluntary organisations a greater role in managing night shelters. The document emphasises building night shelters for women and children, who have suffered glaring neglect in the past.
Night shelter programmes should learn from earlier mistakes. The low occupancy at night shelters is explained not only by the unhygienic conditions, but also by the fact that the needs of special occupational groups are often overlooked. Rickshaw and cart-pullers need a place to keep their cycles and carts — their means of livelihood — securely before they can sleep peacefully in a shelter. Hence, a close interaction with the target group is needed so that the funds are well spent. Along with an increase in the budget for night shelters, greater transparency in funds use will go a long way in ensuring the best results. In sum, it makes more sense to provide for the homeless than to pursue policies which increase their number in the name of beautification and infrastructure creation. Only then can we say Saare jahan se achcha .
February 2, 2005
HOME TRUTHS: PROVIDING SHELTER TO MILLIONS ON THE STREET
by Bharat Dogra
No one remembers them during grand occasions like Republic Day. They are the homeless — people stretched on footpaths under torn blankets or less, on remorselessly cold and foggy nights. Discussions on improving urban infrastructure altogether negate their existence. Perhaps, their only consolation under this framework is to eke out a space below the flyovers littering the city landscape. They are taken note of only as undesirable elements that need to be weeded out of the city in order to improve its 'social infrastructure'. The Emergency happened only 30 years back, but today a Turkman Gate happens virtually each day all over the country without a murmur of disapproval. Have we really evolved as a strong, proud Republic?
Ironically, the callous neglect is visible in the very city that hosts the Republic Day parade. Despite the recent emphasis on poverty alleviation schemes, the existing night shelters in Delhi accommodate less than 5% of the city's 1,00,000 homeless, or 3,000 people. If the homeless go through hell in winter in Delhi, they face high water in the monsoon in Mumbai. The situation in smaller towns, away from public and policy focus, can well be imagined. It is an indication of the extent to which the urban homeless have been ignored that reliable estimates of their number are just not available. Census estimates have left out a big chunk of the homeless as they can only be contacted at night and not very easily.
Sporadic estimates suggest that the number of homeless is not less than three million, or about 1% of the urban population. The figures will rise if we include those who are precariously housed, or on the margin of homelessness. Some people are 'resettled' so far away from their place of work that they prefer to sleep in the open near the worksite despite the existence of a house or hut miles away. Shouldn't we consider them homeless?
Several studies have shown that it makes sense for the government to provide housing sites and basic services close to the place of livelihood. If only a few dwellings pose a problem — for example, to make way for a road or a drain — organisations of slum dwellers can help to find an alternative site nearby for these few. This was demons-trated by the Asha Abhiyan project in Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh).
Notwithstanding these facts, nearly three lakh people have been rendered homeless by a slum demolition drive in Mumbai in recent weeks. Chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh stands committed to changing the face of Mumbai, no matter what the human cost.
A two-pronged approach is needed to provide shelter on a large scale. The programme of creating night shelters should be stepped up significantly. Appeals should be made to make available buildings that are unused at night, so that these can provide shelter to the homeless, particularly in extremely cold weather. Such buildings can include religious and philanthropic places, schools and colleges. A means would have to be devised to link the organisations and people willing to donate space to those who actually need it. Voluntary organisations and citizens' groups can play an important role in establishing this link and ensuring that the homeless enter and leave buildings in an orderly way so that their day-use is not disturbed.
Ordinary citizens can play a more positive role. Their concerns at present only find limited expression — such as donation of an occasional blanket — due to lack of avenues to reach out to the homeless. However, if organisations dedicated to meeting many-faceted needs of the homeless emerge, these can facilitate a much more broad-based participation of citizens.
The Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan in Delhi has made an effort in this direction. It engages people in the needs of the homeless and provides spaces for them to link up with welfare activities. Many students have offered their voluntary services; some educational institutions have allowed their premises to be used as shelters at night; and commercial establishments as well as individuals have come up with job and training offers.
A move is afoot in Delhi and Chennai to provide the homeless with a voters' identity card. This would empower the unfortunate lakhs in their interactions with hafta -hungry policemen and hospital staff, while also bringing them into the reckoning when the government announces welfare measures.
The Tenth Plan document refers to according voluntary organisations a greater role in managing night shelters. The document emphasises building night shelters for women and children, who have suffered glaring neglect in the past.
Night shelter programmes should learn from earlier mistakes. The low occupancy at night shelters is explained not only by the unhygienic conditions, but also by the fact that the needs of special occupational groups are often overlooked. Rickshaw and cart-pullers need a place to keep their cycles and carts — their means of livelihood — securely before they can sleep peacefully in a shelter. Hence, a close interaction with the target group is needed so that the funds are well spent. Along with an increase in the budget for night shelters, greater transparency in funds use will go a long way in ensuring the best results. In sum, it makes more sense to provide for the homeless than to pursue policies which increase their number in the name of beautification and infrastructure creation. Only then can we say Saare jahan se achcha .
January 31, 2005
Mumbai: Aamchi Soweto? (Smruti Koppikar)
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.
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 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)
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