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Thousand of Muslims living in Dharavi are in danger of losing their home as well as their source of livelihood.
Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, a heart-shaped settlement in central Mumbai. Sandwiched between Mahim in the west and Sion in the east and Spread over an area of 1.75 km along the Mahim river and home to over a million people, it is a bustling collection of contiguous settlements, each with its own identity.
On June 1, the Maharashtra government issued an advertisem-ent in newspapers in over 20 countries inviting expression of interest (EOI) for the Rs 9,300-crore Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP).
Besides livelihood of thousands of poor Muslim, the state government Dharavi redevelopm-ent plan could endanger 42 masjids and madarasas if the structures are not sensibly rehabilitated.
The figures: Rs 1 lakh for an EOI form; a minimum opening bid of Rs 1,000 crore; 57,000 families to be rehabilitated; and over Rs 4,000 crore to be made. And in the forthcoming seven years, five select developers will convert Dharavi into a “posh locality” with five self-sufficient sectors, each with basic amenities.
For years, successive governments have cared little for Dharavi and its estimated Rs 3000 crore economy. Dharavi is a home to self-sufficing industry largely made up of leather, footwear, garment, soap, cutlery, food, gem and jewellery, pottery and recycling units, and its own crime network. It has one of the single largest concen-trations of Muslim entrepreneurs.
The redevelopment plan is promising slum dwellers new homes in multi-storey buildings but is largely silent on their livelihood. Naturally, a spanking new apartm-ent block can't have a dilapidated asbestos-roofed tannery in its midst. Slum rehabilitation projects elsewhere in the city have wiped out thousands of small businesses.
The people of Dharavi have threatened to take to the streets and bring Mumbai to a standstill if their businesses are not made a part of the overall rehabilitation package. At stake is the micro-level occupation of a 350,000 to 600,000 workforce.
Many are suspicious that the motivation to demolish Dharavi is purely about money. The slum is a prime location at the centre of the financial capital that makes the land it sits on worth its weight in gold.
Under the Dharavi Redevelop-ment Project, all the eligible slum dwellers whose names are incorporated in the electoral roll of 1995 and whose structures are existing on site will be rehabilitated free of cost in a self contained pucca tenement with a carpet area of 225 sq ft through the developers to be appointed by the government of Maharashtra.
Leading academicians from universities in the US, UK and South Africa have written a letter in protest against the Dharavi Redevelopment Project to Prime Minster Manmohan Singh, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
The letter points out that there has been no proper survey of Dharavi, no suggestions were invited and no environmental assessment done. The government had not followed the legal procedure of publishing a plan and inviting objections and suggestions. Dharavi redevelopme-nt project proposed by the government to build 57,000 houses in the area has brought about a ‘profound sense of disquiet’ among artists, researchers and professio-nals from across the globe.
The letter has been signed by respected intellectuals like professors Arjun Appadurai of New School, Homi Bhabha of Harvard University, Richard Burdette of the London School of Economics, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Saskia Sassen of the University of Chicago. Writer-diplomat Shashi Tharoor and writer activists Jianying Zha from China have also signed the letter. The report refers to a report by Mumbai civic activists D M Sukhtankar, Shirish Patel and others, which pointed out that there were no studies projecting the increased population of Dharavi after redevelopment.
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