ASIA’S LARGET SLUM DHARAVI: REDEVOLOPMENT PLAN & IT’s CHALLENGES
A Project Report Presented to the Faculty of the School of Management & Entrepreneurship AURO University Surat
In Partial Fulfilment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Administration
Submitted by:
Imran Dobiwala
Submitted to:
Ms. JYOTI CHANDWANI Organisational Behaviour September 2013
DEED OF DECLARATION
I, __________________________________, hereby submit my research paper entitled ___________________________________________________ _________________________ _____________________________________________________ ___________________________ And truthfully declare that the above-titled paper is a product of my original research investigation.
I further declare that, should the school eventually e ventually discover that a substantial portion of my paper p aper is lifted, in to, from original sources, using exactly the wo rds of the author in more than 50% of the whole content, I reserve the right to AURO University, Surat to recall my MBA Diploma and cancel the degree granted to me.
Signed this day of __________________________ at AURO University, Surat
___________________________ MBA Candidate
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CERTIFICATE (AURO)
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT I heartily wish to extend heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to numerous Mentors, benefactors, and constituents who have collectively endowed the Wherewithal, faith and encouragement for me to navigate and complete my Project journey. To Professor Kamlesh Mishra, my primary advisor and unflagging advocate, who mustered devoted, continuing, innovative and adaptive mentorship to impel and shepherd my checked efforts through diverse and abounding challenges, I extend my deep and abiding respect and many, many thanks. To Professor Jyoti Chandwani, my supporting advisor, who gently and patiently endured my academic tardiness, I offer commensurate veneration?
To the faculty and staff of the School of Management and Entrepreneurship, AURO University, Surat.
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PREFACE
ASIA’S LARGET SLUM DHARAVI: REDEVOLOPMENT PLAN
Master of Business Administration, AURO University, Surat, September 2013.
This study was an attempt to determine the redevelopment plan of dharavi slum area. Chapter 1 is includes the introduction about the topic the business activities done at dharavi, limitation of the study and significance of the study. In Chapter 2 includes literature review which is said or written by some author. Chapter 3 highlights the life of the people living over there, redevelopment plan of dharavi and the problem to implement that plan and at lastly Chapter 4 is giving short review about the topic and Chapter 5 the describes the sources where the data is collected from.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ch. No
Topic
Page No
INTRODUCTION:
1.
1.1 Background of the study 1.2 Objective of the study 1.3 Scope and limitation
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Scope Limitation
2.
LITERATURE REVIEW
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3.
THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK
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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.
RESEARCH DESIGN SOURCES OF DATA
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5.
REDEVELOPMENT PLAN OF DHARAVI
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6.
CONCLUSION
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7.
REFERENCES
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CHAPTER – 1 – INTRODUCTION BACK GOUND OF THE STUDY
On the surface, the Dharavi slum in the heart of India‘s largest city, Mumbai, is an e yesore. Thousands upon thousands of corrugated iron roofs give the appearance of a place mired in poverty, a place in which every day is a struggle just to survive. In many ways, this appearance reflects the reality. Open drains leave a smell of human excrement in the air, and rats infest the streets. Dharavi‘s residents often live ten people to a room the size of which a student in a British university would be unhappy with, and have access to clean water for only three or four hours a day, and this they have to share with their neighbours. Dharavi gives lie to the traditional conception of Mumbai‘s slums as places of squalor and poverty. This ‗city within a city‘ is a model of economic efficiency and productivity, a place where most things appear to be broken but everything seems to be working rather nicely. Dharavi is situated between Mumbai's two main suburban railway lines, the Western and Central Railways. To its west are Mahim and Bandra, and to the north lies the Mithi River, which empties into the Arabian Sea through the Mahim Creek. To its south and east are Sion and Matunga. Both its location and poor drainage systems make Dharavi particularly vulnerable to floods during the wet season
BUSINESS ACTIVITIES However there is more to Dharavi than poverty, squalor and disease. The slum is often described as a city within a city, and it is estimated that the annual turnover for the thriving businesses within Dharavi stands at somewhere in the region of $500-650 million. Well over three quarters of the residents living in Dharavi are employed, and the slum even has its own millionaires. Moreover, the economic and employment opportunities that Dharavi has to offer its residents appears to outweigh any concerns they may have about the health effects of living in such unhealthy conditions. One doctor working in Dharavi told the New York Times that ―people who come to Dharavi or other slum areas- their priority is not health…their priority is earning‖. Indeed many Indian‘s, particularly from states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, see moving to the slum as a great opportunity, enabling them to find work, gain skills, and escape rural Indian poverty. Whilst agricultural wages in India are measly, many households in Dharavi are earning up to 15,000 rupees per month, and the slum also provides cheap accommodation relative to other areas in Mumbai. Several industries thrive in Dharavi, including textiles, pottery and leather. To add to this, there is now a thriving recycling industry, which stops the city of Mumbai ―choking to death on its own waste‖ One third of the population of Dharavi have no access to clean drinking water at all. There is a serious sanitation problem in Dharavi, with poor drainage systems causing the spread of diseases and serious public health problems. This is only exacerbated by the annual monsoons, with the flooding leading to increased spreading of contagious diseases. In Dharavi there are 4000 cases of disease reported every day.AS per the data of 2009 figures suggest that there is only one toilet 7
for every 1440 people. It is clear that the Indian government, for various reasons, has failed to address the serious health problems that present themselves in Dharavi, and in this sense the slum stands as a prominent and ugly example of the huge social problems faced by an India in the process of rapid economic development and population growth. It is estimated that up to 300 families arrive every hour in Mumbai alone. What‘s more, the people of Dharavi seem quite satisfied with their lot. Crime in the area is low in comparison to other districts in Mumbai, an impressive fact given that the slum has somewhere in the region of one million residents. A scheme to revelop the slum, funded by private investors (who are attracted to the valuable land upon which Dharavi sits, with its proximity to the railway lines, and thus the rest of India, and its central location in Mumbai – it is close to the new Bandra Kurla financial district) is vehemently opposed by many of the slum dwellers themselves. Whilst they would be given a free and legal apartment on the same site, many feel that they would be unable to earn a living if they were moved from their street-side accommodation into high rise buildings.
It is not only economic considerations that lead people to oppose the redevelopment, but cultural considerations as well. Residents feel that redevelopment proposals will erode their traditional ways of life, disrupt communities with rich histories, and point out that the government is offering to re-house only those who can prove they have lived in Dharavi since before the year 2000. Thus, under the redevelopment proposals, the majority of Dharavi‘s residents (many of whom have no paperwork to prove how long they have lived there) would have to leave, a scenario which would only lead to the creation of new slums. What angers the slum dwellers most about the proposals for redevelopment is how little they seem to have been involved in the process. Whilst they do not oppose redevelopment in its entirety, they feel that the motives behind the current proposals (which are led by the private sector) are predominantly, if not totally, commercial. It is perhaps this reaction against the proposed redevelopment that most clearly makes evident the sense of community felt by the residents of Dharavi. Opposition to redevelopment plans which show scant regard for the preferences and desires of Dharavi‘s inhabitants unite people across the religious divide, with both Hindus and Muslims (the two most represented religions in Dharavi) often taking to Dharavi‘s streets to protest against the plans. Indeed, Dharavi‘s residents seem determined to fight, quite literally if they have to, to preserve their way of life. In an open letter to the private companies and government agencies involved in the redevelopment, Jockin Arputham from the National Slum Dwellers Association India stressed that the slum ―provides income and livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of Mumbai citizens who would otherwise have no employment‖, in addition to cheap accommodation. He goes on to claim that if the slum dwellers‘ offer of partnership is ignored, and development plans continue without taking into account the views of slum dwellers themselves, then they will resort to the more traditional tactics of blocking the city‘s main railway lines (which run in close proximity to 8
the slums) and even the airport runways. Arputham makes clear that if only for economic reasons, those in charge of redevelopment plans would do well to accommodate the slum dwellers‘ demands.
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:
The objectives of the study are as follows:
To understand the reality of Asia‘s Largest Slum, Dharavi. To explore the business activities in Dharavi. To explain and understand the redevelopment plan, initiated by the government. To study the challenges faced by the government for the implementation of the plan.
SCOP OF THE STUDY:
The scope of this study in future study is useful to readers to understand the living standard Dharavi particular are, it will help to gathering the information about the business activities of Dharavi the very famous leather market etc. It may also help to understand the future redevelopment coming in and what kind of a challenges state government is facing.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY:
The data is secondary so reliability is not that much as compare to primary data Project not includes all the aspect related to the redevelopment plan
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CHAPTER – 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW
Mark Jacobson (May 2007) stated that some families have been here for three or more generations — how Dharavi came to be, and they'll say, "We built it." This is not far off. Until the late 19th century, this area of Mumbai was mangrove swamp inhabited by Koli fishermen. When the swamp filled in (with coconut leaves, rotten fish, and human waste), the Kolis were deprived of their fishing grounds — they would soon shift to bootlegging liquor — but room became available for others. The Kumbhars came from Gujarat to establish a potters' colony. Tamils arrived from the south and opened tanneries. Thousands traveled from Uttar Pradesh to work in the booming textile industry. The result is the most diverse of slums, arguably the most diverse neighborhood in Mumbai, India's most diverse city. Prakash M. APTE (Sep. 2008) told that a unique characteristic of Dharavi is its very close work-place relationship. Productive activity takes place in nearly every home. As a result, Dharavi's economic activity is decentralized, human scale, home-based, low-tech and laborintensive. This has created an organic and incrementally developing urban form that is pedestrianized, community-centric, and network-based, with mixed use, high density lowrise streetscapes. This is a model many planners have been trying to recreate in cities across the world. A simplistic re-zoning and segregating of these activities -- common in the United States -- would certainly hurt this very unique urban form. The 'unplanned' and spontaneous development of Dharavi has led to the emergence of an economic model characterized by a decentralized production process relying mainly on temporary work and self-employment. The multiplicity of independent producers makes the production process extremely flexible and adaptable. Its viability is proven by the national and international market its products command. Unfortunately, Dharavi is depicted as a 'slum' that lacks residential infrastructure (roads, housing with individual toilets, public conveniences, etc.). In fact it is not a residential slum, but a unique self-contained township (in the sense of close work-place relationship so eulogized since the days of Patrick Geddes, but which has never been achieved in any of the new towns). Because of all these community-based successes, Dharavi needs to be replicated (albeit with adequate physical infrastructure). Instead, the state government wants to force the relocation of Dharavi's population into tiny cubby hole apartments in high rise towers so that the vacated land can be commercially exploited by developers through the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan. At a conservative estimate, a development of this magnitude could fetch $460 million for a developer, a profit of at least 900%.Any plan for Dharavi must explicitly take into consideration the work-place relationship developed over the years so that it does not destroy the existing intricate urban structure that has sustained the local economy. This plan must acknowledge existing economic activities and their spatial organization, and not destroy it in the process of redevelopment. Sectoral divisions of Dharavi proposed in the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan that would segregate land uses are evidence of the insensitiveness of the top-down approach to planning. The involvement of the concerned population in the planning process is a planning imperative if the redevelopment is to be successful from a human and urban perspective. But for the most part, the population of Dharavi has not had much say in the creation of the plan for their community. 10
Lakshmi Iyer (July 2009) stated that Maharashtra state is accepting bids to redevelop Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia. A real estate developer assesses the risks and tenders a bid. The bid conditions include providing new free housing to tens of thousands of slum dwellers. The cost of constructing the housing is anticipated to be paid for from the revenues from developing and selling market-rate housing. While the primary concerns are cost of construction, cost of capital, and revenues from sale of units, the analysis must consider many aspects of risk, including political risk, foreign exchange risk, market risk, and execution risk. Further, the discussion covers social aspects, including whether the slum should be redeveloped at all, whether it should be redeveloped by government or by the private sector, and whether to accomplish it in large chunks or in smaller increments. Additional topics that can be covered include consideration of what happens to commercial activities formerly run from slum dwellings, whether the market-rate units will indeed sell for high prices if there are tens of thousands of former slum dwellers housed nearby, and whether the slum dwellers will be allowed to resell their units or whether they must remain in them. Other issues include timing of the project, guarantees to and from the government and the private parties to mitigate risk, and whether this model, if successful, can be extended to other slums in Asia Dharavi also stands out for its bustling informal economic activity in small-scale industry and handicrafts. Unlike Bombay‘s other slums, where a large majority of inhabitants work outside their place of residence, 80% of Dharavi‘s residents also work ther e. In this way, Dharavi is also a full-fledged industrial area, with an estimated 400 million euros in turnover. A study by the SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres) estimates that Dharavi has 4,902 production facilities, with 1,036 in textiles, 932 in pottery, 567 in the leather, 722 in recycling and scrap metal, 498 in embroidery and 152 in food. Furthermore, there are 111 restaurants and several thousand boutiques in Dharavi. And yet, this dynamic economic activity should not overshadow the fact that work conditions in this informal sector are very often difficult and precarious. Potters and their families constantly live and work surrounded by heat and toxic smoke emanating from the ovens where they bake their pottery, while leather, textile and food workers spend up to 15 hours a day in dark rooms with no ventilation. Salaries are of course very low and competition between old and new migrants is constantly driving the cost of labor down.
Clara Lewis (July 2011) said that Dharavi, spread over 557 acres and housing nearly three lakh people, is no longer Asia's largest slum. Mumbai has at least four larger contenders for the dubious distinction, some of them three times the size of Dharavi. Though, the island city is now largely free of slums.
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CHAPTER – 3 - THEORITICAL FRAME WORK
Experiencing Life in an Indian Slum: Guided tours through Dharavi A few travel operators offer guided tours through Dharavi, showing the industrial and the residential part of Dharavi and explaining about problems and challenges Dharavi is facing. These tours give a deeper insight into a slum in general and Dharavi in particular.
In Mumbai tourist had the visited to the largest Indian slum, Dharavi. In fact, Dharavi is actually the largest slum in Asia, not by size, but rather by population. It is also one of the most productive and least crime ridden parts of all of India. Tourist hire local guides, give back almost all of the proceeds into development of the community, and delve into understanding the area and the culture. In short, they love them. They walked into Asia‘s largest slum ignorant and emerged aglow with a new zeal for life and understanding
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We embarked for Mumbai uncertain of what they wanted to see, but we knew that they wanted to be changed by India. Arriving in Mumbai can be overwhelming for even the most seasoned of travelers. A slum was the last place we expected to find calm and solace. Dharavi has a population of between 600,000 and over 1 million people. It used to be the largest slum in Mumbai at one time, but as of 2011, there are four slums in Mumbai larger than Dharavi In a city where house rents are among the highest in the world, Dharavi provides a cheap and affordable option to those who move to Mumbai to earn their living.. One of the many things they really respected about the way Reality Tours operates is that they insist that you don‘t film or take pictures. People were a little hesitant at first since that goes against everything they believe in. However they got on board with the idea after their guide explained that that was to keep the experience as natural as possible and to avoid intruding into people‘s lives. All of the families and homes you visit along the way are from people who have volunteered to be a part of the tour.
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Vegetable oil cans are recycled up to seven times A large portion (much larger than most people would ever expect) of goods in India are produced in the slum. People collect vegetable oil cans and other items from trash heaps and sell them in the slum. Large warehouses of workers then clean and re-shape the cans, paint buckets, and other items and sell them to companies to be used again. A can for vegetable oil can be recycled and reused up to seven times.
Plastic for cell phones is gathered in Mumbai and processed in the slum Plastic is another popular item to be recycled in the slum. Trash from all over Mumbai is gathered together and cleaned before it is separated into different colors. Afterwards it is 14
shredded into tiny pellets with machines made from old engines. These colored pellets will be sold to cell phone companies across Asia to be melted down into cell phones and cell phone covers.
A large majority of employment in Mumbai comes from the slum. Recycling centers are a large portion of that. There are also hospitals, scooter and car dealerships, refineries, grocery stores, schools, colleges, and everything else you‘d expect in a city. All of these services make it so that if you live in the slum you wouldn‘t ever have to leave to find anything necessary to daily life. In fact, 40% of the Dharavi slum‘s population is the Mumbai police force. Dharavi has a 0.01% recorded crime rate. That small percent is from corruption.
This particular slum is considered a 5 star slum. While the living conditions are cramped and the citizens share small communal toilets, there are great deals of advancements that make the 15
Dharavi slum one of the better slums in the world. Two times a day there is running water. Most families use this time to fill large water jugs in their homes for use later in the day. There are also more schools per capita in the slum than most parts of Mumbai. There are a few different tour packages to choose from. When you will visit dharavi it will take you through the daily life of the slum. The longer tour will also take you through the Dhobi Ghat (open-air laundry) and the red-light district. It is arranged into a winding labyrinth of Muslim and Hindu quarters. We actually arrived the day after a Muslim festival and there were thousands of goat hides piled in the streets. All of them being cleaned for use. A huge amount of ―designer‖ leather products are produced in the slum.
A large percent of textiles in India come from the slum
Pottery is another major product of Dharavi 16
In addition to the traditional pottery and textile industries in Dharavi, there is an increasingly large recycling industry, processing recyclable waste from other parts of Mumbai. The district has an estimated 5000 businesses and 15,000 single-room factories.
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CHAPTER - 4 - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
MEANING OF RESEARCH
Research in common parlance refers to a search for knowledge. Once can also define research as a scientific and systematic search for pertinent information on a specific topic. In fact, research is an art of scientific investigation. The Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary of Curr ent English lays down the meaning of research as ―a careful investigation or inquiry specially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.‖1 Redman and Mory define research as a ―systematized effort to gain new knowledge.‖2 Some people consider research as a movement, a movement from the known to the unknown. It is actually a voyage of discovery. We all possess the vital instinct of inquisitiveness for, when the unknown confronts us, we wonder and our inquisitiveness makes us probe and attain full and fuller understanding of the unknown. This inquisitiveness is the mother of all knowledge and the method, which man employs for obtaining the knowledge of whatever the unknown, can be termed as research. Research is an academic activity and as such the term should be used in a technical sense. According to Clifford Woody research comprises defining and redefining problems, formulating hypothesis or suggested solutions; collecting, organising and evaluating data; making deductions and reaching conclusions; and at last carefully testing the conclusions to determine whether they fit the formulating hypothesis. D. Slesinger and M. Stephenson in the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences define research as ―the manipulation of things, concepts or symbols for the purpose of generalising to extend, correct or verify knowledge, whether that knowledge aids in construction of theory or in the practice of an art.‖3 Research is, thus, an original contribution to the existing stock of knowledge making for its advancement. It is the per suit of truth with the help of study, observation, comparison and experiment. In short, the search for knowledge through objective and systematic method of finding solution to a problem is research. The systematic approach concerning generalisation and the formulation of a theory is also research. As such the term ‗research‘ refers to the systematic method consisting of enunciating the problem, formulating a hypothesis, collecting the facts or data, analysing the facts and reaching certain conclusions either in the form of solutions(s) towards the concerned problem or in certain generalisations for some theoretical formulation.
RESEARCH DESIGN:
A research design is the way or the methods or the procedure followed to conduct an scientific research. Some of the types of research design are exploratory research design, descriptive research design and causal research design. Each has its own meaning. Causal research design 18
helps us to know a cause and effect relation between two variables, whereas exploratory research design is used to find new ideas and insight. Descriptive research design is a type of research method that is used when one wants to get information on the current status of a person or an object. In this study there only one Dharavi slum area of Mumbai. The major focus would be on to know current position of Dharavi and its redevelopment plan. For this a descriptive type of research design is used. DATA COLLECTION METHOD:
There are two ways one can collect data i.e. through primary source (which means generating one‘s own information by surveys or interviews etc.) or through secondary source (which are readily available like information in newspaper, magazines, websites etc.). For this report only secondary data are used as the basic objective is to study Dharavi current position and its future plans, there is no need to conduct a survey or interviews, which are sources of primary data.
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CHAPTER – 5 – DHARAVI REDEVELOPMENT PLAN
The Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP)
Since 2004, a controversial broad redevelopment plan has been in the works: the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. Dharavi is located in a strategic area, a few steps from the new international financial and business centre, the Bandra Kurla Complex , which is meant to free up the southern area of Bombay. The national stock exchange, the diamond bourse and the headquarters of several important financial institutions and banks are all found here. At a time where space is an increasingly rare commodity in Bombay, the land that Dharavi occupies has therefore, within a few years, become very valuable in a rapidly expanding real estate market and has sparked the interest of Indian and foreign investors. Let‘s not forget that Dharavi is ideally situated at the crossroads of the two main rail lines serving Bombay. The Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP), which is being constantly modified and delayed and whose cost is continuously increasing (it is estimated to cost 3 billion euros today), is also headed by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority. Generally, the SRA‘s plans are based on a public private partnership where private builders or cooperatives build small apartments of approximately 21m2 (225 sq. ft.) and residents who can prove they have lived in the slum before a certain date, are resettled for free, usually on the outskirts of the city. In exchange, property entrepreneurs have the right to build other apartments and commercial sites on this land that has been ―freed up‖ by the slums and sell them at higher market prices, thus allowing them to reap lucrative rewards. The DRP is yet a different project with a wider scope since it aims to rehabilitate the entire slum and to rehouse all of the residents whose names appear on the voters‘ list prior to 2000, in Dharavi itself. This would mean an official number of 72,000 families. This project, which is supposed to last seven years, was approved by the government of Maharashtra in 2007, but was developed in 1995 by the architectural firm MM Project Consultants. It is the idea of Mukesh Mehta , a United States-educated Indian architect who has since become a consultant for the Maharashtra government. He defends his so-called ―integrated and sustainable‖ spirit-of-the-times approach, which he has named HIKES for: housing, income, knowledge, environment and socio-cultural development. He suggests replacing the Dharavi slum with a community of five self-sufficient sectors with residential buildings, shops, industrial centers, schools, hospitals, gardens, golf courses, sports complexes, etc. Unlike in the other SRA projects, the five builders who will be responsible for the redevelopment of these five sectors will also have to ensure the establishment of basic infrastructure: water, electricity, roads, and canalization. This clause ensures that horizontal slums are not turned into vertical slums, as is too often the case. Mr. Mehta‘s goal is to make the Dharavi Redevelopment Project a redevelopment model that can be internationally reproduced in order to create a slum-free world by 2025. 20
CHALLENGES On paper, the project may appear attractive, but the reality of it is quite different, and the project has spurred a general outcry from organizations representing the residents of Dharavi, in particular the Dharavi Vikas Samiti collective (the Dharavi development committee), which is made up of the National Slum Dwellers Federation, SPARC and Mahila Milan (a women‘s association). 1. The first issue of conflict concerns the number of people who are to benefit from the project. This number appears to have been greatly underestimated, because even by using the year 2000 as a point of reference, the SRA only came to 72,000 families, whereas the NSDF estimates that 100,000 would be a more correct number. This begs the question: where will the non-rehabilitated families go? Will they populate new slums, somewhere farther, with even worse conditions? 2. The size of the apartments that are to be given for free to Dharavi residents is another problem: 21 m2 is too small an area for families of five to 10 people who often carry out their occupation in the same place as their residence, which they have had to sometimes expand by adding another floor. This would be unthinkable in an apartment building. Through negotiations, the residents‘ associations succeeded in requiring an area of 28 m2, which seems more acceptable, though some people would prefer 37 m2. This is because numerous business activities require much more space. Owners will either have to buy land at market price — something that few of them can manage — close their business down or move it to another slum. 3. The fate of pollution-producing informal business activity (soap-making, tanning, pottery) also poses a problem. Does the DRP mean an end to their operations and unemployment for the workers? There are many questions that have been left unanswered and that indicate the extreme worry of Dharavi residents, small entrepreneurs and artisans who have not received any guarantees about the future of their livelihoods.
Kumbharwada, a neighborhood of potters:
The potters of Kumbharwada are another case. This neighborhood of 2,000 potter families, who came from Gujarat at the start of the 20th century, spreads out over five hectares. For them, space is essential. They estimate that they need at least 92 m2 to store and mould clay, make their pottery and dry it, install ovens where it can be baked, and for some, to have space on the street where they can sell it. The proposed area of 28m2 is very clearly inadequate and their level of poverty makes it impossible for them to buy land. What‘s more, they absolutely refuse to consider Dharavi as a slum and therefore, want nothing to do with the project. Indeed, they consider themselves as the owners of this land, which was given to them for 99 years at the beginning of the 20th century by British colonists as part of the Vacant Land Tenancy Act. However, Mukesh Mehta believes that this allocation of land became invalid the moment the Maharashtra government adopted the DRP. 21
An uncertain future Right now, it is hard to predict the evolution of this project, which, despite being constantly pushed back for 12 years, is still progressing in stages. A request for proposals was launched in June 2007 and interested property developers, both Indian and foreign, started submitting the non-financial technical aspects of their projects in February 2009. Some are already predicting the replacement of Dharavi as a working-class neighborhood with a residential and commercial middle-class area. Others affirm that the residents will oppose any plan that would force them to leave. They were the ones who, through their hard labor, turned the Dharavi marshland into livable land. For example, they threaten to block railway traffic, which would effectively paralyze all of Bombay‘s economic activity. Political parties are no strangers either to the difficulties encountered in the implementation of the DRP. Today, the coalition led by the Congress party, which governs Maharashtra (the state where Bombay is located) defends the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. The opposition parties, BJP and Shiv Sena, firmly rooted in Dharavi, completely reject the project, even though they approved it when they were in power in 2004. We must now wait for the results of the AprilMay 2009 national election. Another important economic issue is the global economic crisis, which puts this massive project into question. But this is also a unique opportunity for the residents‘ associations to suggest alternatives that may have a greater chance of being taken seriously by the authorities. It‘s what Jockin Arputham hopes for anyway. Recently appointed to a government advisory committee, he believes that he ―can convince builders to meet certain needs of the residents.‖ But which ones? He has not said.
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CHAPTER – 6 - CONCLUSION In truth then, Dharavi gives lie to the traditional conception of Mumbai‘s slums as places of squalor and poverty, whose residents have little or no hope of a bright future. The slum is a model of economic efficiency and productivity, a city within a city, a place of opportunity for the hundreds of thousands of Indians who flock there every year in search of jobs, housing and education. Its residents have a very clear sense of their own identity; they have hopes and aspirations, and a genuine belief that these are achievable. This is not to take away from the serious public health issues which the government must do everything in its power to address, but it should make any potential developer stop and think about the virtues of a redevelopment plan which has the people of Dharavi at its heart. It seems that in a place where most things appear to be broken, everything at present is working quite nicely.
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CHAPTER – 6 - REFERENCES
Apte, Prakash M. (2008). Dharavi in Mumbai is no Longer Asia's Largest Slum. TNN. Lakshmi Iyer, John D. Macomber, Namrata Arora (2009). Dharavi: Developing Asia's Largest Slum (A). HBS Premier Case Collection. Mark Jacobson (2007). Dharavi Mumbai's Shadow City. National Geographic. Retrieved 200704-30.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-07-06/india/29742525_1_largest-slumdharavi-nivara-hakk-sangharsh-samiti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi#cite_ref-7
http://www.planetizen.com/node/35269
http://base.d-p-h.info/en/fiches/dph/fiche-dph-7867.html
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