Dharavi : A milking cow and game of land grabing competition

Dharavi : A milking cow and game of land grabing competition

By Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi

Asia’s largest and Mumbai’s pride Dharavi have seen many prime ministers and grants with allocation for rehabilitation but it stand tall in the heart of politicians and ofcourse on the city. The slum redevelopment projects meant to develope the ruins of slums and not rehabilitating. The slum redevelopment project has been called a land grabing competition by urban planners and housing experts who were appointed by government of Maharashtra. The issues raised by committee headed by retired IAS officer D M Sukthankar were put off in July last and authorities refused to accept the fact detailed in the report.
The experts urged the government to give up the notion of making profit out of the project and focus on the interests of residents of Dharavi instead. Under the scheme, the slums spread over 2 sq. kms in the heart of Mumbai would give way to 28 sqm sized flats stacked in multistorey buildings.
These buildings will consume half the land now occupied. The remaining land will e given to builders for commercial projects. The bidding process for this was drawn flack and many have opted out of the bid since the reserve price kept was equating to BKC.
The other side of the story is that local residents opposing the rehabilitation scheme saying it does not provide workspace. The committee in its report said the residents have established not just homes but thriving businesses that need to be protected. Dharavi is having world’s most populated area status on which 3,14,887 persons breathing each others aroma in a sq. km. Adding more people, well almost half of it if scheme is sanctioned, would be catastrophic, the report said. The planners called for an alternative approach to redeveloping Dharavi.
Schemes after schemes, Dharavi is a milking cow to the exchequers and land grabing in the areas pession for some who have built shanties of upto four floors.