[IPSM] Slum Demolitions in India

[Dru Oja Jay]

Not sure if I'm the only one that missed this....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4222525.stm

India's 'biggest slum demolitions'
		
By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Mumbai

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.

"Why didn't you stop us when we set up home here? Where do we go and 
stay now?" she screams.

Annabhau Sattenagar is a bleak eight-acre shantytown in north-west 
Mumbai ringed by hills, a nuclear power plant, drab housing blocks and 
stinking abattoirs.

Six years ago, Mehrunissa and hundreds of others paid a slumlord to 
fill up the swamp-land with soil and erect tin-roofed homes for them.

Slumlords are the men who make their livings by wheeling and dealing in 
illegal property deals that make new slums possible.

In no time, a shantytown grew out of the bog. Some 12,000 people lived 
in nearly 3,000 huts with electricity and cable television connections.

The men and women here sold vegetables, pulled rickshaws and did menial 
work for a living. Their children went to the local municipal school.

Feeble resistance

That was until last week when municipal workers with their bulldozers 
and dumper trucks roared into their fetid neighbourhood and began 
tearing down their homes.

By the end of an overcast day some 2,600 homes had been razed to the 
ground.

Weary, bedraggled residents like Mehrunissa initially threw stones and 
lit small fires to deter the demolition squad, but the police chased 
them away.

At night, they sneak back to the ruins - soggy concrete, tatty 
tarpaulin, rotting tin and dry faeces - and reclaim what they call 
their 'land'.

They sleep under the stars even as the twisted tin lacerates their 
bodies and rodents bite their new-born children.

Mehrunissa's neighbourhood is the latest to be razed in a demolition 
drive against illegal constructions in Mumbai.

Mumbai's municipal authorities reckon this is the "largest ever" 
demolition exercise in urban India.

Since the drive began last December, 67,000 illegal constructions have 
been demolished - shantytowns have taken the brunt simply because they 
have encroached upon 14% of the island city's area.

'Demolition man'

A total of 123 acres of prime government-owned land has been already 
freed up in a little less than two months since the drive began.

The target is to free up another 375 acres by ridding them of their 
residents and their wretched homes.

This is part of a $6bn urban rejuvenation plan for India's richest and 
dirtiest megalopolis, where writer Suketu Mehta says the "first world 
lives smack in the centre of the third".

Leading Mumbai's demolition squad is 45-year-old Vijay Kumar Nagorao 
Kalam Patil, a wiry, reticent revenue officer on secondment to the 
city's municipality.

Surrounded by a posse of commandoes, the indefatigable Mr Patil trudges 
from one site to another making sure that the work is progressing 
smoothly.

"It's not easy. There is a lot of resistance. We are attacked, our 
trucks are set on fire," he says.

"But work is workship. It has to go on."

Affordable housing

Politicians say the makeover will turn Mumbai into the next Shanghai, 
which is touted as a symbol of China's economic prowess.

Urban planners say that the makeover will only happen if the government 
builds new homes to house 7.5 million of the city's 12 million people 
who live in slums - that's more than 60% of the population.

That's not all.

At least 5% of Mumbai's people live on the roads, and 2% are simply 
nomads. Another 2.5 million people live in dilapidated buildings which 
have been officially tagged as 'dangerous'.

Planners say that the only way out is for the state to build low-cost 
housing in a city where real estate is frighteningly expensive and 
drives people even with reasonable incomes to live in slums.

Demolishing slums is not the only way to free up land in Mumbai. Some 
585 acres of land occupied by textile mills have been lying idle for 
ages after the businesses shut down.

'Big money'

For the moment, the state government says that it will provide housing 
only to slum dwellers who came into the city after 1995.

In a land-scarce city, slums have come in the way of building new 
roads, bridges, schools and playgrounds. By one estimate, there are 
35,000 slums alone which sit on top of or run alongside the city's 
water mains.

The lure of a job in Mumbai draws droves of poor from all over India - 
in many cases entire villages have moved into slums replicating the 
village names and sequence of homes.

Urban planners like Chandrasekhar Prabhu say municipal authorities, 
policemen and politicians have connived over the years to build slums 
and settle migrants there.

"It's big money. The slumlord grabs the land, pays off the police, 
municipal worker and the local elected representative. Then he sells it 
to somebody for a hefty price, who in turn parcels it into lots and 
sells huts to the poor," he says.

The cost of a shanty, he says, could range from anything between 50,000 
rupees ($1,100) to 300,000 rupees ($6,600), depending on the location.

'Fear of migration'

Mr Prabhu says slums have been torched or razed and then set up again.

"You allow illegal settlements, make money. Then you burn them down or 
demolish them and rebuild them and make money again."

The sun is setting over gloomy Annabhau Sattenagar.

I ask demolition man Vijay Kalam Patil if he is thinking about the fate 
of the thousands of sleepless, hungry evictees who are squatting, 
fighting, and defecating in the cold, squalid ruins.

"If they set up unauthorised constructions and squat on government 
land, why should I think about them?" he asks.

"We want to put the fear of the consequences of unfettered migration 
into these people. We have to restrain them from coming to Mumbai."

Urban affairs analyst Kalpana Sharma says this is "sheer madness".

"How can you ask people to stop coming to Mumbai? This is a democracy. 
Why don't you demolish the slums only after building housing for the 
poor?"

Curiously, the rich and the middle classes in Mumbai are not asking 
these questions.