Thousands of
Mumbai slum-dwellers have been rendered homeless after their houses
were demolished as part of the Mithi river clean-up project. Sonia
Faleiro reports on a depressingly familiar saga: many who are
legally entitled to full and proper rehabilitation have been left without
a roof over their heads
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Many slum-dwellers
who have been provided new homes continue living among the debris
in makeshift
housing. Some are doing so
to earn rent. Others find the
distance between their
work-area and new home too far to cover daily |
A ribbon of space
separates one of the two-dozen mustard-coloured buildings from another,
but it is enough for the lemon-yellow monsoon light to permeate, illuminating
on the ground the raw sewage floating in an open drain.
Mosquitoes hover
hungrily over the cloudy green water. The stench rises, wafting past
a group of playing children, a string of fruit sellers resolutely slicing,
spicing, and selling their wares, and upwards to the tightly closed
windows of Areefa Qureishi’s 225 sq. feet two room-house and mutton
store, which she shares with her family of 13, four meat cleavers, and,
currently, two shanks of meat hanging from bloodied metal hooks on a
wall. This is Tunga Village on Mumbai’s Saki-Vihar road.
An estimated 4,055
settlements have been displaced as a result of the Mithi River Development
and Protection Authority’s (MRDPA) plan to clean-up and rejuvenate
the Mithi river. Along with open plots in Mandala in Mankhurd, and buildings
constructed by the Mumbai Urban Transport Project and the Mumbai Urban
Infrastructure Project, Tunga Village is one of the sites where the
displaced Project Affected Persons (PAPs) have been relocated.
The project was
conceived in August 2005, after the July 26 floods devastated the city,
exposing government agencies’ inability to protect people and
property during such occurrences. The project, scheduled to be completed
in two phases — by June, 2006 and July, 2007 — at the cost
of Rs 130 crore, has an ambitious agenda. This includes channelling
the river, beautifying the banks, and removing and rehabilitating residential
and commercial establishments whose activities adversely impact the
Mithi. The banks of the river, which starts at Powai and flows through
Saki Naka, Kalina and Kurla, meeting the Arabian Sea at Mahim Bay, are
littered with the byproducts of this ambition. Stores without fronts,
slum dwellers trawling for their possessions from under chunks of concrete,
furniture abandoned in the Mithi whose troubled waters flow sullen,
heavy with garbage and untreated effluent.
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Wrecked
Dreams : Debris of the demolished small-scale industries
along the river
Photos Sonia Faleiro |
On April 25, Fatima
and her son Qadir Sheikh, a welder, were eating their lunch of chappatis,
chopped onion and dal, when the bulldozers of the Mumbai Metropolitan
Region Development Authority (MMRDA) announced their presence along
with policemen and MMRDA officials. No notice period — not even
the minimum 24 hours — announcing the demolition, had been given
to Sheikh and her neighbours in the Jari Mari slum of Andheri East.
“Kutte ki tarah unhone mujhe kheencha. Mera poora khana bhi gaya.”
(They pushed me like a dog. I even lost my meal.) Since then, the Sheikhs
have been living with relatives, moving every two weeks, and making
the rounds of the MMRDA offices in Chembur and Bandra. paps who had
purchased their property prior to January 1, 2000, and have the paperwork
to prove it, are eligible for rehabilitation. Yet, Fatima and Qadir
are homeless, the house which they purchased for Rs 1.5 lakh, a small
mountain of rubble, indistinguishable from the dozens that flank it.
This kind of treatment
meted out to hapless slum-dwellers has scarred the rehabilitation drive.
In fact, the core premise of MRDPA’s action-plan — that
slum-dwellers and small scrap and recycling industrial units were primarily
responsible for the flood, because of encroachment and polluting of
the river — is being contested by environmentalists like Girish
Raut. He points out, “Of the 800 million litres of sewage dumped
into the Mithi daily, 2 million is from the slums and the remainder
from the big industries. Big industries have never taken the issue of
waste management seriously. So the most downtrodden people start businesses
of managing the waste, recycling it — essentially doing the work
of the industries — in Dharavi and Kurla, the biggest waste-management
areas in Asia. As for encroachment, many slum-dwellers work as labourers
in the industries. They aren’t provided accommodation by their
employers and settle closest to their work — the banks of the
Mithi.”
The demolitions
are being seen as the easiest solution the MRDPA could think of in the
name of preventing future floods. However, since the 1970s urban planners
have manipulated the course of the Mithi, and reclaimed over 700 acres
of mangroves swamps in the Mahim creek, the only outlet of the river
into the Arabian Sea, for the construction of high-profile projects.
These include the Bandra Kurla Complex, the National Stock Exchange
(NSE), the MMRDA Head Office, and the ongoing Bandra-Worli Sea Link,
all of which have been constructed on the original course of the river.
As a result, the mouth of the Mithi has constricted to a third of its
original width. On July 26, the Bandra Kurla area experienced the worst
flooding and slowest drainage in the city. While there appears little
point in demanding the demolition of the NSE and surrounding buildings,
Raut argues that the land which is currently fallow should be returned
to the river. It is also not too late to prevent the destruction of
remaining tracts of mangroves, of which 40 percent have been destroyed
in the past decade, to make way for housing construction, slum dwellings
and treatment plants. Says Bittu Sehgal, editor of Sanctuary Asia, “Mangroves
help to stabilise climate by moderating temperature, humidity, wind
and even waves. They are flood buffers, and protect the land from the
impact of the sea.”
The manner in which
the concretisation of Mumbai is being carried out appears to be of little
concern to the Government, unlike the demolition of slum dwellings.
This has led Raj Awasthi, an activist who is also the joint secretary
of the United Shop Owners Association, to suggest that a nexus between
builders and political interests exists. He points out that slum-dwellers
due for rehabilitation are encouraged to sell their land to builders,
who in turn use it to construct high-rises. Therefore the land, which
is cleared of slums in the name of encroachment or river widening exercises
doesn’t remain clear. Hence, the problem remains unsolved. “A
builder will buy this land for between Rs 700 and Rs 1,500 a square
foot,” says Awasthi, “and resell it for upwards of Rs 25,000
a square foot. The Mithi river expansion is a boon for corrupt builders.”
