2008.02.19: A world-class city is not built with a bulldozer

Original version of a response to February 07, 2008, article in Hindustan Times and the abridged version printed in the the Mumbai edition of HT on February 19, 2008:

Aditya Ghosh begins his 07/02/08 article, "Final plan for Asia’s largest slum ready," with the daydream of walking on an ultramodern elevated walkway, looking down at was once “Asia’s largest sprawl of squalor.” This top-down view not only colors Ghosh's palpably laudatory and factually dubious articles on the government's redevelopment plan for the slum, but also characterizes planners' own perspective on the project.

The article misrepresents the published designs as final blueprints, whereas they remain firmly in the realm of the imagination. Although the government has established general standards for amenities, open space and other requirements in each sector, each of the 19 short-listed bidders is charged with submitting a detailed design proposal on the basis of which — along with other criteria — the final five developers will be selected. The article's inaccurate portrayal of Mukesh Mehta's designs as a done deal gives readers a false image of what redevelopment in Dharavi will look like and threatens to mislead people into believing that debates on design are closed.

A reputable publication such as the HT, which has critically examined civic matters in the past, should also have ensured that the reporter include all sides of the story. International media outlets have spotlighted the controversies surrounding the Dharavi project enough for editors to recognize it as a contested matter. While publications such as The Economist and National Geographic interviewed both slum dwellers and project planners in depth, Ghosh’s article unfortunately ends up as a public relations exercise for MM Consultants.   

Like the architects of the plan, Ghosh dreams of replacing what he perceives as a worthless eyesore on Mumbai's landscape with luxury residential complexes and swanky office parks. From their elevated vantage point, proponents of the plan neglect to see that, beneath the sea of corrugated tin roofs, Dharavi is a highly developed, socially diverse and economically productive area that is the outcome of generations of investment and self-development with little assistance from authorities or formal institutions. It is also an economic hub integrated with local and global markets; one estimate places the annual value of goods produced in Dharavi at USD 500 million (“Inside the Slums,” The Economist, 27/01/05). Planners’ above-ground perspective has resulted in a paternalistic development plan that – to the detriment of the slum’s inhabitants and the city as a whole – fails to view Dharavi’s residents as partners in planning the future of their community.

Although development is needed to make Dharavi a livable environment, the top-down approach adopted in the official plan has been discredited among urban planning experts around the world, who agree that development is effective only if it is participatory and accounts for the residential and employment needs of the poor.

In Dharavi, the planning agency has finalized project plans and short-listed developers without any participation from the community whose lives and livelihoods hang in the balance. Authorities have waived the official norm of requiring majority consent in slum resettlement projects. They have not adequately informed Dharavi’s residents about the nature of the redevelopment plan and resettlement policy. Needless to say, they have not engaged the poor in planning efforts. Tellingly, final plans were “available exclusively with the HT,” rather than laid open to public scrutiny and debate or drawn and redrawn in consultation with the affected community.

Failure to involve slum dwellers has resulted in a plan that discounts the needs of the poor while catering to the upper classes. The residents of Dharavi do not need multi-level car parks or multi-storey office complexes that will raise the local cost of living beyond their means. They do not want to live in 15- to 18-storey buildings that are unaffordable to maintain. They do not need outside agencies to train them in the crafts in which they have been involved for centuries.  

Mukesh Mehta and the final developers named in the project cannot be expected to fulfill their claim of accounting for the needs of slum dwellers. Mehta’s background is in building homes for the affluent abroad. The short-listed firms, several of whom are foreign, are distinguished by their work in designing luxury complexes and townships. These actors cannot be counted on to either understand or prioritize the planning needs of slum dwellers or of an integrated metropolis. Their business is to make money, not to engage in pro-poor city planning. The government must fulfill its duty of ensuring that the project is geared not towards lining the pockets of developers, but towards the interests of Dharavi’s residents and the city as a whole, a result that can only be achieved with the involvement of the poor.

The redevelopment plan — and the article's presentation of it — contain an implicit and false opposition between what is good for the city and what is good for the poor. In Mumbai, a place where 54 percent of the population lives in slums, the poor are the city. The largely informal labor of the poor is also the foundation on which the city's growth is built. A slum redevelopment plan that does not prioritize the housing and employment needs of the poor will not be effective or sustainable.

The designs reprinted in the HT may look pretty on paper but do not reflect the best interests of this culturally complex and economically diverse community. A world-class city is not born out of aesthetically appealing and conceptually digestible drawings drafted in an air-conditioned office, but from participatory processes that balance the interests of stakeholders and genuinely account for the needs of the poor. A world-class city is not built overnight with a bulldozer, but through equitable, sustainable and incremental development. A world-class city is not fundamentally defined by its shopping malls and elevated walkways, but by its ability to provide for the basic needs of its citizens.

In its obsessive quest to rival Shanghai, of which the article reminds us, Mumbai risks striving for the superficial trappings of modernity while neglecting the less glamorous but more basic necessities of secure, safe and affordable housing; proper sanitation; and sustainable livelihoods.  

As the government’s struggle to balance the claims of stakeholders has resulted in project delays, authorities still have the opportunity to change their approach. Housing Secretary SS Kshatriya has taken commendable steps in seeking to reconcile the aspirations of residents with project constraints and the requirements of the metropolis. If the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is to be a successful, precedent-setting endeavor that improves the lives of slum dwellers and serves Mumbai in the long-term, all those associated with the project must get their heads out of the clouds and their feet on the ground.  

Katia Savchuk with input from Sheela Patel
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC)