Letter to SRA about the DRP by Matias Echanove

TO:
Shri I.S. Chahal, IAS
Chief Executive Officer,
Slum Rehabilitation Authority,
5th floor, Griha Nirman Bhavan,
Bandra (East),
Mumbai – 400 051.
Fax No: 2659 0457

FROM:
Matias Echanove
Dai 2 Okamuraso #201
7-3-14 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku
Tokyo 160-0022 / Japan
matias@urbanology.org

Mumbai, February 15, 2007


Concern: Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP), in reference to the Public Notice issued under Section 37(1) of the MR&TP Act, 1966 published in Loksatta dated 21st January, 2007.


Dear Sir,

I am a Swiss national pursuing a PhD in urban studies at the University of Tokyo, currently doing field work in Mumbai and developing a website about Dharavi. I have been doing projects and research in various cities around the world including New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Mexico City, Bogotá and now Mumbai. I am particularly interested in Dharavi and the redevelopment project of the government and would like to share my observations with you, not as a Mumbaikar directly affected by the planned redevelopment, but rather as an urbanist, with an international outlook and deep interest in urban life.

Firstly, I must confess that amongst all the cities I have visited, Mumbai stands apart. There is no doubt that in the unfolding century, Mumbai will keep reinforcing its position as a global economic, cultural and urban giant. According to demographic projections published by various international agencies, Mumbai's population will double by the year 2020 and become the second most populated metropolitan area in the world after Tokyo. Due to its status as the financial capital of the booming Indian sub-continent, it will keep attracting incomers from all over the country and the rest of the world. Its inherent cosmopolitanism, entrepreneurial culture, and capacity to absorb new people and ideas are all qualities that will allow Mumbai to keep its edge in a context of rapid urbanization and global changes.

Another major asset of Mumbai is its healthy democratic system and political freedom. The very fact that the DRP is open to suggestions from the public is a sign of good governance. This is particularly noteworthy at a time when other emerging cities in Asia are being redeveloped in authoritarian ways by central planners, an approach which might seem to give them advantages in the short run, since it speeds up urban development and facilitates very large scale projects. But this approach also has many flaws that have been exposed throughout history. As recently as last year, French suburbs went up in flames as a result of a history of bad urban planning and policies that prevented residents from participating directly in their own urban and economic development.

Having lived and studied in Europe and the US, I was particularly amazed by the intensity of economic activity in Dharavi, the exceptional spirit, hospitality and cultural wealth of its population, and the fantastic urban development that they have achieved over the years without any external aid. The contrast with depressed, violent and urbanistically dreadful ghettos of the Western hemisphere could not be starker. This inspired me to study the economic activity and urbanism of Dharavi paying particular attention to the way they relate to each other. I learnt a lot from walking the streets of Dharavi, talking to residents, social workers and researchers, studying the demographics, geography and history of Dharavi, and analyzing the reasons for the failure of various redevelopment schemes. All this lead me to question preconceived notions of good planning and urban order as well as common misconceptions about Dharavi and its residents. I am sure that you must be very busy going through responses to the Public Notice from various constituencies so I will only bring a few points to your attention.

Employment & Economic Activity

One of the prime objective of the DRP is to transform Dharavi into an "engine for economic boost". With an industrial turnover of US $500 million or Rps 2200 crores (The Economist, 27.01.05) excluding home businesses, Dharavi already is an economic engine. Tens of thousands of people have been able to lift themselves and their families out of poverty in Dharavi, establishing successful businesses and supporting their children's education. Many migrants first settled in Dharavi and then moved out as their economic condition improved. Even today, Dharavi residents are proud to say that no one starves here. Even the poorest can work and eat. Dharavi has been a land of opportunity for hard working people from all over the country, providing affordable housing at rates that no government agency or NGOs could match, and employment opportunities in a wide range of sectors ranging from metal work to food production.

According to a survey quoted in a study of Ahmedabad's Center for Environmental Planning & Technology (CEPT), Dharavi currently has close to 5000 industrial units including textile, pottery, leather, recycling, stitching, printing, eatables, and restaurants. This does not include services such as construction, education, health care, and so on. Nor does it include the extremely developed retailing sector, and the large range of home-based productive activities that can be found in Dharavi. The DRP aims at bringing in employers from outside to provide jobs for Dharavi residents. In a presentation of the DRP, there was a mention of employers such as "center of leather research institute" or the "gem & jewelery export promotion council". Although, the central location of Dharavi would doubtlessly be ideal for any of these institutes and research centers, it is not clear how much of the employment they would generate would go to the current population of Dharavi. Taking over space used by local industries and home-based businesses, incoming companies may in fact reduce the range of employment opportunities now available to the residents of Dharavi.

The role of home-based businesses and production units seems to have been overlooked by the DRP. One of the important characteristics of Dharavi is the predominance of live-work arrangements. Walking through any of the narrow residential streets of Dharavi by day, one can observe the intense productive activity taking place in nearly every home. Any plan for Dharavi should explicitly take this existing condition into consideration, so as to make sure that developing new residential buildings does not destroy the intricate urban structure sustaining the economic activity of Dharavi. The decentralized, human scale, home-based, low tech, work intensive, specialized, flexible and highly responsive economic activity of Dharavi is directly connected to its pedestrian, community-centric, networked-based, high density, low-rise, mixed-use, street-level, organic, and incrementally developing urban form. Indeed urban form, economic activity and social networks are deeply meshed together and a simplistic re-zoning segregating these activities would certainly hurt the activity.

The unplanned and spontaneous development of Dharavi lead to the emergence of a particular economic model characterized by a decentralized production process relying principally on temporary work and self-employment. In 1985, a survey by the National Slum Federation found that 35% of Dharavi residents were self-employed and 15% were temporarily employed. These figures are in all likeliness even higher today. In an interview, a supplier of raw material for suitcase manufacturing operating from a 2000 sq ft warehouse in Sethwadi said that he was supplying about 3000 small units all over Dharavi. He explained that the production of suitcases in Dharavi is not an integrated process as in Chinese factories. Instead, all producers fix their own price in function of the demand and the cost of materials. This means that a range of industrial goods are produced in small live-work units. This model based on a multiplicity of independent producers makes the production process extremely flexible and adaptable. The fact that many goods produced in Dharavi are sold on the national and international markets proves the viability of this system.

Therefore, I believe that the land-use maps and plans for Dharavi that the SRA has yet to publish should acknowledge existing economic activities and their spatial organization, so as to ensure that the sophisticated and efficient system in place does not get destroyed in the process of redeveloping Dharavi. If these issues are not addressed thoroughly, I fear that the DRP would replace something that works well by something that doesn't work so well. It would not be the first time in history that in the name of development, urban planning makes things worse.

Redevelopment & Displacement

As a matter of principle, government run redevelopment projects must aspire to improve the area under redevelopment without negatively impacting the rest of the city. For instance, it would clearly be a flaw in the redevelopment scheme if new slums or encroachments resulted from the implementation of the DRP. Therefore, the possible spill-over effects, or "externalities", of the DRP should be carefully thought through. The fact that eligibility for rehabilitation is restricted to residents established before 1995 is a major cause of concern. First of all, it is a well known fact that many photo-pass holders have left Dharavi many years ago and rent their homes to poorer incomers. The DRP would give them a strong incentive to cheat and claim eligibility for rehabilitation, which would benefit the better-offs and leave current renters without a home.

Moreover, the tens of thousands or maybe even lakhs of people (we can only speculate in the absence of updated surveys) who settled after 1995, would simply be left out with no choice but to create new slums. At the very least, because slum redevelopment should not mean the development of new slums, provisions should be made for people displaced as a result of the DRP. The issue is not only human, but also urban. The development of new slums and the multiplication of encroachments on the city's crowded pavements and along railways tracks would be a burden to all of the residents of Mumbai. The DRP should not be implemented if it creates new urban problems for Mumbai.

The DRP in its current form necessarily implies that either i) a very large portion of its current residents will be displaced, or that ii) the density of Dharavi will increase dramatically. The first point was briefly touched upon above. The density levels of Dharavi are already amongst the highest in the world. A 2006 survey by the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture in Mumbai (KRVIA) has revealed that the density of a central nagar of Dharavi, Chambda Baazar is 336,643 people/km⊃;. This compares with 29,500/km⊃; for Mumbai as a whole, which is the most densely populated city in the world, and 55,077/km⊃; for Kwun Tong, the most densely populated area of Honkong.

In any case, further increasing the density of Dharavi would create a great burden on infrastructure and public amenities, and would only be possible by developing double digit high housing projects for current residents. Case studies from all over the world have repeatedly documented the inadequacy of high-rise resettlement schemes in poor areas. The social and economic networks upon which the poor rely for subsistence can hardly be sustained in high-rise structures. High-rise buildings are not appropriate for home-based economic activities. They also tend to be difficult to maintain over the years and lead to all types of social ills. Even the success of reasonably low-rise SRA rehabilitation in Mumbai was put into question by a study published by the Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS) showing that between a quarter and a third of the residents inevitably move out within the first three to five years of resettlement. Unfortunately, the complete reliance of the DRP on profit-maximizing real-estate schemes leaves little or no room for exploring more sustainable and economically viable low-rise, high-density approaches.

Information & Participation

Starting in April 26th 2004, residents were informed about the DRP via posters, pamphlets and banners. This was after the Government decided to implement the Dharavi Action Plan (February 4th 2004). The DRP states that between February 2003 and 2004, "interaction" with various stakeholders, including "slum dwellers, their representatives" took place. Unfortunately, the minutes of these meetings have not been made publicly available. In any case, a few presentations of the DRP, even if followed by questions from the public, does not constitute a consultative process.

The minimal grasp of the urban, economic, and social dynamics at play in Dharavi that the DRP displays is understandable. Dharavi is a complex urban organism that can hardly be understood from outside. This is why it is essential to rely on the residents' local, situational and relational knowledge of the area that they occupy, to draw up a sound redevelopment project. Any attempt to plan from above without connecting to the local actors of Dharavi will result in a simplistic plan that can only destroy the development that has taken place in the last four generations. The diffusion of information and the involvement of the concerned population is not merely a political option, but also a planning imperative, if the redevelopment is to be successful from a human and urban perspective.

The sectoral divisions of Dharavi proposed in the DRP are symptomatic of insensitiveness of the top-down approach to the local realities of Dharavi, which is home to dozens of communities living in nearly a 100 different nagars. Before any sectoral divisions can be made, these communities and nagars should be clearly surveyed and mapped out, alongside the spatial organization of economic activities. A mapping of Dharavi's existing structures, population and economic activities is the basis of a sound master plan. Only the government is in position to put in place or facilitate such a survey. Master planning and zoning should follow such a study, not precede it.

The absence of an honest consultative process with the current residents will leave the DRP open to the accusation of it being a weak cover up for a land grab of the worst kind. Nonetheless, the DRP has had the positive effect of sparking a big debate around the redevelopment of Dharavi, stimulating the interest of developers, NGOs and the media worldwide, and leading activists and community groups to organize themselves around this issue. By opening the DRP to the involvement of the residents, it is possible to realize a scheme that would enhance the welfare of the residents of Dharavi and benefit Mumbai as a whole.

Please do contact me by email if you wish to discuss any of my comments. Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Matias Echanove