While the victims of the State government's demolition drive in Mumbai's slums remain homeless, the rules are apparently twisted to enable mill owners to make a killing out of mill lands.
DIONNE BUNSHA in MumbaiWHEN the bulldozers came to demolish his colony, Anand Nagar, the only thing Rajendra Shresht picked up from the ruins of his hut was a bottle of kerosene and a box of matches. No legal document, no photograph, no cooking vessel, nothing else. As he and his family rushed outside the gate of the colony, he shouted at the municipal vans, "Don't destroy our homes." Immediately after, he poured kerosene on his body, set himself on fire and ran inside the police van parked near by.
"The police just watched as he burned for 20 minutes. The demolition squad didn't stop the destruction inside the slum for even a second," said his friend Jaikant Naidu. Shresht's wife Martha and 11-year-old son are homeless and devastated. Three months after the demolition, they still have to live with a friend. Others like Jaikant are camped outside the padlocked gate.
Their only shelter is a banyan tree across which plastic sheets are hung, along with bags, clothes and even a clock. Women wander from lane to lane searching for a water tap - outside a shop or inside a residential building - any place where they will not be shooed away. Now they have to pay an additional Rs.5 every day to use the public toilet and take a bath. It eats into more than 10 per cent of their wages. Children lost their school books in the chaos. Their exams are approaching, but they have nowhere to study. Recently, a young girl died - she had been ill after camping in the sun without proper food or water. It has been three months of hell and no one knows when it will end.
THE demolitions were part of the Maharashtra government's "clean up" drive, under which all "unauthorised" slums registered after 1995 were to be removed. Around 91,000 houses were destroyed, some of them registered before 1995. The 600-odd residents of Anand Nagar, for instance, have been living there for 30 years. Located opposite a row of five star hotels in Mumbai's posh seafront Juhu, this plot is prime property. "They want to make this a car park for a five-star hotel. The Airport Authority has put up a board claiming the land, although the registered owner is the Forest Department," Jaikant Naidu said. "If we are called encroachers, why aren't they? This land doesn't belong to them either. How come a restaurant on this same plot has remained untouched? Beautify this city. We also want that. But does it have to be at the cost of the lives of the poor?"
The demolition drive that left 4.5 lakh people homeless was part of Vision 2020, the government's plan to make Mumbai a "world-class" city like Shanghai. These plans are based on a report prepared by McKinsey Consultants and sponsored by Bombay First, a corporate-funded lobby group. The State government has wholeheartedly embraced their blueprint for the city and the majority of the city's residents are grappling with the consequences.
In principle, the recommendations seem all right - improve the economy and the quality of life. They want the government to build 1.1 million homes for slum dwellers in the next 10 years so as to reduce the slum population from 65 per cent to 10 per cent. But, instead of building homes, the first step that the government took towards that end was the large-scale eviction of people from their homes without any arrangement for their relocation. The demolition drive was started months after the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance returned to power promising, among other things, that all slums that came up before 2000 would be made legal.
The human tragedy that followed the demolitions prompted the Congress high command to pull up Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. He ordered a stop to the evictions and his government is now conducting a survey of hutments that came up between 1995 and 2000. However, the Chief Minister said the government did not have the 300 acres needed to rehabilitate slum dwellers.
"We are not happy that the government has stopped the demolition drive and is considering bringing forward the cut-off date to 2000," says Vijay Mahajan, CEO of Bombay First. "It's the politicians, police, municipal staff and slum lords who bring the slums to the city by allowing encroachments and taking money for it. They should be punished. It is a theft of public land." Bombay First has asked the government to develop the vacated spaces as gardens and playgrounds adopted by corporates.
Mahajan says that people settled in Mumbai after 1995 "have no right to be here". "They can go wherever they want, we don't want them here. Why do they come to the city if they don't have a place to stay? With slums, the city cannot be world class. Our lifestyle is deteriorating because of them. It gives a bad impression to foreigners."
The government and the elite find more than 60 per cent of the city's 12-15 million residents an "eyesore". A small lobby of powerful "citizens' groups" has persuaded the government to strike at Mumbai's most unique feature - its cosmopolitan nature. The people driven out constitute its enterprising working class, who have made it India's commercial capital, one of the most efficient cities in the country.
The belief that slums are mushrooming all over the city is not based on fact. Slum dwellers make up 65 per cent of the city's population, but occupy only 6 per cent of its total land area - 2,525 of 43,000 hectares, according to the 1995 report of the government-appointed Afzal Purkar Committee, said Deepika D'Souza of the India Centre for Human Rights and Law.
Supporters of the demolitions argue that the high density of population is a drain on infrastructure. However, Deepika D'Souza points out that slums are a minimal drain on public utilities because they have none. "If there is a lack of infrastructure, then how are building permissions granted all over the city for large highrises, many of which have swimming pools. Where is the water, road space and sewerage pipes to cope with this massive increase?" Malls and multiplexes, the new big things, are far more taxing on infrastructure. When Crossroads, the city's first mall, opened, cars were double parked on the road, creating a massive traffic jam, which prompted the Shiv Sena to launch an agitation against the mall.
While the poor are called "encroachers", no action is ever taken against the sprawling illegal constructions across the city. Highrises violating floor space index, development control and coastal regulation rules remain untouched. Mora Gaon, a fishing village in Juhu, is near the homes of film stars like Madhuri Dixit, Dev Anand and Dimple Kapadia. A section of Mora Gaon that houses some of the city's first residents, its fisherfolk, was also targeted during the demolition.
"They say that we are violating coastal zone regulations, but this plot was reserved for a fishing colony. And, land reserved for us is being encroached by bungalows on the beach," said Dashrath Mangela, a Mora Gaon resident. "If our land is being encroached on, where are we supposed to go? A housing society and a college are also encroaching on the mangroves. Why haven't they been demolished? Who needs the coast more than fishermen?"
There is selective rule of law, says Y.P. Singh, a former bureaucrat-turned-anti-corruption activist. Under the Urban Land Ceiling Act (ULCA), which ensured an equitable distribution of land, anyone owning more than 500 square metres of space is supposed to surrender the surplus land to the government or use 70 per cent of the land for low income housing. However, the government never implemented the Act and only 165 acres of the 30,000 acres of vacant land available under the ULCA has been surrendered to the government. "Exemptions given for mass housing have been misused to build luxury complexes for the rich. If the government had ensured that these exemptions were used for mass accommodation, a large part of the city's housing problem would not exist today," Y.P. Singh said.
Moreover, there are over 400 government properties for which lease deeds have expired and lessees pay rents far below the market rate, according to documents obtained by right-to-information activist Shailesh Gandhi. He says that there are many cases of land being supposedly given on lease, but without deed. The average rate that lessees, some of them rich companies, trusts and posh recreational gymkhanas, pay is Rs.21 a square metre, whereas the minimum market rate is Rs.2,500. Gandhi calculates that the government loses Rs.362 crores in revenue for expired leases and Rs.3,000 crores for all leases.
Besides, there are blatant violations of development control and FSI rules. "For instance, Atria, a new mall in Central Mumbai, is being built on land earmarked for housing the homeless," Y.P. Singh said. The government had planned to regularise more than 100 of 154 buildings violating building norms such as FSI rules, until an activist took the matter to court. A 24-storey building under construction at Kandivli, a western suburb, had 17 floors built illegally.
"It's not just slum dwellers, the government intends to take action against these violators also, but they are rich people who have managed to move court for stay orders," said Sanjay Ubale, Principal Secretary, Special Projects, Maharashtra Government.
The Bowling Company, a mall and recreation centre at the Phoenix Mill complex, applied to the Bombay Municipal Corporation for clearance, saying that "recreation facilities" were being added to the mill (which stopped production years ago) for the over 1,000 workers and more than 200 staff and additionally 1,000 to 5,000 executives of various other offices located on our premises". It added that recreation facilities were needed to avert an agitation by workers. The land, incidentally, had been leased to Phoenix Mills only to run the mill.
Mumbai's cotton mills propelled the city towards industrialisation and economic prosperity and drew workers to the city. The mills, however, faced competition from unorganised power looms in the 1980s, a time of real estate boom in Mumbai. Many mill owners were keen to sell the vast tracts of valuable land they owned, rather than modernise their mills to keep up with the competition. As mills closed down, many illegally, more than one lakh workers lost jobs. Shopping malls and posh buildings sprang up where their factories had once stood. Many now work as security guards, taxi drivers, hawkers, earning less than a quarter of what they earned 20 years ago.
MORE such policy-twisting in favour of mill owners came to light recently when the Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG) filed a public interest petition against the amendment of the Development Control rules. Under the original rule [DC Rule No. 58(1)], sale of mill land was allowed on the condition that one-third of the land would go to the Municipal Corporation for open spaces and one-third to the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority for public housing and the rest could be used by the owner for commercial development. Sometime in 2001, the government slipped in an amendment, which said that only open land on which there is no construction should be distributed in this manner.
"The State government's intention seems to be to make available more land to mill owners, but it's at the cost of the city," said Arvind Adarkar, an architect.
The Municipal Corporation passed a notice of motion in its general meeting on October 9, 2003, requesting the government to revoke the amendment. It also requested the government to revoke any permission that may have been granted to textile mills after the amendment. The government has chosen to ignore the protest and the corporation continues to grant approvals to proposals under the modified rule.
There are 600 acres of mill land in the city. If all this land was re-developed under the old rule, 165 to 200 acres would have been used for open spaces by the Municipal Corporation and 160 to 220 acres would be given for low-cost housing. Instead, under the amended rule, only 32 acres would be given for open spaces and 25 acres for affordable housing, according to BEAG estimates. The city stands to lose vast chunks of public land - around 400 acres.
After the petition, the State government has appointed a committee headed by Housing Development Finance Corporation chairperson Deepak Parekh to review this amendment. The Mill Owners' Association insists that the original D.C. rule stated that if the original structure is retained or re-structured, there is no need to share the land with the government.
The sale proceeds from mill lands are supposed to be used to revive the mills. But the mills are not functioning and workers have not been paid for years. Subhash Narke, a worker from Khatau Mills, has been waiting for eight years for his salary dues. "The Supreme Court has ordered the owners to pay workers, but they blatantly violate court orders," he said. Khatau Mill stands on land leased by the government. The owners pay Rs.10,156 as annual rent, as documents obtained by Shailesh Gandhi show. At least five of Mumbai's 58 mills stand on leasehold land.
The government's policy seems to be freebies for the rich, but eviction for the poor. A hawker recently removed from Mumbai's famous Marine Drive was told that Anil Ambani, who jogs there, finds the likes of him a nuisance. There is now a clear divide - the well-fed and the dispossessed. "To make the city attractive to foreigners, the government is willing to make its own people homeless," said Jaikant Naidu, still camping in the dark at Anand Nagar.
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