Corruption rampant in slum rehabilitation in Pune: Madhura Lohokhare

A scholar doing research for her doctorate from the prestigious Sycracuse University in the USA, Madhura Lohokhare has been studying, over the last few months, the slum rehabilitation schemes in Pune as part of her field research.

These schemes, undertaken by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), are meant to ‘eradicate’ slums and give proper housing to the slum dwellers. However, Lohokhare, in the course of her research, found that these schemes are the underbelly of systematic corruption. DNA spoke to Lohokhare to understand her findings.

Q: Brief us about the research you are undertaking in Pune.
A: I am doing my field research for my doctorate in Pune in the discipline of anthropology. The research aims to understand the place of public spaces in the neighbourhood’s and the community’s social, economic and cultural life. During the course of my research, I came across the state-sponsored slum rehabilitation scheme under the aegis of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). A growing number of slum dwellers have turned into vociferous opponents of these schemes and they have become part of my research.

Q: What are the main problems faced by the SRA schemes in the city?
A: In exchange of a 270 square ft flat that the slum dweller is given, the builder who has undertaken the rehabilitation of the slum gets additional floor space index (FSI) and commercial transfer of development rights (TDR). But in reality, the builder ends up making a profit as high as 800% in the whole deal.
In exchange of the flat, the slum dweller loses out on the open spaces in the slum, which are handed over to the builder to develop commercially. Post-rehabilitation, they are also burdened with maintenance costs of a high rise in terms of lift maintenance charges and water pump maintenance charges.

Although the schemes talk about taking 70% consent of the slum dwellers, in absence of any directive of the state on how the consent should be taken, the builders often take the consent by putting the slum dweller under duress and fraudulent methods.

Q: How people-friendly is the process of rehabilitation? How rampant is corruption in the process? How powerful is the grievance redressal system in SRA?
A: From the accounts of the slum dwellers I interacted with, the process is anything but people-friendly. If a rehabilitation scheme is conceived without the participation of the people and without taking their social and economic needs into consideration, then that scheme cannot be people-friendly.

The concept of cut-off date is misconstructed as it deprives many people of their livelihood at a single go. Rampant corruption goes on, in the preparation of the eligibility list, with often people who have died being shown as having given consent. The grievance redressal system is very weak with the slum dwellers expected to travel to Mumbai to lodge their complaints.

Q: What according to you would be a better way of rehabilitation?
A: The question of slum rehabilitation is a complicated one and one has to take into consideration several aspects while addressing this question.

Ideally slum rehabilitation should be ‘in-situ’ i.e. without displacing the slum dwellers from where they are currently based, because it is important for their livelihood and for the retention of the social networks existing in these spaces that sustain them.
Similarly, the slum dwellers that are going to be rehabilitated should have a say in the kind of rehabilitation that is being implemented. Such a rehabilitation plan has to take into consideration the social, cultural and economic needs of the population in question.