Dharavi makeover plan may change

The Dharavi redevelopment saga may see yet more twists. Nearly five years after the state government approved the ambitious Rs15,000 crore project, some officials are wondering if it can be implemented in its current form. An alternative plan, based on the small-is-beautiful concept, is being drawn up.

Instead of dividing Dharavi into five zones of about 30 hectares each, the new plan will see it being divided into several zones of 2-3 hectares each. As in the current plan, each such zone will be developed as a self-sustaining township with the government providing the common amenities.

In a major departure, however, the slum dwellers will get the right to select the builders and redevelop their colonies. Currently, the government has to choose the builders.
If the slum dwellers fail to decide on a builder within a specified time frame — say, six months — the builder redeveloping an adjoining slum colony will implement the scheme under section 3(k) of the Slum Rehabilitation Act.

(Under this section, the government can let a builder carry out slum improvement schemes in a vast area as a vital infrastructure project. The Shivalik-Unitech joint venture is an example in which the builders are redeveloping Golibar, a slum colony spread over 100 acres at Santa Cruz.)

The new scheme will be discussed when the high-powered Dharavi Redevelopment Committee of secretaries headed by the chief secretary meets in December.

Real-estate experts pooh-pooh the new scheme. They say slum redevelopment schemes have not been successful till date. “The piecemeal concept has not prevented shanties from coming up,” said one angry consultant. “Further, why think of a new plan almost 10 years after one was first drawn up? Were two chief ministers and four chief secretaries fools to approve the project?”

But government officials believe they are on the right path. According to them, the new plan has a better chance of success as it will be easier to obtain the consent of 70% of the residents in an area of three hectares than of those on a 30-hectare plot.

One official said that while the number of ineligible slum dwellers will not come down, the government will escape the responsibility of evicting them and return to its traditional role of facilitating such schemes.

All those slum dwellers who moved into Dharavi after January 1, 2000, are ineligible even if they may be occupying structures that have been in place before that date. “We would have been in a soup if we had failed to evict such slum dwellers,” the official said. “Having paid huge premiums, the developers would have asked for huge compensation.”

But evicting the slum dwellers could have led to a law-and-order problem with many of them having invested their life’s savings in their houses.