Mumbai to Shanghai-Background
Mumbai to Shanghai-Background
MAKING MUMBAI INTO SHANGAI
Clifton Rozario
Maitreyi Krishnan
A lot is happening in the name of urban development and, as usual, again it is the slum dwellers who are facing the brunt. Somehow any conceptualization of urban development does not factor in the needs and aspirations of the slum dwellers and urban poor. This is quite some situation considering that the proportions of urban poor are not small. In Mumbai, for instance, about 55% – 60% of its population resides in its slums while in a city like Bangalore it is between 30% - 35%. This being the case it is important to take note of and understand the erasure of the slum communities in the context of urban development.
The following is a four – part critique of the ongoing slum demolitions in Mumbai.
The Mumbai demolitions that took place, in the end of the last year and early this year and continue still though in a more sporadic fashion has resulted in more than 4,00,000 slum dwellers being renedered homeless. It is said that in the initial sustained phase strecthing of December 2004 to April 2005 saw about 90,000 dwellings razed to the ground.
The dream of Vilasrao Deshmukh to turn “Mumbai to Shanghai” is a nightmare of lakhs of citizens who are now homeless. It is curious that every time an ambitious benchmark is set for a city, the slum dwellers are the ones who face the axe. In the early Eighties, Antulay the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra had dreams to turn Mumbai into Singapore. Lakhs of slum dwellers were then not only evicted but actually packed into buses to take them back to where they came from.
The following are four pieces that were prepared while we were helping out in the campaign against these demolitions. These are:
1. Issues
2. Slum Policies
3. Right to Shelter
4. Conclusion
These have been prepared by Alternative Law Forum along with Maitreyi Krishnan of ILS, Pune.
Clifton Rozario
Maitreyi Krishnan
A lot is happening in the name of urban development and, as usual, again it is the slum dwellers who are facing the brunt. Somehow any conceptualization of urban development does not factor in the needs and aspirations of the slum dwellers and urban poor. This is quite some situation considering that the proportions of urban poor are not small. In Mumbai, for instance, about 55% – 60% of its population resides in its slums while in a city like Bangalore it is between 30% - 35%. This being the case it is important to take note of and understand the erasure of the slum communities in the context of urban development.
The following is a four – part critique of the ongoing slum demolitions in Mumbai.
The Mumbai demolitions that took place, in the end of the last year and early this year and continue still though in a more sporadic fashion has resulted in more than 4,00,000 slum dwellers being renedered homeless. It is said that in the initial sustained phase strecthing of December 2004 to April 2005 saw about 90,000 dwellings razed to the ground.
The dream of Vilasrao Deshmukh to turn “Mumbai to Shanghai” is a nightmare of lakhs of citizens who are now homeless. It is curious that every time an ambitious benchmark is set for a city, the slum dwellers are the ones who face the axe. In the early Eighties, Antulay the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra had dreams to turn Mumbai into Singapore. Lakhs of slum dwellers were then not only evicted but actually packed into buses to take them back to where they came from.
The following are four pieces that were prepared while we were helping out in the campaign against these demolitions. These are:
1. Issues
2. Slum Policies
3. Right to Shelter
4. Conclusion
These have been prepared by Alternative Law Forum along with Maitreyi Krishnan of ILS, Pune.
