Redevelopment in the slum from Slumdog Millionaire has residents worried they’ll be forced out

Residents of Dharavi, India’s largest slum, are worried about a new development project led by billionaire Gautam Adani – which could see thousands of residents displaced.

Dharavi, depicted in the 2008 Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, located in the heart of Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, and home to around a million people. They can live in shacks and shacks squeezed into a small piece of land that is smaller than Central Park, but they are an independent neighborhood.

In Dharavi, children run and play – and thousands of businesses established over the years thrive under migrant workers. But now, many are worried that they will lose everything.

In November, Adani and his company Adani Realty win the bid to rebuild Dharavi. Over the years, the area developed from a mangrove swamp, to a fishing community and then to a slum with poor infrastructure. The company’s $2.4 billion US project vaguely promises to rehouse some residents and businesses on the same site, but details are scarce.

Hussain Indorewala is an urban researcher and assistant professor at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture and Environmental Studies. He predicts that the redevelopment project will move households to smaller portions of land – about half the size of the current slums.

“[It] it will probably be one of the densest urban settlements in the world,” Indorewala said Nothing is Stranger hosted by Tamara Khandaker. “And the population of Dharavi is double that number… which means the same number of people will be displaced.

“It would be a disaster.”

Many generations of families live in one-room houses in Dharavi. Many do not have access to running water or clean toilets.

Sonu Shah lives in one room with his wife and children. He earns his daily wages by working with plasterers. He is one of the citizens Nothing is Stranger talk to those who say they want better living conditions and support rebuilding. But he is concerned about what it will look like at the hands of the Adani group, which is currently mired in its own controversy.

Only residents who live on the ground floor of the slum and who can prove that they have lived in Dharavi since before 2000 will be eligible for rehousing, according to the tender agreement read by city researchers. All others living above, or without the necessary documents, will be forced to leave.

“If there is a need to demolish houses in Dharavi, they can, but they have to build and provide houses in the same place,” Shah said. “There is no need to throw them here and there. If they are sent to other places, it will affect their livelihood, children’s education, everything.”

At the same time, Shah is concerned about the power lines visible above his house. It has a current of 11,000 volts – and runs above the children’s playground.

“In the summer, there was an explosion that happened in the cable [and] we woke up to the sound of an explosion,” he said.

“We are not safe at all.”

Cost of living

After the Partition of British India in 1947, poor laborers and artisans from all over the country came to Mumbai in search of jobs. Dharavi was a free and unregulated land at that time and it developed rapidly crowded slums.

Housing activist Raju Korde grew up in Dharavi. His father moved to the city to work in a lentil processing plant, while his mother worked in the recycling industry.

“A lot of lower-cost businesses work from here,” Korde said Nothing is Stranger. “It’s cheaper because the laws of the Factories Act don’t apply. Electricity can come from residential buildings – you don’t need industrial electricity. And taxes are avoided because many businesses operate without obtaining the necessary licenses.”

Dharavi is home to Indians of diverse religious and linguistic backgrounds. For many, slums are a symbol of the widespread wealth inequality in the country. Ironically, it also has prime real estate value.

Another city grew up around the slums and became Mumbai’s global financial sector. Residential areas for middle and upper class households now border Dharavi.

“Dharavi is definitely Asia’s most profitable site for profit-focused redevelopment,” says Indorewala. “That’s why it’s interesting… very long time.”

Problems with the Adani project and group

In exchange for the rehabilitation of Dharavi residents and businesses, the Adani group stands to benefit by using some of the land to build commercial real estate and sell it at market rates. Owner Irfan Ahmad Khan, who sells fruit on the slum streets, feels like a “pawn”.

“All these businesses have been developed here, from the ground up,” Khan said. “Now the rights of these local people are being trampled and given to Adani.”

It also doesn’t help that since January, the Adani group has been at the center of a huge controversy. US short-seller firm Hindenburg Research accused the company of fraud and stock manipulation, which triggered the loss of more than $110 billion US in the company’s market value as investors jumped ship. Gautam Adani, who until now the third richest man in the worldlost more than half of his fortune.

Adani’s close relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also been in the spotlight. There is speculation that this relationship that is why the Adani group won the Dharavi redevelopment project, despite the government’s rejection.

Indorewala, an urban researcher, has studied a similar project in Mumbai and does not expect improvements from the new settlement in Dharavi. If it looks like any other building, it could be a multi-storey tower block with high density, poor lighting and ventilation conditions – documented as a cause of respiratory diseases among the inhabitants.

“Standards for working people and slum rehabilitation schemes are much, much lower than for the general population, which means a discriminatory planning system,” he said.

“The city can easily build very good quality houses in Dharavi for Dharavi residents as public housing. But it is not done because it is an ideological commitment to a certain form of development, driven by the private sector, based on capturing the extraordinary value of land in the city and creating a surplus of real estate for landowners and property developers.