In a high density city like Mumbai, vertical expansion is inevitable if land is to be available for everyone. However, high rises mean heavy maintenance expenditures which the slum dwellers have to incur to pay for water bills, garbage collection, regular cleaning etc. Elevator maintenance adds to it. In an article featured above, the developer is positive about slum dwellers moving into 23 floor buildings. He wants to balance the cost of maintenance by providing fix corpus and provision for part payment of maintenance for 10 years, “training” slum dwellers in using facilities like the elevators and bathrooms and thinks “they will have to learn to adapt to these socioeconomic changes”. Are these too high expectations? Or wrong assumptions? Firstly, most families could be coming from economically vulnerable groups that might find the sudden rise in monthly expenses too taxing to handle and secondly, sudden change in socio-economic conditions are not easy to handle as compared to a gradual change. Thus, the rehabilitation policies should also look at long term affects of the scheme and draft guidelines that will not jeopardize the future of affected families.
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