The story of the port trust beginning to explore the usage of 3.11 of SRA

Like other informal settlements in Mumbai those households living on Mumbai Port trust lands always thought they would never get alternatives.

In the mid 1990s they joined NSDF and Mahila Milan  to explore if the strategies of enumeration could assist them to document their settlements and explore alternatives.

The Indian alliance suggested that a particular slum located where the railway and Port joint venture wanted to use land commercially, let to MbPT finally agreeing to relocate and re-house slum dwellers on their land for the first time using the 3.11 section of SRA .

MbPT has always ensured that its lands were never part of the DP reservations. They have also only recently conceded to open space for the non toll road from Chembur to VT, and then to consider opening up the eastern sea front to the Mumbai citizens. 

In the surrounding areas of Oshiwara station there will be over 5-8000 slum dwellers relocated due to various projects. Finally by chance more than planning poor households will be within walking distance from the relocation site they were moved to

The Oshiwara business district fifteen years ago was full of tabelas full of buffalos  and was finally converted into a relocation site for re-housing slum dwellers, living on land needed for public infrastructure projects. The land use was changed  giving land owners who gave land and housing to MMRDA an FSI of 1 for the land 

Wonder why the lease renewal did not happen?

A very large part of Mumbai suburbs and extended suburbs are state lands leased to industry. We know that all textile mills factories and other such lands were leased as were salt pans.

Some ( all textile mills) are now huge gated commercials and residential areas. 

How come this was not done on time? And what will happen in the High court where the petition is now being made by the company?

Mumbai: Planning for 58% with Inaccurate Data by, Sheela Patel

The aspirations for the slum dwellers that came with setting up SPARC in the 1980's didn't materialize because the limitations of the municipality or government because of the DP (Development Plan). Carefully study of the plans indicated that there were spaces available to house the slum dwellers; in reality however the space or land was always used for different purposes and thus occupied. In frustration, SPARC raised this issue with the then Chief Secretary of Maharashtra who had also been the municipal commissioner of Mumbai.  His comment on the development plan was (with a benignly smile) that the DP is a manifestation of what we envision, but reality is very different. In layman terms it translates to the urban poor can’t ask the city for land for housing because all the land that they have earmarked for the poor is already occupied.

The DP which is being prepared today is haunted by incorrectness of the past: lack of accurate data and unclear and contradictory data sets. When challenges to plan are not accommodated and addressed in each plan, they clearly produce unregulated response. The poor squat if they can’t find a space to stay near work; the elite equally ignore the rules. Both pay bribes for the regulatory process to ignore their presence and turn a blind eye, and the unregulated growth increases exponentially.

Manipulating the data is a routine strategy of the government agencies. The state and city institutions are known to inflate and deflate the data on poverty slums based on whom the report is being prepared for.  The data used for preparing the Mumbai DP states that there is a 18% dip in slums; the information is quite vague is you consider the following facts: How do we link this to the fact that the census definition requires a slum cluster to have more than a certain number of dwelling to be counted under the census connect with this factor? What do we do when even lower level government data collection refuses to count the households who live as renters in the mezzanines of huts?

Ongoing Saga of the Slums Along the Airport by, Sheela Patel

The slum along the Mumbai airport contains over 98,000 structures and to date remains a crucially unsolved challenge for the development of the airport. The resident’s networks, that are part of NSDF city federation, have promised to willingly concede land that the airport wants for its infrastructure if the remaining land not needed for the development will be made available to them.  The residents wish to live in SRA ground plus 5 buildings. For many years the contract to build alternative housing for slums along the airport was given to a construction firm HDIL.  276 acres of encroached land was to be “cleared” as households would move to sites nearby. The unusual act of getting transferred development rights for the 7000 structures in which no one has moved yet has been noted by the CAG in his report. There are numerous other challenges that have also impeded this process.  For example:

• The state cannot undertake surveys until it clears eligibility norms, which should be structure for structure; the High court says the year 2000 cut off is acceptable. Thus only a very small percentage is eligible.
• Residents what to be assured that the whole community get houses which are nearby; only 7000 are nearby so the residents have refused to move.
• The deal for GVK and HDIL does not become profitable unless the land use for commercial purpose is accepted; this has resulted to a standoff.

 In the meanwhile the new terminal with huge array of art work is to be opened on Feb 14.

26 towers to house city slum dwellers

Mumbai: The Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) has cleared 26 skyscrapers with 23 floors each to house slum dwellers in Malad, Worli and Bhoiwada, Parel. About 6,600 slum families, comprising around 25,000 people, will be relocated to these towers from their original shanty land. Each family will get a free 269 sq ft (carpet) flat, but will have to be trained to use the lift, bathrooms and other amenities. Housing experts have dubbed it a “sophisticated displacement plan and a highly unsustainable urban development model that will lead to further slumification of the city”.  Publication: The Times Of India Mumbai; Date: Aug 17, 2013; Section: Front Nauzer K Bharucha TNN

SPARC believes that multi – storied buildings inevitably leads to higher maintenance cost that eventually the poor have to bear, for example, high rise buildings require the use of lifts which increases the electric cost; structural maintenance is higher for high rises in comparison to G+2 structures.  In addition, social interaction is challenged as the slum dwellers are interdependent within their community, but with shifting into high rises, the community structure is disrupted.

Too HIGH expectations?

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.

R&R and New Mumbai Airport - Sheela Patel

All infrastructure projects ignore both the economics and the politics linked challenges of relocation of households. It is evident that relocation for pubic requirement of infrastructure legitimatize relocation of households and  by and large their needs aspirations and demands are never considered; which is crucial for the smooth execution of the project. In many instances in which the households that need to be relocated are slum dwellers, administrators treat the slum dwellers as “getting favors” to be given relocation.  The administrators should instead see the project as ensuring that the disadvantaged households get adequate shelter as well as improved quality of life as a result of the project which the state is obligated to provide to the vulnerable.

In the situation of the Navi Mumbai Airport the circumstances are different.  The land is inhabited by villages their land cannot be just taken away.  This project has been continuously delayed for many years due to several reasons at different times.  The simplicity and clarity of demands by the households and their acceptance by the state will facilitate a way forward. Why should it have taken so long?

Changing attitudes and changing strategy - Sheela Patel

R&R projects in which the vulnerable and unsure slum dwellers get a place to stay when infrastructure projects are taken up is good commons sense. NSDF and MM, who have organized slum dwellers in these situations, have worked hard to demonstrate its good governance for the city to invest in rehabilitation when taking up infrastructure projects.

For many years the announcement of such projects meant that the “market” would swoop down on the households who were entitled to such homes and buy over the houses at distress rates, thus benefiting from the projects.

Since the state and city didn’t intervene, there was no coordination between locational solutions and relocation options; often households had to move far away from their previous locations.

In many instances (in R&R), water access to sewerage and transport was not available before households moved in; schools and health centers were not near the relocation site; and changes in ration cards, access to kerosene nearby were not available for almost a year. Now exploring net based data strategy is to attempt to make these processes reviewable by senior administrators.

However at the end of the day all this is effective when communities are involved in making choices from the beginning and amongst the community members it is women who make these choices.

Going back and forth on R&R for New Mumbai Airport - Sheela Patel

The NSDF link with Airport slums predates the formation of the alliance with SPARC and MM. ZOPADI KI AWAS and may leaders from airport slums were part of NSDF and fought against evictions. Prominent amongst them was MAGAR who lived in the airport slums but worked as a peon in BMC.

From 1986 onward the NSDF begun to survey airport slums and formed a federation which in turn sought the assistance of SPARC to present its findings to the Urban Development Department as well as the housing department.  The issues surveyed were the direct impact of lack of collection of garbage in the slums near the airport causing an increase in the number of birds hitting the planes; the loss of time and air fuel due to the slum that abutted the runaway.

This one slum was then relocated, thus demonstrating what organized communities could do. This was followed with the announcement of the privatization of the airport and MIAL managed by MVK group. Although some people in the government tried to get the alliance to undertake the survey, the construction of the tenements for relocation and the actual relocation was given to HDL. While local communities feel the number of houses is 98,000 structures HDL claims it is 80,000—although no official survey has been done so far as the residents do not allow it.

Their contention is simple: They want to know what land the airport needs for expanding its directly needed infrastructure. They agree that this land would be handed over in exchange for the households to be relocated on lands outside this new boundary.

MIAL and HDL want to relocate all of the households elsewhere on lands purchased or claimed for this purpose.  They want to convert this land into convention centers hotels and other commercial activity which the residents are resisting.

Although this estrangement is between two private companies, the state has a duty and obligation to arbitrate the public interest matter of addressing the relocation issue as well as expediting the improvement of the airport.

No one is answering the resident communities question about what land does the airport need for its own infrastructure.

Exploring either/or type options in housing is BAD - Sheela Patel

About 5 years ago, SPARC, NSDF, and MM, having been involved in creating  transit accommodation option as a two phase relocation possibility, began to explore how rental housing would be useful to the poor.

In slums, almost one third of all units have rental accommodations, which is a mirror image of the formal rental procedures. The renter rents the accommodation for 11 months at a time and pays a deposit as well as advance rent. For many households, rental housing is both useful as a income generational activity for the owner and a boon to the renter to stay in a particular locality.

MMRDA, to whom along with the alliance recommended the construction of small units to rent to the poor began to give permissions in the metro region.  These are the units that this article is referring to. Having begun construction, MMRDA is reluctant to put into place the governance architecture to this investment and for some time has either sought to “sell” the houses or use them as transit.

Given the volume required for both transit and rental, the state strategy falls between two stools as it fulfills neither goals.

Large metro regions need a wide rage of options for housing. Creating conditions for mobility, different time spans for living in different locations and different types of accommodation is the need of the hour. Yet, somehow, the stamina and transparency as well as foresight to take on this long neglected task is beyond the state.

Marriages and Sanitation - Sheela Patel

In rural India and Bangladesh, sanitation values are fast changing. Villages are campaigning against open defecation. Children put flags with names of people they have seen defecating in the open and women refuse to give their daughters in marriages in villages and homes that have no universal sanitation.

Unfortunately, this is not happening in urban areas.  Many years ago, when the western railway line was more efficient than the central and harbor line, marriages were arrange with families along the same railway line. Families didn't want their daughters married to households which required women to walk long distances for water; likewise, families who lived on the plains didn’t want daughters married to those who lived on hills… so the story goes.

So then what about urban sanitation?

First of all, in urban areas, traditionally cities never laid sewers under slums as they always believed they would eventually evict the slum dwellers. Secondly, given the sheer volume of faecal matter in dense settlements, digging a pit and defecating is hardly the solution. Access to water and safe management of fecal matter in large volumes does not produce individual focus for solutions. Even if people wanted toilets in their homes, without water, adequate space or disposal mechanism it actually would add hazards to the existing hygiene challenge the urban poor face.

It’s because of these circumstances that the alliance of SPARC, MM, and NSDF are exploring the community toilet concept.

A law that is a double edged sword - Sheela Patel

The real challenge of informality in cities and their label of “encroachments” is very troubling. In a well managed and inclusive city context where everyone has the opportunity to find a place to stay, having a tough law that stops encroachment is something that makes sense. In Mumbai however we have a dual crisis. Firstly if we believe that the BELL CURVE principle is correct, it means that majority of the population falls in the middle and extreme deviance with too much land or no land is less, then it demonstrates that the law and the governance is working well. However when a city has over 50% illegal structures , then something is wrong with the laws and the planning systems.

Secondly, when land is framed to be exclusive and out of reach of most people, then not only the poor live in a constant fear of being evicted, they also find that the absence of overarching legal framework to protect them.  Thus, informal “protection” which is extortionist and almost feudal adds its burdens to the insecurity they face.

It is within this context that we have to view such a news item. While on the face of it the BMC seems to get freedom to manage the city, the real deep question is how many of these evictions are taken up for what reason. Often when slum dwellers show “disrespect” or do not follow the dictate of a local leader, it is followed by eviction orders.

DHARAVI NEWS: SECTOR 5 INAUGURATION GETS DISRUPTED, NOVEMBER 2012

Dharavi redevelopment project is continuing to remain in flux. Somehow, the recommendations and suggestions made by the Committee of Experts is never actually explored in the spirit of the advise.

The recommendation not to take all five sectors together, but  only start with sector 4 was initially suggested. Sector 4 is a dense sector where the communities have themselves begun to work on exploring solutions. Instead the state and MHADA chose sector five which does not produce robust solutions for the rest of Dharavi.

Another recommendation made after sector five was selected was to develop a master plan for Dharavi and then work through NGOs with the community. Unfortunately, without implementing any of the recommendations, an inauguration ceremony was initiated and after eight years  the people are once again resisting the intervention.

“Why are the benefits of capitalization of land not being shared with the people of Dharavi?”

WATER FOR WHOM, OCTOBER 2012

Even though the BMC  project on paper sounds promising, it fails to specify which section of the population will actually benefit from the plan.

REFLECTING ON CHANGING DEMOGRAPHY IN INDIA, SEPTEMBER 2012

http://www.economist.com/node/21563412 In this article there is a general conclusion that India and its cities are not equipped for growth and while there are some exceptions, like Surat, in Gujarat, most cities with its slums and poor infrastructure are ill equipped to grow. It makes we wonder how we view history and cities and what came first good organized cities which invited investments, or investments that produced good and bad impacts and produced planned cities. More importantly how can we examine planning strategies that can have a disconnect from the past which ignores the expanding presence of the poor in cities. Sheela Patel

A mainly rural country is ill-prepared for its coming urban boom http://www.economist.com/node/21563412

September, 29th 2012 | from the print edition some quotes from the article.

Putting off urbanisation can also mean postponing prosperity. When farmers leave the land to work in factories, call centres or almost anywhere else, their incomes and consumption almost always go up, lifting assorted development indicators. In China just over half the population is now urban.

Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), says that India’s 100 biggest cities, with 16% of its total population, contribute 43% of its national income. Even slum-dwellers are often productive manufacturers and traders.

Some urban centres will become megacities. According to one vision, India’s entire western seaboard could turn into a single conurbation, stretching from Ahmedabad in Gujarat in the north, past Mumbai and south to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. Inland, Delhi and its environs could be a hub for 60m-70m people, provided there is enough water.

Within two decades India will probably have six cities considerably bigger than New York, each with at least 10m people: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.

India is ill-equipped to make such places attractive drivers of growth and better living. “I see no improvement in thinking about cities,” says a senior figure in construction and retailing. Much land is privately held, but markets are opaque and development too often depends on cronies with political connections.

Mumbai is especially bad. “Property in the city has run riot,” says Mr Guzder, the Parsi businessman. Towers shoot up, especially around the Sea Link, a bridge connecting the southern part of the city to the north. “But we have no urban infrastructure, no widening of roads, no provision of police.” Prithviraj Chavan, the chief minister of Maharashtra, blames the city’s woes on a “deep nexus of property and political funding”.

CLUSTER DEVELOPMENT: MORE NECESSARY AFTER FSI LAND GRANTS TO PRIVATE HOTELS, AUGUST 2012

In an article in the  Hindustan Times, Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan announced that the government is looking into cluster development as a way to rehabilitate Mumbai slum-dwellers.  In the article Chavan expressed his fears at being able to accommodate all 14.5 lakh hutments of slumdwellers in the cluster plans, even if they manage to build housing projects as dense as 500 homes for square kilometer.  At the same time, though, Chavan spoke openly about FSI land that has recently been granted to five star hotels in the coastal regulatory zone.  Despite this practice being legal, it makes the housing crisis even more severe for Mumbai’s urban poor.

Chavan’s defense of the FSI hotel land transfer demonstrates that allotting land to the urban poor is not a current government priority.  Chavan himself says that “the only way out, as I see it, can be cluster development,” but 500 homes for square kilometer is an ambitious goal for even the most densely populated clusters.  Furthermore, while cluster development will provide shelter to those who need it this development strategy does not address the consumer needs of the urban poor; the poor need to buy food and supplies and also work for themselves in order to survive, but cluster development will geographically separate these people from business and market areas and make day-to-day shopping and bread-winning more difficult for them.

Clusters can be effective community layouts, but they need to be integrated with commercial areas so that families can take care of their other basic needs like food, water, and an income.  The less land that the government gives to commercial developers for hotels and other elite attractions, the more land will be available to service the basic needs of the urban poor even as they live in a cluster arrangement.  The government needs to look beyond what they are legally able to do in giving away land to private developers and think more critically about what is the best use of the land for the greatest number of people.  If they take collective good and the urban poor into account in their decision-making process, they will find that the available land can and will stretch to accommodate the urban poor who need living space.

MUMBAI NEEDS LAND AUDITING, JULY 2012

In his Hindustan Times article “The city needs a land audit,” Shalisesh Gaikwad references the Adarsh Housing Society Scam, a recent scandal in which Mumbai government officials constructed an apartment building for themselves on government land in Colaba under the guise of providing housing to retired personnel of Indian defense services.

In his article Gaikwad explains the controversy that has arisen between government officials who claim that the land they used for the new building in Colaba belongs to the state government and India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which calls the situation a “land grab” by the government.  In response to this debacle, Gaikwad notes other instances of fraud and corruption in recent Mumbai property dealings and he explains that the people of Mumbai should be concerned about the outcome of precedent-setting Adarsh since Mumbai’s egregious real-estate prices hang in the balance.  Gaikwad ends his article calling for an audit of public lands in Mumbai as a way to help formalize dealings of urban property and establish accurate records of land availability and ownership in the city.

Indeed Gaikwad is correct that the people of Mumbai should be concerned about the outcome of the Adarsh case, but the rationale for their concern should transcend simply curbing city real-estate prices. More importantly, the people of Mumbai should be concerned that dispossessing individuals of land for “public benefit” prolongs the cramped and unsanitary conditions of slums and informal housing sites and brings down the overall livability and economy of the city.

 A land audit is certainly a must, and it must include assessments of land ownership, plot size, vacant lots, and spaces that are “informally” occupied.  The past experience of the government’s Slum Rehabilitation Act (SRA) and Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) schemes has revealed that the identified lands that benefit the urban poor are often not correctly measured or the ownership of these lands is not defined. These omissions have not only lengthened the procedure for obtaining legal land clearances for relocation projects, but they have also resulted in forced evictions and fewer slum-dwellers able to stay in their homes because of inaccurate audit measurements.

The land audit to come should aim to produce a digitized database of survey findings in addition to standard paper records of the audit results.  When records only exist in paper they quickly become outdated and remain accessible only in institutions like municipal corporations, land revenue departments, and tax revenue departments.  These departments often do not coordinate with each other, meaning that obtaining accurate information on the state of land ownership can be nearly impossible.  This in turn jeopardizes projects that are meant to benefit the urban poor.

The hopeful land audit to come has the potential to provide easily-available, accurate, and updated land records for the public.  These records would be capable of serving myriad purposes: to identify ownership records, to locate vacant and available land for relocation and affordable housing projects, to feed into formulation of policies, schemes, and detailed project reports meant for the urban poor, among other benefits. Maintaining transparency in the audit process and the records that result from it will ensure fact-checked records for all concerned residents, civil society organizations, and the urban poor themselves.

FORCED EVICTIONS OF THE POOR IN THE NAME OF "DEVELOPMENT", JULY 2012

An article published in Times of India earlier this week announced that though the majority of people living in UN-surveyed cities possess tenancy documents of some type, many still fear forced eviction from their homes.  The article referenced the UN Millennium Development Goals of 2012, which claimed that the most obvious violation of housing rights faced by the urban poor today is eviction without due legal process.

Forced eviction is the first of countless problems that the poor will face as they struggle to find safe and sanitary housing alternatives.   Poor communities may not get resettled into permanent housing locations for months following evictions.  After being evicted family breadwinners often cannot continue with their jobs, either because long commutes to work prevent them from living out their previous livelihoods or because the market and commerce districts of their old communities disappear along with their old homes.  The poor may face problems of sanitation and safety when they released into the streets without homes to return to.  Children often cannot continue with school once uprooted.  The knock-on consequences of eviction go on and on and on. . .

Many people conceive of urban development as the modernization and expansion of facilities.  Better sewage systems, bigger malls, new sports complexes, expanded airports, reliable power lines, luxury condominiums –all of these improvements within a city can serve as emblems of urban progress.  But in most big cities, these facility improvements come at the cost of relocating people who live informally in slums and on the pavements.  Expansion does not occur without the opportunity cost of poor peoples’ futures.

Development in its purest form extends beyond the elite classes.  When contemplating human development and progress, we must assume a more holistic view.  Uplifting the circumstances of the poorest of the poor will enhance the economy, education, health, standards of living–sectors that endure beyond the momentary gratification of glitzy buildings and material prowess.  When considering worthwhile approaches to development, we must seek solutions that can reach all sectors of society at once.  Only through united and democratic progress can we achieve the momentum necessary to cave urban issues.

MEASURES OF "GLOBAL APPEAL" IN URBAN AREAS, JULY 2012

An article published in Hindustan Times this Sunday revealed the results of a recent survey done by the Economist Intelligence Unit called Hot Spots: Benchmarking Global City Competitiveness.  The survey assessed many of the world’s large cities to determine global competitiveness by analyzing how cities fared in terms of their economic strength, physical capital, financial maturity, institutional effectiveness, social and cultural character, human capital, environmental and natural hazards, and global appeal. Through these parameters, the survey defined competitiveness as a city’s ability to attract capital, business, talent, and tourists.  Though the Indian cities surveyed excelled in economic strength, their performance in other categories placed them all in the lower half of cities ranked, with Ahmedabad ranked at number 92 in the world, Bangalore at 79, Mumbai at 70, and Delhi at 68.

Urban experts who were interviewed for the article recommended different actions that Indian cities could take to raise their global appeal; the creation of safe public spaces, the geographical expansion of cities into their suburbs, an expanded political system that would emphasize local politics were some of the main suggestions offered.  That said, none of these experts mentioned the dark underbellies of the solutions they proposed.

Creating public spaces involves clearing out lands where pavement-dwellers and slum-dwellers have made their homes, essentially evicting them.  Expanding cities geographically demands uprooting people and relocating them to less-desirable locations in hopes that these new suburban areas will become more robust overtime.  Empowering local politicians shifts public responsibility onto representatives whose stakes in the decisions on the ground are limited. All of the recommendations presented in the article are idealistic, top-down solutions, executive decisions made by those who will not need to personally endure the day-to-day effects of these reforms.

When considering how to best address the problems that cities face, agency must come from the urban poor themselves.  People living in cramped, unsanitary, and deprived conditions know how to uplift their situations if they can access the basic resources they need for development.  Rather than aiming to achieve a competitive edge by attracting tourists and business, perhaps cities should define competitiveness as a desire to become successful, to prosper on their own terms.  The urban poor will stand at the core of this movement, as they are the ones who will benefit the most from urban successes.