In Dharavi’s Kumbharwada (potters’ colony), where the lanes are as narrow as an arm span, a group of teenagers is glued to the screen of a single mobile phone, an anachronistic scene if there ever was one. They are watching a Marathi YouTube channel that talks about the rehabilitation of Dharavikars, people who live in the Mumbai slum that is known for its economic resilience, entrepreneurial grit, and community living, amid the lack of basic sanitation in a city that is India’s economic hub.
Gini Ben, 76, a potter, asks what the anchor is saying. “They are saying we will be given houses elsewhere, so the redevelopment work here can begin,” one of the boys tells her.
Dharavi, spread across 555 acres, is in the northernmost part of what was once Parel island, one of the seven islands that made up the city’s land mass, before the sea was reclaimed. Satellite images throw up a sea of flat grey roofs dotted with some blue; asbestos sheets punctuated with plastic. On the ground, lanes form community spaces, where the boys sit.
Here, people engage in political discussions, and mothers ask neighbours to care for babies as they dash out to run an errand. Homes in the area run one into the other, and single-room workshops of micro industries — recycling, leather, dyeing, garment manufacturing, among others — thrive. To people living in what is touted as ‘Asia’s largest slum’, this is home.
The area has a population density of 3.5 lakh people per sq. km as per various estimates (India’s is about 473.4 as per the World Bank; Mumbai’s 26,453 as per its civic body in 2018-19). It was declared a slum in 1971. There are various amenities provided by the government such as taps, toilets, electricity, schools, and dispensaries.
In 2022, Adani Properties, a company under the Adani Group, won a bid worth ₹5,069 crore for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project Private Limited (DRPPL), a joint venture with the Maharashtra government. The aim is for the company to develop a township on government land, with apartment blocks, business spaces, schools, hospitals, and other features of community living. The current tender document calls this a “vital public project” situated less than 10 km from the city’s international airport. Political parties in opposition to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim the deal benefits the Adani Group.
The homes in Dharavi, often featured in movies and across social media as ‘poverty porn’, will be razed. The boys with the phone sit on a cement bench in front of a hutment. Behind them is a woman’s larger-than-life face, painted bright in green, yellow, and red. Her hands are folded, with the words ‘Shubh labh’ (auspicious wishes and prosperity). That is not how the people in Dharavi feel their future will pan out though.
“What will happen to our workshops and the homes we built? What will we eat if we lose our livelihood?” Gini Ben says. The boys have no answer. “My ancestors moved here from Gujarat when there was no basti (slum). It was an empty piece of land with grasses that grew to my height during the rains,” she remembers, of the 1950s.
Dharavi was a koliwada (fisherfolk colony) before people from across the country began to move here in the late 1800s, setting up shop under temporary structures. Gini Ben says potters need an open space to bake clay products and a workshop to craft them in. Her family expanded when her two sons got married. Now they have two homes here, next to each other, both three-storeyed, with a single room on each floor, in which 12 family members live.
Dharavi residents worry about various aspects of their lives once the project plans are finalised: Will they get new homes in lieu of existing ones? Where will the homes be? Will these be temporary or permanent houses? What happens to their businesses? Will children drop out of school?
Land surveys and the future
S.V.R. Srinivas, chief executive officer and officer on special duty, Dharavi Rehabilitation Project (DRP), which comes under the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), says, “It is the brownest of brownfield projects. To be able to implement this plan, we need to conduct a proper survey, and need people to cooperate,” he says. He adds that DRP is working on a plan that will take Dharavikars “directly from their present home to their final home”.
The Dharavi notified area under DRPPL is approximately 600 acres, which includes 45 acres of railway land located in Kamala Raman Nagar, Matunga, a couple of kilometres away. Of the 600 acres, approximately 300 acres will undergo redevelopment. The rest of the area is occupied by the Mahim Nature Park, Tata Power Dharavi Receiving Station, two suburban railway lines, and an upcoming sewage water treatment plant.
A reply from DRP to a query filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by advocate and social activist Sagar Devre reveals that an additional 41.6 acres, now a dumping ground reclamation site, will be given to the project after June 2025.
The recycling micro-industry is prominent in Dharavi, taking in all of Mumbai’s waste. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
There are 63,983 tenements in the area, as per a biometric and socio-economic survey that was conducted in 2007-08 by Maharashtra Social Housing and Action League, a Pune-based NGO.
In March this year, the Adani Group began another survey to find out the number of residential and commercial establishments in the area, and how many people live and work here. The survey of around 10,000 tenements on the railway land is complete, with houses being physically marked. This is the fourth survey since 2004, when the first government resolution was passed for the redevelopment of Dharavi.
Sources say the DRPPL team is in the process of preparing the master plan for the project. Devre says until the master plan is prepared, there will be no certainty about “the number of eligible citizens, the amount of land required, and the location of the rehabilitation”.
In Kumbharwada, Ranchod Tank, 57, says his family owns 2,000 sq. ft of land that includes his pottery workshop and home. He wants a better living space for the next generation. “We have all the documents of ownership; we pay the government tax and electricity charges. Until now no one has discussed the master plan with us,” he says.
Srinivas explains the rehabilitation plan. There are three categories of eligibility: people with documentary proof (voter identity card, electricity bill) who have been living on the ground floor on and before January 1, 2000. They are slated to get 350 sq. ft homes within Dharavi free of cost. The second category is people who established homes in Dharavi from January 1, 2000 until January 1, 2011. They will get 300 sq. ft homes outside Dharavi under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana at ₹2.5 lakh. The third category consists of residents whose structures have been in existence from January 1, 2011 until the cut-off date to be declared by the Maharashtra government. They will be given homes on rent or hire purchase.
Resettlement plans
Potters like Hasmukh Narayan Chawla, 40, wonder what this will do to the family structure. “Most houses have at least seven members who live on building stacks over the hutments. If only ground floor occupants get homes, the rest of the family will scatter,” he says.
Those left out of the net include people without documentation, those living on rent here for many generations, and those in the first category living in spaces above the ground floor. Residents have other worries too.
Many parts of Dharavi fall in Mumbai’s international airport’s funnel zone (parts along the runway and paths planes follow while landing and taking off). So there are height restrictions on buildings, as per the tender document. Which is why, add Adani Group officials, it is not feasible to accommodate all Dharavikars within Dharavi.
People from Dharavi often make the 16-km journey to Srinivas’s office to ask about various aspects of the project. A group of seven people, of which five are women, wants to know what their future will be. “My house collapsed during the monsoon. I was promised a MHADA house (a complex being developed by the government within Dharavi that is still not up). This was five years ago,” says Roshan Shaikh, in her 40s. She wonders whether she makes the cut to get housing within the locality.
All eligible people with commercial tenements that are non-polluting will get space within Dharavi, says Srinivas, adding that there are some terms and conditions based on the size of the establishment, with some getting it for free and others having to pay an additional sum.
In Dharavi’s Chamda Bazar (leather market), considered a polluting industry, Shabbir Shaikh, 36, runs his family’s leather factory, where products are manufactured and exported. “We are not against development, but it should not be at the cost of losing our livelihood and homes. Dharavi alone generates a revenue of $100 billion every year because of the small and micro industries here. If we are rehabilitated to another area, the workers and our workshops will suffer a loss.” He is worried about being pushed into poverty.
The first tannery was set up in Dharavi in 1887, when people migrated from Tamil Nadu, according to Re-Dharavi, a collaboration that suggested guidelines for redevelopment of slums.
Shabbir Shaikh, outside his workshop in Chamda Bazaar in Dharavi. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
Before the unsettling feeling overtook Dharavi, florist Perumal Kumar, 50, sold his ancestral home here. His family of five now lives in a rented hutment in Dharavi as their new one in a slum in Sion, 500 metres away, is under construction. “Generations ago, my family moved here from Tiruvannamalai (in Tamil Nadu) to sell flowers in Dadar. Since the talk began on the project, not a single official has come to explain it to us. That’s why we decided to move out,” he says. Other residents say it is the lack of communication from a ‘higher entity’ that is making them nervous.
Citizen movements
To get people on board, DRPPL has tried the ‘soft’ approach: they have organised a job fair and cricket tournaments with prize money up to ₹1 lakh. Advocate Rajendra Korde is the office secretary of the Peasants and Workers Party of India and founder-coordinator of Dharavi Bachao Andolan, a residents’ group formed in 2004. In his office, an ageing Edwardian-period building, he says this is all just a ploy to deceive people.
He says as per the Slum Rehabilitation Authority rules, rehabilitation should happen within Dharavi. “The larger plan is to remove the slum dwellers from Dharavi to different locations and turn Dharavi’s land into an extended BKC (Bandra-Kurla Complex) and make it a business hub. This is a sophisticated land grab plan of the government to hand over the entire real estate market of Mumbai to Gautam Adani (chairman of Adani Group).” He remembers that in 2006, the State government’s Department of Housing had added a portion of BKC to the Dharavai redevelopment plan.
A reply to one of Devre’s RTI queries on land allocated for townships to rehabilitate people revealed that DRPPL has asked for at least 1,500 acres outside Dharavi in different locations in Mumbai: two in Mulund, and one each in Dahisar, Mankhurd, Vikhroli and Kurla; some are salt pans, others dumping grounds. Adani Group spokespersons claim the required land for rehabilitation is 1,000 acres, of which 540 have been identified.
In May, Watchdog Foundation, a citizens’ group from Mumbai, wrote to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai raising concerns over temporary rehabilitation for Dharavi residents on salt pans. Advocate Godfrey Pimenta, representing the citizens’ group, highlights the environmental concerns. “The proposed rehabilitation on salt-pan land poses significant risks and could be detrimental to the safety and well-being of Mumbaikars due to ill-planned development,” he says.
Devre says two major rehabilitation projects of project-affected people (PAP) are coming up in Mulund East. An RTI response shows that 118.1 acres will be allotted here and many will be moved into the 7,439 tenements in the area, he says. “These projects will add pressure on civic and other amenities in Mulund East,” he says.
In July, residents of Mulund, Kurla, and Dharavi formed a group to demand clarity on the project. The same month, hundreds from Mulund staged a protest against shifting of project-affected families to the area, with placards that read, ‘Dismiss PAP project’, ‘Save Mulund’, ‘No-PAP - No Dharavi’.
Sayyed Sajid Ali, 44, owns a factory that produces garments for export to African countries. “Our entire life is centred around Bandra and Mahim. If we are displaced, we will have to start from scratch. Children might drop out of school.”
Sajit Garments in Dharavi, the area that manufactures and sells clothes. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
A DRPPL spokesperson says after the project secures clearance from all government departments, rehabilitation and reconstruction will take seven years. However, the tender document says this will take 17 years.
Abdul Hakeem, 65, another garment producer, says, “My home and factory that I built with my savings will be demolished. It will take years to redevelop Dharavi. By that time many of us will die; we will never move back home.”
