Dharavi, the “largest slum in the world”, is a horror which haunts Mumbaikars on a daily basis. Take it as a compliment or not, the National Geographic Magazine (May, 2007) described it as “unique among slums.” It went on to add, “A neighborhood smack in the heart of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and historical pull of a subcontinental Harlem -- a square-mile center of all things, geographically, psychologically, spiritually.”
Its location and connectivity to airport, rail, road and to other parts of the city makes it an ideal target for realtors. On date, it is valued at several billion dollars. Once recovered, it can be readily linked to the already completed surreal structure known as the Bandra-Kurla-Complex (BKC). As the city Fathers and town planners dreamt once, when India was shining , Mumbai could become another Shanghai and an international financial centre to boot. Unfortunately, the dream vanished when ground realities struck; and nobody is sure of the future.
This book by Liza Weinstein is about the City and the Dream. More importantly, it is about the survival of Dharavi. Will Dharavi, a slum seething with a million or more of poor people drawn from many parts of India and who have taken abode in the cesspit to eke out a living withstand the onslaughts of bulldozers and the planned attacks of politicians and globalisers? The author argues, “They will.” She comes to this contrarian conclusion by drawing heavily on a decade of research by her, including field trips, to explain how, despite innumerable threats, the slum has endured. It is a scholarly study enriched by research done by sociologists, economists and political analysts. She displays a rare empathy for slum-dwellers missing in our own town planners.
Interests at work When she came first to India for her research in 2004, she assumed that given “the wave of global capital and real estate investment that had begun to subsume the city, Dharavi would clearly soon be taking on water.” After nearly a decade, and at the end of her research, she takes a different view. As she says, “The cranes and bulldozers are still waiting just outside, along with global capital that propels them, but I now understand that a powerful set of interests, actors, and institutions are working hard to keep them at bay.” What are the interests, who are the actors and which are the institutions at work? This is the extra-ordinary story of this book.
The author narrates the historical origins of Dharavi explaining how from a fishing village populated by Kolis, the native fishermen, it grew into a megaslum. Adi Dravidas and Dalits from south India migrated there to avoid caste persecution. They set up tanneries which, over time, grew into major production centers where foreign tourists purchase handbags or leather items. There are kumbars who set up potteries and the smoke from those kilns cover the skies in the evenings.
Over years, Dharavi has grown into a throbbing manufacturing zone. Further, Dharavi has become a humongous landfill which absorbs all the waste and excreta thrown up by the city. Dharavi has thousands of rag pickers and, as the saying goes, “nothing in Dharavi is wasted.”
Enter Dadas The transformation of Dharavi detailed by the author is based on deep sociological research and field work. As population pressure increased and more and more people entered the area, it was vital to preserve one’s own living space. Most of the tenements are illegal and subject to threats of eviction. They seek the protection of local leaders ( dadas ) and a dadagiri culture has grown up. These dadas also help them to get water, electricity, ration and other essential services from municipal agencies, services through bribes. These services should ordinarily be free in a democracy. Dadas get linked to politicians who need vote banks. They also get connected to organised crime groups with international links. The author describes with clinical precision the rise of local leaders like Varadaraja Mudaliar (Varadbhai), Haji Mastan, Yusuf Patel, Arun Gawli, Chota Rajan, etc. and their involvement in real estate. It is interesting that the same leaders were earlier engaged in smuggling high value electronic items, gold and bootlegging in the years before liberalisation and, after 1991 and with the shooting up of real estate values, shifted to real estate. Dharavi, a source of supplying cheap labour in pre-reform era, came to be courted for its land value. The closure of old textile mills displaced labour but added to land supply. Weinstein did a separate study of this in 2008. (Mumbai’s Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land Development, International Journal of urban and Regional Research , March 2008.) The book explains how the Slum Upgradation Programmes of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) were exploited by the mafia and led to poor multi-storeyed structures on the outer periphery. They are now dilapidated ghost structures on the verge of collapse, a la Campa Cola Society. The tragedy was, as Weinstein explains, the State Government and the civic authorities did not have the financial resources or the political will and were ready to condone illegal structures and compromise with the “free enterprise” generated by the mafia at no cost to them. The World Bank’s scheme begun in the mid-1980s had to be abandoned in 1994 and it had completed barely 20 per cent of its target.
Rehab efforts The book narrates at length the efforts made by the State and Central Governments, as also the Municipal authorities, to rehabilitate the slums and how they came to naught. Part of it was lack of resources; a greater part was lack of political will and the inability of the state sovereign to contend with regional sovereigns who had grown in number and strength. There were political rivalries marked by the decline of the Congress and the growing rivalry between Shiv Sena and other parties. Her account of the failure of coordination at municipal level should be a lesson for future planners.
The later parts of the book are devoted to the rise of Mukesh Mehta who came up with the massive Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) and how he worked his way through the political and regional interstices with the backing of global investors. His timing was perfect. India was shining and aspirations ran high. Global capital was awash with investors ready to grab land for development. Mehta was persevering in his efforts and did everything possible to get the local leaders on board. Mehta was able to inspire a number of foreign investors to come forward and make the bid when it was opened. Unfortunately, the financial crisis erupted in 2007-08 and the bidders developed cold feet. Among them was Lehman Brothers who made history by creating the crisis in the first instance. Fifteen others withdrew in due course and the project was put on hold.
Her conclusion is grim and should warn future planners. “Embedded politics, institutional fragmentation and popular mobilisations have erected barriers to potentially destructive development schemes and kept residents in a precarious state of stability.” Moreover, “If the megaslum was to disappear, then Mumbai would have to lose so many of its drivers, domestic servants, domestic workers, garment manufacturers, garbage collectors, and office workers that India’s commercial capital would simply cease to function.” Future plans would need to be modest and confined to Dharavi as a regional entity and provide better and modernised amenities in terms housing, civic facilities and good environment. In many ways, this book is an eye-opener and embodies a wealth of scholarly material on the issues which lie ahead.
THE DURABLE SLUM: — Dharavi and the Right to Stay Put in Globalizing Mumbai: Liza Weinstein; Orient Blackswan, 3-6-752, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad-500029. Rs. 695.
