Of people, for them too?

“BUT residents have questions,” says Raju Korde, a Dharavi resident and leader of the Dharavi Bachao Samiti, formed two years ago. “And the officials have no answers.” World-class schools are a great idea, he says, but will students who’ve been in civic schools until now, many in Kannada, Urdu and Tamil-medium, get admission? The Samiti is demanding 80 per cent reservation for Dharavi’s children in the proposed schools.

Also very worried are Kumbharwada’s potters, who had a barrage of uneasy questions for project management consultant Mukesh Mehta when he visited last week. Large drying yards, kilns, warehousing for their goods are all crucial, and nobody’s quite impressed with the idea of a community kiln.

Mehta—he conceived the ambitious project more than five years ago—says the detailed land use plan accommodates everyone who’s eligible. (That’s a contested, startlingly low figure of 52,000 families; residents say the cutoff date of January 1995 is unfair.) “We have been transparent about our plans from the start,” he says, after making a presentation to BMC leaders, including the mayor, on Thursday. The BMC owns 69 per cent of land in the notified area and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has asked the Slum Rehabilitation Authority to seek the civic body’s nod for suggested alterations to the Development Control Regulations, including a plan for a first world-style, colour-coded underground utilities duct, a first for India.

“We have decided on a land use plan,” explains Mehta. “So for each sector, we know where a park, school, hospital will be located. Also, detailed specifications for buildings will be given to the developers.” That will include art deco buildings and mandatory eco-housing criteria—including rainwater harvesting, water recycling, renewable energy systems etc—being worked upon simultaneously by the BMC and USAID. “It will be world class.”

... contd.