Harbouring global aspirations despite 60 per cent of her population living in slums, Mumbai might, after all, have some lessons for rapidly urbanising India. If Maharashtra’s just-announced Draft State Housing Policy meets targets, that is.

Two days after Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh announced the state’s first-ever housing policy, planners and builders in the country’s most expensive real estate are welcoming a slew of moves aimed at declogging Mumbai. The policy proposes to increase FSI for urbanisable areas outside the city’s municipal limits from 0.5 to 1, a shot in the arm for townships in the manner of satellite cities.

“In any case, for every one new construction in Mumbai, there are 99 in the suburbs,” said Niranjan Hiranandani, who is already developing massive layouts with premium apartments in Thane city, some 35 km from the heart of Mumbai. “By turning the focus to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR),” he says of the city’s outback comprising over a dozen municipal bodies, “the policy is recognizing a historical move.”

Also, TDR (Transfer of Development Rights) — there is massive generation of TDR from the rehabilitation of thousands of families affected by Mumbai’s mega infrastructure projects — will now be able to travel outside Mumbai’s municipal limits, once again to identified zones in Mahamumbai, as the MMR is being called.

In the last 30 years, while the population in south Mumbai has seen a fall, the population of the MMR has doubled. “In general, the policy is moving in the right direction, with slum redevelopment and TDR outside the city,” said HDFC chairperson Deepak Parekh. This is an opportunity to face the challenges of urban decongestion without putting that onus only on city governments.

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