Unfair? Well, tough. After all, there are 7.5 million like our watchman in Mumbai, people who don’t deserve our pity. They squat on public land, filch water and power from us bona fide, tax-paying citizens, and turn our city into a sewer. If Mumbai even hopes to become like Shanghai — ah, that embodiment of civic splendour! — we need to get rid of them. Quick.

There’s just one niggling problem. The figure 7.5 million constitutes more than half this city’s vote bank, not something politicians can afford to sniff at. Save or withdraw, that’s a tricky question for any visionary government.

Fortunately, a Robinhoodesque little plan miraculously promises to do both. The plot: hand over all slums to Mumbai’s brave, brash builders who will construct forty lakh 225 sq ft tenements in low-cost high-rises, free of charge for every slum family. In return, they will be ‘gifted’ an equal amount of the surplus floor space for lucrative commercial development. Meanwhile, the government gets to do what it does best: turn a social responsibility (building low cost housing) into a money spinner (real estate).

But in a city where a square foot of land is figuratively worth its weight in gold, it is also expected to generate 33 lakh crore worth of business — about thirty times the budget for the Mumbai Makeover. So no wonder the state government has stepped in to, uh, help.

Step One: Retain and legitimise vote banks by ‘regularising’ all shanties. (More slums, more business)

Step Two: Oil the machinery. While builders do the dirty work of bullying, intimidating and even forcibly evicting slum dwellers, government officials pitch in by endorsing fudged lists of eligible candidates, and winking conveniently when the ‘beneficiaries’ are ‘rehabilitated’ without the stipulated seventy per cent consensus. (Incidentally, this is no cakewalk: hundreds of cases have been filed by irate slum dwellers against the ‘builder-politician-underworld nexus.’ And only this month, dalit groups rioted to protest the mysterious death of a Buddhist monk who had refused to budge.) But the official assistance obviously comes at a price: kickbacks to Slum Rehabilitation Authority officials from builders are rumoured to run into crores of rupees, (Didn’t we say it was business?)

Step Three: Remove every obstacle. Last year Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh — who is fortuitously in charge of three crucial departments — Housing, Law and Slum Rehabilitation — shot down a proposal by the Anti Corruption Bureau to appoint a special prosecutor for SRA violations. (“Who will foot the bill?” he demanded, irrefutably). And this week, he sacked SRA CEO T. Chandrashekhar, coincidentally after the latter suggested that the government — not the builders’ mafia — should provide low cost housing.

Step Four: Keep everyone happy. Disgruntled ‘beneficiaries’ have been offered a more viable alternative : ‘sell’ their free homes for Rs 5 lakh to 10 lakh to the obliging builder, who will, in turn, ‘resell’ them to middle-class buyers for twice the amount (minus legal papers or transfer rights, naturally). Meanwhile, the ‘rehabilitated’ can ‘relocate’ to another slum, on the city outskirts, with a handsome ‘compensation.’

Snigger not, the plan may actually work. As upper-end accommodation doubles and slums get gentrified, their original inhabitants will be pushed so far away that they prefer to migrate to another metro. Then, at last, Mumbai will be rid of watchmen, cooks, domestic help, factory workers and countless small service providers. And maybe, just maybe, become slum free.

farah.baria@expressindia.com