Project under BSUP may bring hope for Mandala residents

Ever since she left Guwahati and reached Mumbai ten years ago, Anawari Shaikh has been making houses for others. She is a construction worker who stays in slums frequently uprooted during demolition drives. And now she may own a house herself.

Shaikh is one of the 3,500 families from Mandala slums in Mankhurd living on the fringes for the last four years after their shanties repeatedly came under the bulldozer as part of the state government’s slum demolition drive.

Their shanties, built post-1995, had no legal protection to claim right to housing. But in what could be a unique project if approved, these slum-dwellers have submitted a housing project to the central government under the Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP).

BSUP is one of the components of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM ).

“I have built homes for so many people, I am capable of building a home for my family too,” said Anawari who would be among the many slum-dwellers who will work as labourers on the project in case it is approved. Many others would chip in with services as plumbers, carpenters, electricians and the like in a project which will not involve any developer in any way.

The activist group Ghar Banao Ghar Bachao, which has mobilised slum dwellers for the project, has submitted a proposal to the state housing department as well as the Central Urban Poverty Alleviation Ministry, which handles BSUP.

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