Slums, the most visible symptom of Mumbai’s housing crisis, cannot be wished away. And a famine of ideas has caused their relentless proliferation

The sudden revival of interest among the Congress legislators to extend protection to encroachers who had set up their shanties before 2000, from the current cut-off of 1995, may be seen as an obvious attempt to claim the tag of being the patron of Mumbai’s slumdwellers.

But it was the Shiv Sena that had won a bout in competitive populism in the mid-1990s when it announced free homes for protected slumdwellers. Five lakh homes in five years, they had promised, giving the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) its mandate. A decade-and-a-half later, the latest numbers from the SRA tell the story of a plan gone awry:

* Until January 31 this year, a total of 97,956 free houses, or tenements, had been given occupation certificates, less than a fifth of the original five-year target. Even after counting the projects underway, the total number of tenements given the nod is an abysmal 2,84,928.

* The City Development Plan prepared by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation two years ago states that 54 per cent of Mumbai’s population lives in 1,950 shanty towns that dot India’s financial capital.

* Worse, the numbers will turn more skewed: In 2001, Mumbai’s slum population was 58.2 lakh vis-a-vis the non-slum population of 60.9 lakh. By 2025, the government estimates, the slum population will be over 64 lakh.

Mumbai’s slums may be the most visible indicator of the gaping hole that is affordable housing, but obviously, the city’s plans for slum resettlement have been a complete failure. “Free houses for slumdwellers is an unsustainable concept,” says D M Sukthankar, former state chief secretary and now head of a panel of independent experts monitoring the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. “Because that cost of constructing free homes has to be loaded on the free-sale component.”

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