Slum rights till 2000: more than mere politics

Mumbai’s worst crisis as an urban space has been the slums it hosts. They could never be curbed. They could not be effectively removed. They could not be replaced with normal housing for the urban poor. But their dwellers are a major chunk of the population who can be relied on to indicate their strong preferences; they vote with their feet when people like us only crib about how the city is managed. Or not managed. No wonder, just before the code of conduct for the February elections to the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — easily the country’s richest and perhaps the worst-run — comes into effect anytime now, the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party decided to curry favour with them. It decided to afford protection to all those who lived in slum dwellings legitimised till 1 January 1995. It does not matter if they lived there before that cut-off or took to it after. However, it would be inappropriate to see this move only through the political prism; it would also be simplistic. It helps to sort out a major issue that has been a speed-breaker to the slum rehabilitation programme. The pre-1995 and post-1995 divide between slum dwellers has been a serious issue. One was preferred and another was not, simply because the latter arrived there late. [caption id=“attachment_176865” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Half and perhaps more of Dharavi, the city’s most known slum internationally, are tenants. Reuters”]  [/caption] Since then, demographics of the slums, which house, as per 2001 census, 60 percent of the city’s population, have undergone a vast change. Those who originally built the structure or had lived in one such had sold it off or rented it out. That made the occupants of quite a few dwellings of the protected slum units illegal; they were not entitled for rehabilitation as and when it was decided to give them replacement housing. This caused a huge problem. There were slum rehabilitation programmes, where each swath was peppered with dwellings whose occupants were ineligible for replacement housing, but the structure in which they stayed, was. Quite a headache, this, as well as a huge racket where rent-seeking officials and even politicians made hay; faked identities, etc., came to surface. Till they were sorted out, homogenised with the entitled neighbour, projects were held up. Now, by amending the Development Control Rules and bringing them in harmony with the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme norms, those who stayed in pre-1995 dwellings but had occupied it prior to 2000, get the benefit. Their numbers would be in lakhs among the millions in the slums. The builders – developers can now hope to get cracking with their projects, in a few places. But it does not mean the entire issue has been resolved, for there are people among the occupants of these pre-1995 slum houses who came in even after 2000. The city’s slums have a vibrant sale-resale as well as a rental market which people like us are not aware of. Dwellings are let out with proper leave and licence agreements, much as people like us enter into, except that they are not registered. They merely call them ‘affidavits’ and using the rough and ready methods, are even enforced. As per educated estimates of slum activists and some more honest officials, over half of the slum occupants are tenants. Half and perhaps more of Dharavi, the city’s most known slum internationally, are tenants. Now, even these tenants, if they had been in occupation since 2000 and could establish that, get due protection. But chances are, many have changed hands over time in the past one-and-half decades for the government to think that it has entirely solved the issue of uneven spread of eligibility of slum dwellers even in slums that had come up entirely before 1 January 1995. This, however, does become a major move ever since the regularisation of slums till that cut-off date by the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in 1996. Thereafter, there has been only much talk of rehabilitation, with very little to show on the ground. However, the fact remains that with over half the city in slums, any bid to solve the issue of housing, can only be a nibble at a time. The issue is that intractable. However, unlike in the past, a slum dweller in Mumbai has been able to put a monetary value to his dwelling because many owners have been able to sell their’s to a builder-developer or a speculator who can wait till any rehabilitation is taken up. Faking of records is one common route. Even today, slum dwellers are found running around government offices trying to prove they were inhabitants of a pre-1995 slum dwelling. A builder-developer, who is allowed to rehabilitate free of cost all slum dwellers in a patch he finds viable, can sell the surplus stock he generates in the open market. But he cannot just buy-up the slum units. The unit has to have an identifiable person’s name tagged to it. Now, if it happens to be a person who did not occupy it before 1995, but has been there between that year and 2000, he would be letting out his hurrahs today. Provided, he has documents to prove his case.