Indian government wants to relocate millions living in Mumbai’s slums

MUMBAI — Leaders want to transform Mumbai, the world’s seventh-largest city, into a center for financial technology — but the biggest hurdle to that modernization makeover has been the struggle to address the crowded slums that exist in and around India’s industrial, commercial and entertainment hub.

Approximately 5.5 million people reside in poverty throughout the state of Maharashtra, with Mumbai serving as its capital. Families are crammed into a single room where they lack necessities like food, clean water or adequate health care.

The government is in the midst of a controversial and wide-ranging plan to shuttle slum residents to other areas while continuing economic development projects like luxury apartments, malls and high-rise office buildings.

Aseem Kumar Gupta, the head of urban development for the state of Maharashtra, said the city is shifting residents out of slums like Dharavi while new commercial buildings and infrastructure projects are under construction. The plan is to provide financial assistance so they can secure other living arrangements nearby or help displaced residents build new homes farther away.

“It’s like changing the engine of an aircraft while it’s still flying,” Mr. Gupta told The Washington Times on Tuesday.

The government’s plan has drawn criticism from local advocacy groups like the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers. They said Mumbai’s history of successful large-scale resettlement projects has been grim.

“Whenever municipalities wanted a piece of land, they simply evicted all the poor families living there,” SPARC said in a statement. “Even in the few cases when the municipality did provide alternate land, the poor were just dumped in places far from the city with hardly any provisions for water, infrastructure or jobs.”

The impoverished invariably drifted back to the city, where they build shacks in other slums or live on the streets, SPARC officials said.

In his 1897 travelogue “Following the Equator,” author Mark Twain described what he saw while driving at night in the city then known as Bombay. He wrote of seeing hundreds of people sleeping on the ground.

“They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads and all,” Twain wrote.

Mr. Gupta said the rising popularity of other Indian municipalities such as Bangalore and Kolkata has somewhat lessened the pressure on Mumbai.

“You don’t have to live in Mumbai to have the modern enjoyment of life,” he said. “Twenty years ago, there was no competition. Now we are talking about other [Indian] states competing with us.”

Dharavi is located between Mumbai’s two main suburban railways and is adjacent to the city’s airport. The blue tarpaulin roofs of the homes are easily visible to any visitors. Advocates say about 60,000 families who moved there before 2000 and have residency documents will remain in the area and be entitled to a new 350-square-foot apartment.

Meanwhile, more than 10,000 other families will be relocated elsewhere and must either rent or buy a home in installments spread over 12 years, advocates for the residents said.