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Article
in The Hindu, dtd. April 24, 2000
Maharashtra asked to evolve
new policy for slum dwellers
--By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI, APRIL 23. Some good news at last for Mumbai, which
is bursting at the seams because of an enormously large
influx of people over the decades. There has been a drop
in number of people arriving to the metropolis from an all-time
peak of 400 families a day to just 36 now. And there is
bad news for the people who have populated the ever- growing
slums.
Orders, backed by the courts, have been given to demolish
such habitats, though a condition has been imposed that
alternative accommodation be provided to them. In short,
no demolition without rehabilitation. Nowhere else is the
condition so stringent as in the case of 55,000 dwellings
within the Borivili National Park but the Government has
been unable to do anything about it. The new site identified
is not acceptable to the locals because it is situated far
away and drinking water is supplied through tankers.
Even as the Government is in a fix over its next course
of action, NGOs working towards the rehabilitation of slum
dwellers say it should evolve a comprehensive slum policy.
Right to housing has to be protected and the standard of
housing has to be decent enough for people to live in. According
to anti-demolition activists, "slums are a characteristic
part of the city's life which cannot be wished away or demolished.
The city's non-slum dwellers should have a say in this as
well and their relationship with slums cannot be one-way,
using them as a reservoir of cheap labour".
"Demolitions have never solved any problem," the actress-MP,
Ms. Shabana Azmi, said. "People in slums do not disappear;
they do not go back to their villages.
They only see their condition worsening. Water is no longer
available, nor is electricity. They settle to live in worse
slums than they did earlier." The eradication of slums,
as it is done now, makes for only cosmetic solutions. The
Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti, headed by Ms. Azmi and which
is spearheading a campaign to provide security to slumdwellers
from demolitions and evictions without acceptable rehabilitation,
has sought that the State Government come out with a new
slum policy.
Mumbai, with a population of 14 million and more than half
its population living in slums and on sidewalks, has never
been able to solve this problem. The Shiv Sena-BJP Government
fixed a cut- off date of 1995; those who occupied slums
after that have no protection against the bulldozers which,
of late, have become ubiquitous in slums.
The Sena-BJP Government also tried, and woefully failed,
in providing alternative housing for the slum-dwellers.
The Congress(I)-NCP Government has also not been able to
carry that forward. Its search for an alternative means
of rehabilitation continues but solutions are elusive. The
Housing Minister, Mr. Rohidas Patil, himself heads the panel
but it has made little headway. If the Sena-BJP Government
was unsuccessful in providing houses to slum dwellers, it
was because, as the Samiti told the Chief Minister, Mr.
Vilasrao Deshmukh recently, everyone, except the slum dwellers,
were involved in it. "Slum redevelopment cannot be a byproduct
of real estate interests working for profit."
UNI reports:
The former Prime Minister, Mr. V.P. Singh, who has taken
up the cause of the slumdwellers said it is the piercing
painful stare of the human misery that has "turned me to
take up the cause of the suffering slumdwellers". After
launching a virtual gallery of his paintings created by
Nazara.Com today, a leading Indian entertainment portal,
here, he denied there was any political motivation behind
his latest crusade for the meaningful rehabilitation of
'Jhuggi Jhopadiwasi'.
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