A Review of Slum Housing Policies in Mumbai
Introduction:
This paper provides an analysis of the slum housing policies and squatter settlements in Mumbai and the changing policy response to the problems they present. Policy change has itself been informed by the development of theory in relation to the housing of the urban poor in the developing world.
Mumbai (Bombay) is India’s main industrial and commercial centre. According to the United Nations it is the seventh largest city in the world with the fifth fastest rate of population growth. Over half the population, however, live in conditions of abject poverty, crammed into overcrowded slums and hutments located in unhealthy marginal environments. There are many complex reasons for Mumbai’s housing crisis, including strong population in-migration and growth. Former urban development policies favoured capital-intensive industries and the rapid growth of a low-wage informal sector.
Subsidised transport systems allowed poor people to live and work in the city. Mumbai’s poor housing is also a reflection of a poor and inappropriate urban planning system, a lack of public investment and restrictions in the land and rental housing market. The failure of the city authorities to cope with the urban poor is highlighted by a review of the main slum housing policies implemented in the city. These range from slum clearance and the construction of high-rise apartment blocks to a range of self-help strategies and current privatized market-led schemes. Trapped between dwindling public investment and new powerful market-led forces, it is contended that the future of housing the poor in Mumbai looks bleak.
Site and setting:
The present urban metropolis of Mumbai consists of three different entities. First, there is Mumbai City Island a Manhattan-style promontory of 69 sq km and a population of 2.7 million at the last formal census in 1991. Originally composed of seven small separate islands, land reclamation and infill carried out mostly during the 18th and 19th centuries have combined these islands into a continuous peninsula. Beyond the Mahim Creek to the north lies the suburban area of Salsette Island.
Population growth:
General trends in population growth in the Island City and Greater Mumbai from 1901 to 1991 are shown in Fig. 2. From the turn of the century until 1950 most population growth was contained within the Island City where, even by the 1930s, the workers’ tenements could be described as “…unspeakably congested and insanitary.” Since the 1950s, the majority of the increase has taken place in the suburbs and extended suburbs of Salsette Island.
General housing conditions:
A summary profile of all housing types in Mumbai since 1961. The number of households increased from 803 000 in 1961 to 2.1 million in 1991, while over the same period, the number of rooms rose from 1.1 million to 2.9 million. Mumbai’s general housing conditions appear to have declined between 1961 and 1971, with the average size of household rising from 5.3 to 5.4 persons, the numbers of persons per room from 3.7 to 4.0 and the percentage of households with only one room increasing from 72 to 77%.
Public services: water, electricity and sewerage:
Faced with rapid increases in population and scarce public funding, it has generally proved difficult to maintain basic urban services such as supplies of water, electric power, sewerage and garbage clearance to the city’s inhabitants. Nevertheless, a larger share of households had access to electricity (90 compared with 78%) and toilets (78 compared with 71%) in 1991 than a decade earlier.
Supplying clean drinking water to users remains a critical issue, however. This is a consequence not only of Mumbai’s rapid population increase, but also of a spatial mismatch between centers of demand, eg in the CBD at the southern end of the Island City and centers of supply in Salsette Island and increasingly on the mainland of Maharashtra itself. Despite this mismatch, there have been some general improvements in the supply of clean drinking water during the 1980s.
The distribution of slums:
It is important to recognize that Mumbai’s slum pockets are highly differentiated by type, size and location, and occupy land held under a variety of ownership structures, including central government, state, municipal and private land. Estimates of structures on private land, for instance, range from 43% to 49%. While “zopadpattis” or hutments can spring up virtually anywhere, some slum pockets are destroyed while others retain a degree of permanency.
Slum Housing policies:
Since the late 19th century, the municipal authorities have engaged in various attempts to rid Mumbai of its slum and hutment areas, and a number of discrete housing strategies and slum housing policies have evolved over the years. These include strategies for both the very poor and middle income groups.
Conclusion:
This paper has described the slum housing policies and squatter settlements in Mumbai and the changing policy response to the problems they present. The city of Mumbai has experienced a number of housing and planning initiatives and therefore provides a useful empirical illustration of the outcomes of such initiatives. From the end of the 19th century and up to the 1970s, housing policy for the urban poor in many developing countries often imitated that in developed countries. Considerable faith was placed in borrowing models of planning from the latter and especially the preparation of a master plan.