Dharavi Redevelopment – A Plan

This plan is a Dharavi redevelopment plan, a large inner-city township in Mumbai that is often said to be one of Asia’s largest slums.

Dharavi is to be redeveloped, and the means through which it will be redeveloped are currently under discussion.

A paper in the October 2007 issue of Environment & Urbanization described how the government of Maharashtra’s plans for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) divided Dharavi into sectors.

International companies would bid for the right to develop.

(1) Although the Dharavi Redevelopment Project acknowledged that redevelopment must rehouse or resettle Dharavi’s current population, there was no consultation with the residents or enterprises in Dharavi.

There were serious concerns that commercial developers would seek to minimize the costs of rehousing the population and maximize the amount of land cleared for commercial development.

With no clear policy or official documentation on who would be entitled to rehousing or resettlement, or on grievance redressal for those who would be left out.

Residents feared that many households and business enterprises stood to lose their homes and places of work.

Thus, the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Mumbai inhabitants are at stake, as is the future of thousands of local businesses in Dharavi.

They are of considerable importance not only for livelihoods but also for Mumbai’s economy.

Also read: Dharavi: A Construction Site