Shanghaing Mumbai – Politics of Evictions and Resistance in Slum
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Page 1 WORKING PAPER - 7 Shanghaing Mumbai – Politics of Evictions and Resistance in Slum Settlements Darshini Mahadevia Harini Narayanan October, 1999 CENTRE FOR DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES E-71, Akash, Near Chief Justice‟s Bungalow, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad- 380054. INDIA Tel: +91-79-26850160 Telefax: +91-79-26844240 Email: [email protected] Web site: www.cfda.ac.in Page 2 Shanghaing Mumbai – Politics of Evictions and Resistance in Slum Settlements Darshini Mahadevia ( Faculty, School of Planning, Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology, Ahmedabad and Visiting Faculty, Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad, INDIA ) Harini Narayanan (Independent Urban Researcher, New Delhi, INDIA) Page 3 1 Published by Center for Development alternatives, Ahmedabad E/ 71, Akash, Near Chief Justice‟s Bungalow, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad-380 054. INDA Tel: +91-79-2685 0160, Telefax: +91-79-2684 4240 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.cfda.ac.in CFDA Working papers are the output of research work or research projects conducted at CFDA. This paper has been peer reviewed and edited. The paper is also available on the Web site : www.cfda.ac.in Page 4 2 Shanghaing Mumbai – Politics of Evictions and Resistance in Slum Settlements 1 Darshini Mahadevia Harini Narayanan “Citizens will see many suburban road projects completed on a war footing by next December, although the rehabilitation of as many as 20,000 slum families is an onerous task. The proliferation of slums throughout the city has created obstacles for development and today there are demands that the cut-off date for regularising hutments be extended to 2000. But, the existing law clearly stipulates that protection to slums can be given only if they existed prior to January 1, 1995. … I admit that the Congress-I-NCP2 manifesto did promise to extend this cut-off date to 2000. However, any amendment to the existing law will only be done after reaching a consensus with all political parties, including the Shiv Sena and BJP3. …. Today, Shanghai has become a symbol for Mumbai – that city started from zero and see where it is today. Citizens here will start having confidence in the government when they see Mumbai's transformation in the next five years. … We want citizens' groups to support us. Their advice and suggestions for improving the city will be considered. …. I have a dream to make Mumbai a world class city.”4 “The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has assured us all possible help …. within five years you will see transformed Mumbai. This will provide new opportunities and avenues in IT and ITES5- related activities. I am confident that global leaders in this sector will give their first preference to Mumbai for their new ventures.” - From a newspaper interview given by Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister6 of Maharashtra7 “We fully support the CM‟s drive on the demolition of illegal slums. …. If Mumbai has to be a World Class city then the slums have to go and for which strong and urgent steps need to be taken. Any encroachment of public property cannot be tolerated and must be dealt with according to the rule of law.” - Bombay First and Citizen‟s Action Group (CAG) comprising of prominent citizens8. “On 9 December (2004)9 my husband immolated himself to stop the demolition and subsequently passed away”. - Martha Shresth of Anand Nagar Society on Juhu Tara Road (Indian Peoples Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights - IPTEHR 2005: 18). “I returned home at 10.30 pm and found our houses demolished. Some goons standing there asked us not to build anything there. … We needed some place for our children to sleep. So we tried to build makeshift arrangement by using bamboos. .. Heated exchange of words soon resulted in physical blows. In that fight, a watchman from their side got hurt. They … complained to the police. As a result, the commissioner summons us regularly to date although there is no information on the other party. …. We paid Rs. 20,000 to a goon for 10 x 20 ft home in Hari Omnagar. We did not have Page 5 3 amenities, no water, no electricity, …. The goon whom we bought the house from did not give us anything in writing and that if we identified him he would say he did not know us”. - Deposition of Uma Shankar Jai Narayan Mishra from Hari Omnagar Seva Sangh, Hari Omnagar to IPTEHR 2005: 15) “Bulldozers ran with two jeeps of police. Our houses were destroyed. Women were beaten. Children got burnt.” - Coordinator, Kadwi Wagari from Wagari Basti, in a deposition to IPTEHR (2005: 21). “The next day they came again with bulldozers and took away all our belongings, including food items, utensils etc. … An 8 year old girl and a 21 year old woman died due to cold” - Ramzan Hasmat of Rafiq Nagar in a deposition to IPTEHR (2005: 24). “In the city, (poor) people find their role is to become human bulldozers. The poor squat on useless, rocky or marshy land; they level it and turn it into valuable real estate. When people started coming to Dharavi (the largest slum in Bombay) fifty years ago, land was forty paise a square meter; now it is 400 rupees a square meter. This is the hidden purpose of the poor in the city - to benefit the rich. No wonder they then try to criminalize the poor, say they're lazy and worthless. They want to get their hands on the urban land which the poor have improved and added value to.” - Seabrook: 1987, 149 quoting A. Jockin, then a social worker, now president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation and a recent winner of the Ramon Magsasay award. Page 6 4 Introduction Mumbai (former called Bombay) – its political and business leaders hope - will be the driving force of India‟s global economic integration. Hence this comparison with Shanghai, which became the driving force of China‟s global economic integration from 1990s onwards (Yeung 1996). Since the development of the Pudong area in Shanghai, through foreign investments and the adopting special area development as a strategy to revitalise and redevelop old large cities, China‟s economic development strategy has shifted to encouraging real estate development (Yeh 1996). In transformation of Shanghai, real estate‟s contribution has been estimated to be 37.3 per cent in Pudong and 45.9 per cent in the whole of Shanghai in 1993 by Yeh (1996: 292). Further, since Shanghai was opened up for FDI, the per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has accelerated in China (analysed from ADB document of key indicators of development10). The argument is powerful. To use real estate for city transformation, that in turn would spin-off rapid economic growth of the nation and in turn lead to decline in poverty and absolute deprivation. But, it is the transformation of Shanghai in short span is what has captured the imagination of the politicians, the planners and the business leaders in Mumbai. India, too, hopes that Mumbai, the commercial and finance capital of India, like Shanghai, would be such a driving force of Indian economy. In order to kick-start this longed-for transformation, the state government apparatus felt the need to make dramatic demonstration of its ability to take difficult decisions and follow through with them even in the teeth of vehement opposition. Simply put, in Mumbai, between November 2004 and March 2005, 90,00011 homes of slum- dwellers, located over 44 localities (IPTEHR 2005: 10), were demolished. Considering an average of five persons living in one slum home, 450,000 slum- dwellers were evicted by this concerted act of demolition. This means that about 8 per cent of the population living in slums within the jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGB - or in the Marathi form, Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika, or BMC), were evicted in the span of four months. The demolitions were observed with helplessness by the slum-dwellers and concerned citizens for a while before the resistance gathered pace. By February 2005, the evictees‟ resistance movement to the demolitions gained strength and from then on, the history of the city‟s resistance is still being written. The authors of this article have been participants in this developing story and could, therefore bring an insight into why demolitions were carried out in first place and what shape the New Social Movement (NSM) that may be observed in Mumbai in wake of the demolitions and other ongoing land-related debates in the city is taking. Due to number of reasons, the slum evictions were halted. But, other forms of exclusions in the city, remained in the news. The first major recent exclusion is banning of dancing by girls in beer-bars (pubs) in the city. There are estimated 75,000 dance bar girls, as they are called, work in non-five star hotel bars12. Most of these girls come from families that are unable to find well-paying jobs in the city and the girls are important earning members and in some cases even the sole supporters of the Page 7 5 family. Some of these girls do slip into prostitution while they are employed as dance girls in these bars and some of them take to it after retiring from the dancing profession, which is at a fairly young age13. The state government‟s argument, made on its behalf by the Deputy Chief Minister (DyCM), Mr. R. R. Patil was moralistic; to protect the young generation from slipping into a moral abyss! The other one, not so much reported event has been, banning of hawking in all but the designated hawking zones, a fallout of the Supreme Court order of December 2003 in response to a petition filed by a city-based NGO, CitySpace against hawking everywhere in the city.