Public private participation in slum rehabilitation in Mumbai

Abstract

Mumbai, the commercial center of India, is well known for its vast slum population. The government of Maharashtra has been making efforts to improve the environment, which started with forceful eviction in the 1950s and evolved through stages to the enabling approach of forging public-private partnership in the 1990s. The main focus has been on decentralizing the decision making process to the community, and on involving the private developers. Multi storied buildings are constructed by demolishing the existing huts to accommodate all the families and the remaining part is sold in the open market to meet the total cost of construction and the profit of the developer. A developer mobilizes the community to implement the project on a slum colony only when he sees sufficient profit in it, which depends mainly on the location of the colony and the density of the existing huts. Approximately, 1900 out of 2500 colonies are not covered yet, mainly because they are not financially viable due to their poor location or high density. This paper is based on a case study of six slum rehabilitation projects. One was impossible due to its very high density in spite of being situated in a lucrative location. The community decided to execute the project without depending on a developer and also to contribute the deficient amount and put it on the path of sure success. The task of construction is very difficult and complex, which involves obtaining permissions from various government agencies, mobilizing the finances, shifting the families into temporary houses, marketing and selling the saleable flats, resolving conflicts etc. For executing all these activities, a community must be sufficiently enabled and supported by some agency at each stage, which was done by an efficient and experienced NGO working in the area of slum housing for many years. Many lessons can be learnt from these cases to make the remaining unviable colonies viable with proper empowerment of the community. This study also demonstrates that there is lack of community empowerment effort and absence of institutional support to enable the community