INDIA: City Out of Bounds for Workers, Slum Dwellers

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sandhya Srinivasan

MUMBAI, Jul 24 2005 (IPS) - Till recently, visitors to the Lower Parel district in the heart of Mumbai were struck by rows of one-room shanties; last week, a new, unabashedly pro-rich, approach was confirmed when a chunk of 243 hectares of property owned by defunct textile mills was sold to the very politicians who had made their careers opposing such sales.

Six months ago, when authorities in this port city, ordered slum demolitions that rendered 400,000 people homeless they were serving notice that it had little further use for the toiling masses that helped build this city into one of the world’s great metropolises.

Last week, the new, unabashedly pro-rich, approach was confirmed when a chunk of 243 hectares of prime property owned by defunct textile mills was sold to the very politicians who had made their careers opposing such sales and gaining the votes of the workers.

Till recently, visitors to the Lower Parel district in the heart of the city where the mills are located were struck by rows of one-room shanties set up by workers forced to take up residence along the high compound walls while waiting for their dues to be paid.

It proved to be a wait too long since most of the mills were locked-out following a failed textile workers’ strike in 1982. Many died in the lean-to shelters outside the mills or just gave up and went back to distant villages.

And now the mill lands are being auctioned off at prices that exceed those that accommodate the skyscrapers of Nariman Point at the tip of the peninsula that forms much of Mumbai.

There were no apologies offered on Jul. 21 when the central-government owned, two hectare, Kohinoor Mill compound was sold for a record one billion US dollars.

News that the city’s most expensive real estate was now in a working class section was shocking enough but it turned out that the successful bidders were leaders of the pro-Hindu, Shiv Sena party which had all along opposed private development of mill land – whether owned by the state or otherwise.

Builders are undeterred by a case pending in the Bombay High Court challenging mill land conversion confident in the knowledge that that politicians with personal stakes in the property development business will always stand by them.

In recent weeks, a number of mill premises have been sold to builders, at record prices. In mid-June, the seven-hectare Mumbai Textile Mill was sold for close to two billion dollars.

The buyers of all these plots have announced plans for luxury apartments, shopping malls, hotels and entertainment centres on land where textile mills have been standing for well over a century.

Indeed, one worry is that the development activity would see the demolition of fine, dressed-stone, Victorian-era buildings and destroy a major chunk of the city’s heritage. But there are other more pressing concerns.

Even as the mill land sales made the news, thousands of the city’s homeless shivered under make-shift shelters in the relentless monsoons blowing in from the Arabian sea.

Of the 400,000 people rendered homeless by slum clearance operations in Mumbai, 100,000 were children and moved Milon Kothari, United Nations special rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, to describe it as the ”most brutal demolition drive in recent times”.

The demolitions which started in December 2004 to clear more than 81 hectares of land were conducted in the name of an eight billion dollar development project announced by the state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to ”turn Mumbai into another Shanghai”.

The demolitions halted only after sustained agitations by organisations including activist Medha Patkar’s National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM). After protracted agitation and a legal battle, the government conceded that some of the demolitions were illegal.

But tens of thousands of families are still homeless, and have lost all their belongings as well as documents proving their right to live in this city.

Said Deepika D’Souza of the Indian People’s Tribunal: ”More than 50 percent of the city’s population lives in dilapidated housing or make- shift shelters, though they occupy just 10 percent of the city’s space”.

”They work as domestic help in homes and as unorganised labour in small- scale industries and small establishments. They hawk vegetables and other household goods at affordable rates. And they make just enough money to survive, living in make-shift settlements as close as possible to their places of work,” she said.

”People are forced into the city to find work and Mumbai runs on cheap labour,” notes Vinod Shetty, labour lawyer and advocate for NAPM. ”Employers are not required to provide housing so workers are forced to live in slums. And there’s plenty of land – around 6,075 hectares should have been taken over under the Urban Land Ceiling Act”.

”Instead, shopping malls are coming up on land reserved for public housing,” Shetty said.

Urban planners have not given up the struggle for more orderly and fair development of mill land to provide for workers’ housing, public amenities and open spaces.

”The government said the demolitions were needed so that Mumbai kept its open spaces,” says architect Neera Adarkar, who co-wrote ‘One hundred years, one hundred stories’, documenting the lives of textile workers.

Mill land was originally given out on nominal leases to encourage the textile industry. Activist Shailesh Gandhi used the Right to Information Act to find out that owners of mills have been selling off land even though their leases had expired years earlier.

”Mumbai belongs to the working class which developed it,” says Datta Ishwalkar of Girni Kamgar Sangarsh Samiti (Mill Workers’ Struggle Committee), a registered trade union in Mumbai.

”Mill land should be used for low-income housing, and for small businesses for the children of mill workers to find their feet,” argues Ishwalkar. ”Planning should be for people’s survival first”.

The textile industry once employed more than 250,000 workers. Many of them now eke out a living in odd jobs and hawking. Trained for one industry, they are unable to find suitable jobs in others. The next generation is facing a crisis due to the closure of manufacturing all over the city with its white collar services orientation.

Sharad Walawalkar, who lost his job at Matulya Mills, runs his household mostly on the money his wife earns cooking meals for workers. He works 12- hour shifts as security guard at a shopping mall within the compound of the Phoenix Mills at half his former salary.

”Nothing is being done for the thousands of worker who lost their livelihoods over the years,” says Ishwalkar. ”The government is talking about converting some buildings into heritage sites. It should first provide compensation to the thousands of workers”.

”Some 6,000 employees of the Khatau Mills were rendered jobless when it shut down as late as 1997. Even the government said the closure was illegal,” notes Ishwalkar. Khatau has 21.87 hectares of land in Mumbai waiting to be sold and also 50 million dollars in dues pending to the workers.

”They are missing the opportunity to build a balanced environment with the vast spaces, and meeting housing needs for the poor,” says urban historian Foy Nissen.

”We could have addressed pressing infrastructure problems in Mumbai like inadequate transport arteries and open spaces,” lamented former urban development secretary, G S Pantbalekundri.

Mumbai residents meeting recently under the banner of Mumbai People’s Action Committee noted that that the mill lands were ”entrusted to mill owners to develop the textile industry and provide employment, not to speculate in real estate”.

”Mumbai was made by using land for economic and social purposes,” says civic activist Gerson D’Cunha. ”The textile mills were the best example, where land was given to build an industry. Now it is being gifted to builders who funded the ruling party in the last elections”.