Upgrading Slums for a Slum-Free-City

Mumbai has a population of 12.44 million as per census 2011 and 52 Lakh population of that is housed in slums, protected through the slum act. Generally, slums are defined as compact settlements of at least 20 households with a collection of poorly built tenements, crowded, with usually inadequate sanitary and drinking water facilities in unhygienic condition. Slums in  various parts of  Mumbai, vary significantly in density, religious/income mix, and overall availability of infrastructure facilities.

             A survey identifying condition of the households was conducted by Indian National census in 2011 for all the households in Mumbai including households in slums. It estimated 26.7 Lakh HH in Mumbai out of which 19.4 Lakh are good for living, 7.1 Lakh are livable and only 37500 HH are in extremely poor condition.

This clearly shows that, over the years slum dwellers have created incremental housing by investing in the development of their households and have improved its condition. Unfortunately improvements in the infrastructure facilities could not keep the pace which is making these settlements have slum like conditions.

 There is a need to improve the infrastructure and public areas in these settlements to improve livability and bring them out of slum conditions. Several government policies and  schemes since 1970  till now for past  45 years have been trying to address the issue of slum proliferation and urban renewal but the outcomes have not been as per expectations. In 1995 by making policy for free houses to slum dwellers, the housing cost in the formal market got escalated severely impacting generation of affordable housing stock. Unfortunately in-spite of several efforts to involve private sector by offering  FSI as incentives to make the city slum free, the city has not only failed to create affordable housing but  also to improve the condition of slums.

It is important to understand that all slums are not alike and have varying density, infrastructure, employment opportunities and public facilities depending on its context. Learning from the past failures for the slum free action plan, policies like Rajiv Awas Yojana clearly indicates in situ up- gradation of slums as the preferred option with no or minimum demolition of incremental housing. In many south American cities where huge population is living in slums, have  successfully adopted slum up-gradation to tackle issues of slums.