Dharavi-Like Makeover: Cut-Paste Or Misfit?

Time of India

23-06-2025

New Delhi: Constantly under attack from the opposition over the demolition of illegal settlements, albeit on the directions of the courts, CM Rekha Gupta recently announced that her govt will study Mumbai's
Dharavi
redevelopment model to explore the possibility of replicating the same in the capital to provide housing to the residents of 675 slum clusters.
D
haravi, a vast slum sprawl in the heart of Mumbai, will be redeveloped through a special-purpose vehicle set up through a joint venture between Adani Group and Maharashtra govt. According to estimates, close to a million people live in Dharavi, which is located over a total area of just 2.5 sq km. The area also houses thousands of small-scale manufacturing units of leather, textiles and pottery, among many others.
Adani Realty won the bid in 2022 to execute the redevelopment in a phased manner over a period of 7–10 years. As per reports, the Dharavi Redevelopment Master Plan was on the verge of finalisation and will be submitted to the authorities soon. It will then be placed before the public for suggestions.
But can the same plan be replicated in Delhi? Those who work closely with slum dwellers on the issue of their housing and rehabilitation, and experts, believe the "model" is not fit for the capital for the simple reason that Dharavi and Delhi's slums are completely different.
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While Dharavi is spread across nearly 256 hectares of contiguous land, Delhi's slum clusters are much smaller and spread across the capital. As per estimates, Delhi's 20% population, or nearly 50 lakh people, live in more than 675 slums, spread over 0.5% of 1,483 sq km of the city's total area, which comes to nearly 7.5km.
According to the list of slums available on the website of Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, these slums are much smaller in size, with a large number of them providing housing to fewer than 50 households.
According to Aravind Unni, an urban policy researcher, Mumbai has a separate govt body, named Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA), for the rehabilitation of slum clusters. But the fact is that it is not the same agency but a special-purpose vehicle that will redevelop Dharavi because of its size.
"Dharavi is mammoth. The number of houses is huge. SRA could never do that kind of redevelopment in Dharavi; that's why a new authority (Navbharat Mega Developers Private Limited — a joint venture between govt of Maharashtra and Adani Group) has been formed.
The scale of the area is totally different. In Delhi, the 675-plus slums are spread across the city. It does not offer a big patch of land or the scale that Dharavi does," Unni said.
To rehabilitate the slum dwellers in the capital and provide them with pucca houses, govt came up with Delhi Slum and Jhuggi Jhopri Rehabilitation and Relocation Policy, 2015. The policy stressed in situ rehabilitation, which means providing pucca houses to slum dwellers at the area where they were already residing.
The policy stated that only in conditions where in situ rehabilitation was not possible would slum dwellers be relocated.
This decision was taken because a large number of more than 53,000 flats built previously for the economically weaker sections in localities in the periphery of the city — Narela, Bawana and Savda Ghewra, and many more — under schemes, such as Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, remained unoccupied and turned into ghost towns.
The city's poor, who work largely in areas around their slums, cannot afford to live in the periphery and spend a lot of time and money travelling to the centre of the city to work. These flats are in a dilapidated condition now and require an investment of thousands of crores of rupees to make them liveable again.
In the last few years, Delhi provided housing to a small number of people under the in situ redevelopment model in three areas — Kalkaji, Kathputli Colony at Shadipur and Jailorwala Bagh — but left out many of them as they failed to meet the eligibility criteria.
As per the rehabilitation policy, only those having their dwelling units built before Jan 1, 2015, in slum clusters in existence before Jan 1, 2006, are eligible for pucca housing, provided they have their names mentioned in a DUSIB survey and possess one of the 12 identification documents.
Unni said even the in situ rehabilitation scheme was not successful due to little interest shown by private developers who looked for higher floor-area ratio, more land and bigger incentives.
"Since slum clusters occupy only 0.5% of the total land of the city, let them exist where they are. 'Jahan Jhuggi, Wahan Makaan' is the best policy. And in cases where slum houses are in good condition, the clusters should be regularised the way unauthorised colonies are being done. Only those clusters should be considered for relocation that exist in areas such as close to railway tracks," Unni said.
Sunil Kumar Aledia, executive director of Centre for Holistic Development, which works closely with the deprived, also said that the clusters should be allowed to exist where they are located, as most of them worked in the close vicinity.
"Provide them with all basic amenities such as water, electricity, drainage, etc., and let them live there. They are part of an ecosystem and cannot sustain if moved out in the name of rehabilitation. Their voices should be heard, and they should be included in any plan right from the stage of inception," Aledia said.
Indu Prakash Singh, a housing rights activist, also agreed that a "Dharavi-style" plan was not suitable for redevelopment of the city's slums, as Mumbai's sprawling slum was a "livelihood ecosystem" while in Delhi the dwellers depended on the neighbouring areas for their livelihood.
"The main objective of a private developer will be profit, not the life and the livelihood of the poor living in those slums. Let the slums be there where they exist. Build houses and consider them for giving on rent to the poor. Provide them with loan holidays or loans on very small interest so that the poor can think of buying their own small houses without stressing overpaying huge EMIs," Singh said.
A senior Delhi govt official, however, said the CM had so far directed them to check the feasibility of a 'Dharavi-like' redevelopment plan. "We will soon work out the modalities and study the model. We will only recommend it if it is suitable for the city," said an official.