Are Mumbai's Chawls Likely To Be Redeveloped?

Are people nice when they live too close to each other? Psychologist John B Calhoun pointed out in 1962 that infant mortality, frenetic overactivity and cannibalism were common among rats living too close to one another. Experiments with Rhesus monkeys, in contrast, prove that density leads to kindness and greater forgiveness.

The story of people living close to one another in Mumbai's chawls, however, is different. They recount stories of cracking floors, crumbling walls and rationed clean water.

Novelist Manu Joseph remembers wars between the second and the third floors because of budding relationships, and riots breaking out because fallen kites were not returned or pet pegions were stolen. These are typical of dense colonies.

In an article in Slate, Vinati Singh remembers stories of men throwing sickles at the throats of their partners, grown men violently chasing children, and babies dying because rats ate them. Many environmentalists and activists believe that dense settlements in Mumbai respect the natural environment, and that there is a sense of community in chawls and slums. But, Singh points out that these spaces were so overrun by people that there was no grass, flowers or plants to be found.

But density is not to blame for all this. There are many dense neighbourhoods throughout the world where living conditions are incomparably better. Much of this can be attributed to government policy.

Mumbai's chawls were once built by private organisations, and later by the British on land that was once cheap. These chawls are situated in Island City, where land today is one of the most expensive in Mumbai. They form a large part of the housing stock in this area. Rooms in chawls were in great demand for decades because rents were frozen, leading to favouritism and corruption.

The Bombay High Court recently asked the Maharashtra government to set a deadline for redeveloping chawls in Mumbai. There are 207 Bombay Development Directorate (BDD) chawls in the city. In these, there are 16,557 flats, which are not really conducive for living but house among others thousands of government officials and policemen.

Why do government officials and households much above poverty line live in chawls?

The tenants in chawls do not want to move out because rents are much lower than elsewhere in the city. It is almost impossible to find similarly cheap housing in central areas of Mumbai. Landlords are not keen on redeveloping buildings because there is not much profit in doing so under rent control. Besides, since the floor area ratio (FAR is the ratio of the constructed area in a building to the size of the plot) in Island City is fixed at 1.33, redeveloping these buildings is not feasible. Most buildings in Island City, including chawl buildings, are taller.

Even in redevelopment, there is much corruption. Recently, when Derida Builders Private Ltd received the right to redevelop the 150-year-old Fernandes chawl, it was found that only 20 of the 47 members in the society supported the project. But when Derida Builders gave the final proposal, it had the support of 57 members. That would be possible only if they managed to obtain signatures of dead members of the housing society, and siblings and staff of other members.

Many such plans fail because they are based on unreasonable expectations. For example, in 1995, the Maharashtra government decided to provide free housing to eight lakh slum-dwellers in Mumbai by allowing higher FSI in other areas. The government expected this to happen in five years. As journalist Dilip D'Souza estimated long ago, for this to happen, the government would have had to give 1,60,000 flats every year. Assuming 560 flats have to be sold at market rate for every 1,000 flats given free, (according to the real estate price in Mumbai in 1995) , 90,000 additional flats would have had to be sold for 1,60,000 flats given to the poor for free. That meant 2,50,000 flats a year. But from 1995 to 1997, the Maharashtra government was able to build only 1,147 flats.

All this does not mean that redeveloping Mumbai's chawls is not important, or that it is impossible. But this is not a goal that can be accomplished without repealing rent controls in the city, and raising the FAR to at least 8 in central areas of the city.