Adani's plan to 'transform' Asia's largest slum stokes fear among residents
Many of the residents in the 500-acre slum are migrants and artisans, whose enterprises generate a collective annual turnover of more than $1 billion by some estimates.
The plan billionaire and infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani, founder of the Adani Group, has chalked out to transform Dharavi, one of Asia's biggest slums and a bustling hub of industry in India's financial capital, has raised worries among residents over their livelihoods.
Many of the residents in the 500-acre slum are migrants and artisans, whose enterprises generate a collective annual turnover of more than $1 billion by some estimates.
But with their homes and businesses, generational for many, now under Adani's magnifying glass, residents fear that they might be relocated to an entirely different area.
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Masoom Ali Shaikh, who has a shoe-making business, arrived in India in 1974, finding a home in Dharavi.
"When redevelopment happens, the only thing I want is to be relocated to the same place," Shaikh told CNN during a visit to his workshop in April.
"If I am thrown into some different area, I will lose all my business and my livelihood," he added. "My vendors and buyers will not know where I am moved, which would harm my business."
Over the years, there have been a number of efforts to redevelop Dharavi, with all failing.
Experts point out a number of factors behind the failures, such as the scale and density of the slum, and the high valuation of the land in central Mumbai.
Although the slum has grown, residents have often complained about the extreme crowdedness and poor sanitation.
Adani hopes to address all these with one swift stroke.
"A new chapter of pride and purpose is beginning. It is a historic opportunity for us to create a new Dharavi of dignity, safety and inclusiveness," Adani wrote in a message on his company's website after winning the bid to redevelop the area in 2022.
He has vowed to create a "state-of-the-art world-class city, which will reflect a resurgent, self-assured, growing India finding its new place on the global stage as the 21st century belongs to India."
But who will this state-of-world-class city be home to?
A history of false starts
Dharavi is often considered the largest in Asia, housing a staggering 8 lakh people.
In 2004, the Maharashtra government decided to turn Dharavi into an integrated planned township, but it didn't come to fruition.
In 2011, the government cancelled all contracts and created a master plan. In 2018, the BJP-Sena administration established a special-purpose vehicle for Dharavi and informed it of the rebuilding plans.
Later, worldwide tenders were requested.
In November 2018, the then-Fadnavis administration authorised a new plan for redeveloping the slum.
The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) administration, led by Uddhav Thackeray, cancelled the offer in October 2020 and said that fresh tenders will be issued shortly.
The project finally took off as bids were invited in 2022 nad Adani came up with the winning bid of $612 million.
What Adani plans
For decades, the Indian government has struggled to find developers and builders to carry out the arduous task of redeveloping Dharavi from top to bottom.
There are also many questions which are raised when the redevelopment issue surfaces: Which residents would be re-located, and to where? How would business owners be compensated? Who would be eligible?
But Adani's winning bid means he has taken up the gauntlet.
His project is expected to take seven years to complete.
According to his plans, about a million people will be "rehabilitated and resettled," with both residential homes and businesses up for redevelopment, he said in the message on his website.
He has also promised better healthcare and recreational facilities, open spaces, a hospital and school, and more.
Ineligible residents who can't be rehoused within Dharavi will be given relocation options instead.
The Maharashtra government's dairy development department will pass up a 21-acre site from the Kurla dairy to the Dharavi Redevelopment Project and the Slum Rehabilitation Authority. The site can be utilised to help rehabilitate slum people who were not qualified for free housing under the Dharavi project.
The Adani-led DRPPL (Dharavi Redevelopment Project Pvt Ltd) will mean apartments with separate kitchens and toilets totaling at least 350 sq ft (17% more than average and most among Mumbai's slum redevelopment) for qualified residents.
All apartments, either in or near Dharavi, will have separate bedrooms, toilets and kitchens. The land itself will remain government-owned.
There will also be community halls, recreational areas, public gardens, dispensaries, day care centers, schools, and hospitals.
But some residents aren't convinced.
'Only words and dreams'
"For the last 30 years, we are dreaming and hearing about redevelopment, but nothing has taken place," Dilip Gabekar, 60, who was born in Dharavi and works for a non-profit aiding women and children in the slum, told CNN.
"Only during elections, there is noise about redeveloping Dharavi," he added.
"But once elections are over, the talks about redevelopment also die down."
Meanwhile, residents also worry about whether they would be eligible for the free apartment under Adani's plan.
CNN reached out to the DRPPL spokesperson who informed that ground-floor residents who lived in Dharavi before the year 2000 will be granted a free unit within the area that is at least 350 square feet.
Higher-floor residents, or those who lived there between 2000 and 2011, will receive a 300-square-foot home following a one-time payment of 250,000 rupees (about $3,000), located within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of Dharavi.
Those who moved to Dharavi after 2011 will also receive a 300-square-foot home within the same radius, but will have to pay rent to the government.
To ensure eliginility, a firm hired by Adani is now collecting resident's information.
But there's also the issue of proper documentation.
"There is no alternative for someone who has no proper paperwork," Gabekar, the NGO worker, told CNN.
Many deemed ineligible also cannot afford relocation to housing options provided by Adani, he said.
Having the right papers, however, doesn't mean an end to worries.
Shaikh, the shoemaker, told CNN, "I have enough papers to prove that I have been in this place for a long time."
But, he added, many businesses have changed hands over the years, leaving new owners without the proper documents.
Baburao Mane, a former elected state assembly member affiliated with the opposition party, and a Dharavi native himself, has led some of the most vocal protests against the Adani plan.
Only about 50,000 residents, about 5% of the population, have valid papers, Mane estimated.
He claimed that the ongoing survey would bring that number down further.
"They should make no difference between valid and non-valid papers to allot places. Anyone who has land in Dharavi should be given land during the redevelopment," he told CNN.
When asked about concerns over proving eligibility, the DRPPL spokesperson told CNN its plan had "suitable redressal mechanisms to address such eventualities."
Even if eligible residents get re-housed within Dharavi, there are concerns over space.
Often, several generations of a family live within cramped multi-story buildings. But only the ground-floor residents will receive the free housing, leaving about 700,000 upper-floor residents ineligible, the NDTV reported.
"All the houses in Dharavi have two or three floors … I have 15 family members who stay above each other (in the same building)," said Neeta Jadhav, a 46-year-old resident who has lived in Dharavi for 26 years, and who has the documents to prove eligibility.
"If we are all put in one small apartment there will be a lot of conflict, so the developer should consider giving us a bigger space," she said.
Hope and suspicion
Despite the pushback from some, there is uniform agreement among residents that Dharavi does need redevelopment. It's just a question of how, and who can be trusted with such a mammoth project.
"If Adani redevelops Dharavi, it will be good for us as we don't want to stay in Dharavi any longer," said 42-year-old potter Dhanshuk Purshottamwala, whose family has lived in the area and run the pottery business for generations.
He hopes Adani's plan will end that family tradition, with all their necessary papers in order.
"I don't want my children to be living the way I am," he told CNN.
Adani is behind some of India's most ambitious infrastructure projects. He is also India's largest airport operator and owns India's biggest private port operator and private thermal power operator.
He's also one of the country's largest developers and operators of coal mines, and is simultaneously building the world's biggest clean energy plant.
He, however, is a relative newcomer in the field of slum redevelopment and affordable housing.
Several also pointed to the 2023 fraud allegations against the Adani Group, which sparked an ongoing investigation by India's regulators and lost the company over $100 billion in value in a stock market meltdown.
In January, the country's top court ordered the regulators to quickly finish their investigation and said no further probes were needed, a decision Adani celebrated at the time.
His representatives have called the allegations baseless and malicious.
Others residents complained about a lack of transparency, saying they had received little official communication and were not included in meetings about the redevelopment, leaving them in the dark about the details or timing of the plan.
There's also an ongoing lawsuit by a rival company that alleged the Maharashtra state government had improperly canceled an original 2018 bidding process and restarted it so Adani could win, according to Reuters.
The state and Adani deny any wrongdoing, but that hasn't stopped many residents from viewing Adani and his government ties with suspicion.
