Infrastructure

Several years have passed since the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) was launched to rehabilitate slum dwellers of Mumbai, and promises of free housing and proper water and sanitation facilities remain unfulfilled.  After facing eviction from their own homes, residents are stuck in rented houses with developers neither completing the project nor paying rent - owed to them - to slum dwellers. Some projects have failed to take off the ground due to reasons such as disputes between co-developers. In other cases, people are stuck in transit camps for years together.  Those who have managed to get houses, claim poor living…

In 1995, the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) scheme was launched to provide free housing for slum dwellers. Twenty-seven years later, the scheme remains stuck in a maze of unkept promises, incomplete projects and poor slum dwellers caught up in rented houses waiting to get their own houses in Mumbai. Urban planners blame the builder-centric approach for the lack of progress on this scheme.  Since its inception, the SRA scheme has built only 2.36 lakh houses. As of date, about 5,20,645 houses are proposed to be built and approvals have been granted to start work on 2,75,942 houses.  The task to…

Many of us may have bought a beautiful apartment or villa by investing most of our savings or even on a mortgage/home loan. After a few months of living in your new home, you realise that there are a lot of issues. For example, you may find water oozing from the floor tiles, or your wooden flooring has been laid in an uneven manner, door frames are not finished to the level they should be, electrical fixtures are malfunctioning, and water pressure drops. All these are niggling problems that will not only take your time but also more of your…

Lallubhai Compound in Mumbai's Mankhurd is one of those areas where nobody wants to live unless they are compelled by their circumstances. All the residents here were rehabilitated about two decades ago by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) in buildings built with the sole purpose of providing a roof, everything else was left up to the people. Up until 2009, the area lacked access to clean drinking water, there were no schools and no street lights; late evenings were a big no for women. While some sent their children to schools at Sion Trombay Road, which is about 4 km…

For a majority of the population, moving homes is typically a voluntary decision made with great deliberation, taking into account the impact on education, employment and health. However, for the millions of slum residents in Mumbai, the same exercise is a result of routine eviction and demolitions. If these families are fortunate, they are moved to slum resettlements. Consider the case of one of the largest slum resettlement drives in Mumbai, documented through the eyes of women by Ramya Ramanath in her book, A Place To Call Home: Women as Agents of Change in Mumbai. An associate professor at DePaul University,…

This is the second and final part in the series on the history of building regulations in Mumbai. This part continues where the first left off, at the turn of the twentieth century amidst the administration's efforts at slum clearance. The Development Plan Preoccupation with affordable rents and slum clearance remained the mainstay of urban planning and governance in the 20th century. At the same time, efforts to address issues such as access to open spaces, amenities and concerns of over-crowding, traffic on roads were formalised and debated upon. The very first Development Plan was introduced in 1964 and sanctioned…

This article is part one of a series looking at how the history of building regulations and development has shaped the built environment of Mumbai. Part two will delve into the changes in building regulations over the twentieth century, through suburbanisation, the development plans and liberalisation. Ask Mumbaikars about the housing problem in the city, and you’re likely to get a different take on the issue from each one. Some will be up in arms about the pervasiveness of slums, which they call ‘encroachments’. Others will point to the absence of affordable housing, laying the blame on either the gaps…

"India tops the world in terms of the number of people killed and ranks number 3 as per number of persons injured in road accidents”, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari recently admitted in Parliament. This despite the passing of a comprehensive Road Transport and Safety Bill in 2014, to reduce road accidents. Karnataka’s record on road safety reflects this grim reality. Annually, approximately 11,000 people die and over 50,000 sustain injuries from road accidents in the state. One way to be aware of issues of impropriety and poor performance in local government bodies and departments is…

"A city designed with the principles of Universal Design will ensure that all users, including people with disabilities, the elderly, children, and women, can move about the city seamlessly, at any given time, without any dependence on anyone else," said Santhosh Loganaathan, a Chennai-based urban planner with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). If Chennai implements Universal Design perfectly, no resident will feel any inhibition while accessing urban spaces, said Santhosh. For instance, a visually impaired person and a sighted person must have the same confidence while navigating the city. "Currently, only some groups of people can participate…

Bengaluru will soon have 8600 CCTV cameras monitoring activity in public spaces. While the city currently has around 1,100 such cameras, another 7,500 would be added as part of a new 'Safe City' project. One key objective of the project, financed by the Center's Nirbhaya fund, is to monitor, detect and prevent crimes against women. What would this massive surveillance project entail - who will look at the footage, how will it be used, and what are the expected outcomes? Here's what we found, based on the tender documents for the project. The Centre had approved Safe City projects for…