PORTLAND, Oregon – In the city known both for its status as the cosmopolitan financial capital of India and for housing one of the largest slums in the world, wealth disparities have recently come to a head in a clash over land for an airport expansion.
Mumbai is home to Dharavi, a large slum of some 60,000 dilapidated structures that house over one million people. It is overcrowded, with not enough toilets or access to water, while sewage and trash flow freely in green rivers. Slum dwellers pay about 185 rupees, or $4 per month, to live among their neighbors in crowded shanties made of scrap metal with corrugated tin roofs, packed so closely together that sunlight barely reaches the ground between them. Despite its poverty, Dharavi lies on some very prime real estate. Slums currently occupy about a sixth of the land, more than 300 acres, owned by the Mumbai International Airport Ltd. (MIAL), and the airport is anxious to get it back.
MIAL representatives approached the state government on Tuesday, asking for the removal of slums encroaching on airport land earmarked for modernization. MIAL, which has only one runway, is desperate to gain space to meet growing air travel demands which has seen the number of passengers jump to 30 million, an increase of 17% over the past five years. Space is already too limited, resulting in frequent delays and congestion and the number of airline travelers passing through Mumbai is expected to increase to 119 million by 2031.
The request for slum removal comes seven years after MIAL originally signed contracts with Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) to build new housing and relocate some 85,000 residents of the slum to free up land for airport expansion. According to the contract, HDIL had four years to relocate residents, and until October 2010 to build 28,000 new tenements to house them. Only 7,012 tenements have been completed at this time, and 6,315 of those units are vacant due to lack of clear relocation policies from the government. In response to the unmet deadlines, MIAL terminated the expensive contract with HDIL and HDIL, in turn, filed a lawsuit against the airport.
As the legal battle rages on, the future of the slum and the people who live there remains uncertain. Until the government, which is rife with disagreements about resettlement policies, completes a survey of the slum dwellers, it cannot relocate them to the tenements built by HDIL.
Meanwhile, MIAL continues to struggle with inadequate infrastructure. Out of 7,598 departures in July, 28% were delayed because of problems with the airport and air traffic control facilities. There is not enough space for runways or aircraft parking, and currently, the airport handles 38 aircraft movements an hour on a single runway. There are concerns that problems with Mumbai’s airport will hurt Indian airline companies, especially Jet Airways (India) Ltd. MIAL’s issues also have serious implications for the Indian economy.
A new facility is unlikely before 2018, says Binit Somaia, a director at CAPA Center for Aviation, which advises airlines. “This means traffic will be choked off, reducing business traffic and tourist arrivals,” Somaia said in an interview with Bloomberg. The delay will cause “an economic loss running into billions of dollars for the city, the state, and the Indian economy.”
It seems for now that the economic fate of Mumbai, richest city in India, is entangled with the fate of the city’s poorest people.
– Sarah Morrison
Sources: The Indian Express, British Broadcasting Corporation News, Live Mint, Bloomberg, New York Times
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