Who would prefer a rancid slum on a drain-fed marsh to the relatively organised chaos of an apartment block?

Yet, Mumbai’s 20 lakh (the official figure, but it’s much more) slumdwellers voted for the combine that promised to protect slums that sprung up until 2000. The Sena-BJP alliance that—once again—promised free flats to rehabilitate the urban poor finished a poor second.

Clearly, the poor have wised up. After all, in the seven years since the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) was formed, a modest 26,520 tenements have been given occupation certificates—a far cry from the string of promises made by political parties.

The Shiv Sena, credited with making slum rehabilitation a poll issue, promised 5 lakh free homes, hastily revising the target to 50,000. That was 1996. (See box)

But that only partly explains why slum dwellers are slamming projects to rehouse them in flats.

In Azad Mohalla, Wadala, over 100 eligible members of a rehabilitation project have filed high court affidavits, opting out of a delayed project many of them had signed up for.

‘‘Most people were kept in the dark about the plan,’’ says Alibhai of the Azad Ekta Sangh, formed mainly to oppose the project. They also suspect fraud in how eligible members’s lists were compiled.

At the second hearing of the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights on housing rights of slumdwellers—the first was in Azad Mohalla—residents of six slums in Bandra (East) vented anger against officials, builders and corrupt society promoters.

‘‘I’ve realised that only slums in areas lucrative for the builder are taken up,’’ admits Ujjwal Uke, the chief executive officer of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). ‘‘There is also a lack of information on the project, building plan and lists of eligible members in the slum.’’

Uke says he’s tackling both problems. Slumdwellers can now use a computerised appeal system and lists of eligible members will be published in newspapers.

How slum rehab works
Eligible (pre-1995) slumdwellers form a society, gain the consent of 70 per cent members, rope in a developer for finances and submit a project to the SRA. One set of buildings rehouses members. In return, the developer builds another set of flats on the same plot, for sale. If his available floor space index—the SRA’s incentive to him—is not utilised here, he gets Transfer of Development Rights certificates, to use the FSI north of the plot