....for the best slumburger (dung cake).
"VognoDuut189" <don@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:6oGdndo3f75mIdHVnZ2dnUVZ_jSdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> India's slum dwellers face ruin in development blitz
> Reuters/bdnews24.com . Mumbai
>
> Prakash Kajuri is asset rich but cash poor. The Mumbai courier earns
about
> $6 a day delivering packages in India's most populous city but his home
is
> sitting on land worth about $2 million dollars.
> Kajuri lives in Dharavi, often described as Asia's biggest slum,
where
> around a million people cram on to what was once a mangrove swamp along
> railway lines leading to central Mumbai.
> The slum is the focus of a looming showdown as municipal authorities
and
> developers seek to raze it to the ground and replace it with office
towers,
> luxury apartments and shopping malls.
> Families that can prove they have lived in Dharavi since 1995 would
be
> entitled to a free apartment in the same area, but the new dwellings
would
> be tiny, just 225 square feet or 20 square meters, about the size of a
> living room. Not surprisingly, many prefer to stay where they are.
> 'Why should I move into such a small place with my family?' said
Kajuri,
> a father of seven, who has lived in Dharavi for over three decades.
> 'If they want us to move then they should give us the same amount of
> living space that we now have.'
> The land on which his nearly 700 square feet shanty stands could be
worth
> at least 100 million rupees in Mumbai's soaring real estate market.
> 'It used to be just marsh and bushes,' said Girish Poojary, a guide
who
> shows groups of curious tourists around Dharavi.
> 'Now builders from all over the world are coming because there's big
> money here. There's a domestic air****t and business parks nearby, so
land
is
> very expensive.'
> Bids to redevelop the roughly two-square-km warren of brick and
> corrugated iron rooms into a high-rise housing and commercial complex
are
> due to close by around mid-year.
> The project is expected to take at least seven years to complete and
> could eventually be worth up to $10 billion in property sales.
> But with local politicians haggling to secure votes in the run-up to
> parliamentary elections in the coming year, hopeful bidders might have
to
> alter their projections to take into account rising animosity among
> residents.
> The Dharavi project, split into five parts, has drawn 26 bids
involving
> 78 Indian developers including DLF Ltd and Unitech, as well as 25
foreign
> firms including Lehman Brothers, Dubai World and China's ****mao Group.
> Nineteen have been shortlisted.
> 'It takes time with these kinds of projects. It's huge,' Ramesh
Sanka,
> chief financial officer for DLF, said in a telephone interview. 'But I
don't
> think there'll be any problems, because everyone wants it to happen.
Even
> residents want it.'
> Although developers are obliged to build rooms on the site for about
> 87,000 families registered in a 2000 census, as many as half a million
> people could fall through the cracks.
> 'A lot of people will go homeless,' said Poojary, 20, who lives in
> another of the many slums that house half of Mumbai's more than
17-million
> population. 'Half of the people in Dharavi rent, so they'll get
nothing.'
> Arguably the most prosperous among the world's biggest shantytowns,
> Dharavi has about 5,000 single-room factories and hundreds of cottage
> industries that together have a turnover of an estimated $1 billion.
>
>
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