 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are joined by Mr. P.K. Das, Mumbai based architect activist as media likes to call him. He has been involved in redevelopment of a lot of areas where the urban poor live in Mumbai. Welcome to our show Mr. Das. Recently we have seen the resistance that has built up in Goli Bar and during the National Park Slum eviction drive as well and a lot of people are agitating against these eviction drives demolitions that are being carried out in Mumbai. So in this whole context of eviction, violence and resistance, what do you observe? Where is Mumbai going in this sense? Well, where is Mumbai going? Going is a big question. But let's first discuss about the movement of the slum dwellers in Mumbai and how significant they have been in influencing the decisions of the government for policies and programs for rehabilitation and slums redevelopment in Mumbai. You know, the movements of slum dwellers is historical in the city of Mumbai. It's a very old story where slum dwellers have continuously opposed evictions and resisted rehabilitation beyond their places of location. There has been in the recent past two significant struggles. One is, of course, the Goli Bar, as you mentioned, where Medha Patkar and some sections of the slum dwellers in Goli Bar sat on a hunger strike, demanding certain changes in the government's policies and also primarily demanded that the builder or the developer who's been designated the redevelopment project be terminated, be thrown out of the project. But before that was even a much bigger and more significant struggle, struggle of nearly about 85,000 families who reside in the Burrivili National Park, known as the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. And 85,000 families you can imagine is more than 500,000 people, which is bigger than many Indian cities. And by an order of the High Court, upon a petition filed by an environmental group, the Bombay Environmental Action Group, the courts ordered their eviction for protection of the forest and the lakes in the forest. Even though the slum dwellers didn't reside inside the forest area, they were actually in what's called the buffer zone of the forest. However, at that point our organization, the Nivarahak intervened in the matter and we opposed the evictions and we demanded rehabilitation first. What we said was we're not against the protection of the forest and the lakes, but the evictions should not be carried out unless a viable rehabilitation program has been implemented. So this was a long struggle. There were police firings, there were several arrests, there was violence that was perpetrated. And what was really shocking to us in the city of Mumbai was, I mean, we all know historically how governments have perpetrated violence. But what came out so clearly then was the kind of violence that the courts propagated. By the orders of the court, military was deployed. By the orders of the court, helicopter surveillance was installed. And there were ban orders and activists of the Nivarahak within five kilometers of radius around the national park. So that was the severity of kind of oppression that the city witnessed during those periods. Now, I think that is a larger point and I think that's something that sort of has reflections throughout the country. And in that sense is a very significant political issue for all of us, not just in the struggles for housing and democratic rights movements for housing rights, but actually as a part of a larger democratic rights movement, movements in the country. How can we challenge this organized perpetration of violence by the state and various state machinery, including the courts? So that's really a significant point. Well, after that, the struggle continued. And of course, we were victorious to a certain extent, wherein we resisted demolition prior to rehabilitation. And now world's single largest rehabilitation program project is underway in Chandivili near Poway. And for the first time, the slum dwellers have actually moved southward. That means towards the city and not away from the city. And this is an area where we're building 25,000 houses for almost 100,000 people. So that was the Sanghar. And now the rehabilitation colony is named Sangharsh Nagar, because this was born out of Sangharsh, out of the struggles of the people. That was Sangharsh Nagar, the national park slum dwellers movement and resistance. Then of course, the recent one is Goli Par. Now Goli Par brings up a few other significant issues and aspects of slum street development. One of course is the aspect of privatization of slums redevelopment, which is consistent with the larger privatization policy of the country under neoliberal globalization. It's not just privatization, it's also corporatization of slums redevelopment. Second, the government of Maharashtra has come out with a policy, which is called the 3K policy, wherein the government, the developer, does not require any consent of the slum dwellers in order to develop a slum. Usually under the slum rehabilitation policy, there is a clause, wherein a developer would have to obtain consent of over 70% of the slum dwellers' families. But under the 3K clause, that has been waived. So what we witness now in Mumbai, both by the 3K clause and even otherwise under the asset policy, is the kind of force that private developers use to win the consent of people and to take over slum's land for trading. Now this is important. Today slums occupy nearly about 9% of the city's land mass, even though they're 60% of the population in Mumbai, which is 9 million people. 9 million people occupy a mere 9% of the city's land mass. Even that is not spared. The developers under the SRA program are trading on slum's land in which what they're doing is they're providing free housing to the slum dwellers in let's say 20% of the land area or 25% of the land area. And the physically 75% of the land area has been siphoned away for commercial development, which they would sell in the open market to make profits, from which they would provide finances for the free housing for the slum dwellers. Now we have demanded that this trading on slum's land be stopped. We have opposed the SRD policy on this count. We are saying that there is no land in the city for affordable housing. The problem with India is that we do not actually have a proper urban rehabilitation policy, the acts that we have actually cater to rural India, if at all. So in terms of policies, where do you actually propose a change that in this whole context? Well, if you go back again to Mumbai's example or Maharashtra, as you know, this is one state probably where policies and programs for housing of the urban poor, not so much the housing of the urban poor, but slum's redevelopment has developed substantially. And this is because of the resistance, because of the strong movements of slum dwellers, not because the state of Maharashtra has had progressive governments. So I think this is something that we must realize across the country, that it is necessary, it is mandatory for slum dwellers to wage struggles to win rights, whether it be housing rights or civic rights or civil rights or whatever human rights and so on and so forth. But interestingly, in Maharashtra again, there has been significant policies and programs for slum's redevelopment. And this has again been possible because of active participation of the slum dwellers organizations and movements in that process. Yes. We have therefore certain policies that are presently under implementation, which is to some extent good, even though they have serious drawbacks and have inherent weaknesses. But they are a step forward in as far as the rights of housing is concerned for the poor. The Delhi government has taken up certain policies which the Mumbai government has been implementing. For example, rehabilitating people on the same land where they are being evicted from otherwise. So in comparison to Delhi, what would you say, what Delhi can take actually from? Whenever there is an eviction, whenever there is a demolition of a slum, they are invariably pushed out of the city limits as far as they can. This had happened in Mumbai too. This has continuously happened in Mumbai too. When Air Antulay was the chief minister, I remember in the 80s, there was this massive midnight scoop which he started, where he would take trucks, force the slum dwellers to get onto the trucks and take them outside the city limit and drop them. This was a joke that they played obviously. But also what we have witnessed in Mumbai is that over the years of evictions and demolitions in the city, today the city area has no slums. It has just very few slums, few dots. The city has been almost free of slums. But the areas of western suburbs and the eastern suburbs of Mumbai have flooded with slums. Large numbers of slums actually exist in these two parts of the city. And we find even in the western and eastern suburbs, it's the outer periphery is where the bigger slum population is, because they have been driven over the years through multiple demolitions to newer and newer sites further and further away from the city. So as I said, this is true across the country and it's true in Delhi too. And Delhi, it continues today that the slum dwellers are being moved out of the city limits, like into the trans-emuna area in Delhi for example. So that's not new. But the difference has been that in Mumbai, the state government has come out with this policy of in situ development under the SRA program. A slums redevelopment authority is an authority that has been established with a slum act under which slums cannot be evicted and can be developed in situ by the engagement of private developers and builders. And only those sites which are very important or critical for the city's infrastructure development or amenities could then be cleared or evicted off. So that is the policy which is in a way, in a way. As I said, there were some things good and some things much more bad. This is one of the some things good where slums cannot be evicted unless otherwise required for the city's larger interest. Coming back to the high court and how the courts have also been hand in hand with the state. What have been the other judgments which have been really problematic in this sense? There has been many significant judgments in the past on slums evictions and housing rights questions. There have been even nasty remarks by the judges in the courts. For example, I can't remember exactly whether it was during the Olga Teles case or a no, it wasn't that. It was a case later in Mumbai where the judges remarked that the slums could be evicted and resettled in the Buckingham Palace in London. These kinds of remarks are even made by the courts, even though they are not part of the orders but such comments have been made which very clearly shows the kind of upper class interest that the courts have or the judges sitting there have when it comes to the issues of the workers' rights and housing of the poor. So I think these the courts have, we in the struggles have never relied upon the courts for justice. We always see it as a stopgap arrangement or victory for a transition or just to win a little more time in the struggle before we take on to the next step in our struggle. We've never relied upon it because we've always found there is a deep nexus of interest of the ruling class and the courts and this I think must be a part of a larger democratic rights movement in the country to challenge the judiciary and to see how this class interest that is reflected by the judgments of the higher by the courts, courts are institutions and the democracy upon which we rely upon for justice, for equality and if that is vulnerable and if that has a history of not just perpetuating violence but also expressing deep upper class interest then the whole thing has to be restructured. Thank you Mr. Das for having come to our show. Thank you.