A developer is transforming Mumbai, one slum at a time
A developer is transforming Mumbai, one slum at a time
The end of India’s informal settlement problem begins with good promises
Informal settlements are ingrained into the heart of Mumbai. The city is home to Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia with around one million people packed into one square mile of former marshland. Sixty-percent of the city’s 20.7 million inhabitants live in slums.
Like many developing urban areas in Asia, the government of Mumbai tries to play a non-zero-sum game that appeases both slum dwellers and rightful land owners. Those good intentions often culminate in forced evictions.
Perhaps not as much with Omkar Realtors & Developers — the real estate firm has been in the business of building luxury residential developments on former slum areas for 14 years, Mansion Global reported.
Omkar has been able to relocate 50,000 informal settlers in the city across 15 redevelopment projects, a laudable feat given that many slum dwellers are loath to leave their homes. Some Mumbai developers are notorious for flinging slum dwellers to areas far from their work sites, if not give false promises altogether.
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“The entire strength of this business is whether you can convince the people to move out,” Omkar director Gaurav Gupta told Mansion Global.
Unlike their peers, Omkar makes good on its promises by prioritising the allocation of capital to replacement housing before conducting any demolition job. By undertaking multiple projects, the firm is able to better manage financial flows as well. The firm has been “successful in terms of scale,” Amita Bhide, an urban planning professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, told Mansion Global.
Gupta revealed that Mumbai will be “broken down and rebuilt” by Omkar over the next 25 to 30 years.
Not everyone is living in such ideal though. A former slum dweller who has been successfully relocated by Omkar reported that the company still has not built homes for many families from his area since 2013.
“The balance eligible tenants will be handed over their houses in due course,” a spokesperson for Omkar told Mansion Global in response.
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Source: Property Report