Massive slum demolition underway in Mumbai as several pockets begin to resemble a war zone.

[rangeelaraja]

A slum demolition drive has been underway in the Bandra suburb of Mumbai - easily the top 5 most expensive zip codes in all of India.

 

It is heart breaking on one hand - the impacted people lived in crammed multi storied shanties - extremely inhuman conditions.

 

But they are also squatting on govt land for free, while the avg hardworking middle class family toils for decades to be able to afford a tiny apartment in Mumbai.

 

Most of us who have either lived in Mumbai or visited -- know the scenes that are visible from the seat window during flight take off and landing. 

 

Nearly a quarter of Mumbai is occupied by slums and this demolition drive in Bandra is barely scratching the surface. It is said that the majority of the slum dwellers at this place were settled and protected there by the late Sunil Dutt, as they were his votebank. 

 

It took a court order for this demolition of illegal settlements to be authorized because India is a democracy.

 

50 years ago, Dubai was a poor finishing village and Mumbai was one of the shining lights in all of Asia - ahead of Shanghai, Shenzhen and in the next tier after Tokyo and Hong Kong.

 

50 years hence Dubai appears light years ahead of Mumbai, where wealth has grown fast but squalor has grown exponentially faster. 

 

Clearly, democracy has paid India rich dividends. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 22 by rangeelaraja

[Nikhil_cric]

All slum areas need to be demolished in cities and the dwellers should be rehabilitated into cheap 8 storey buildings.   

 

It's not ideal but vertical slums like the ones in Chinese cities are still better than sprawling slums which just eat up land.  

 

 

[LordPrabhzy]

This is one of the side effects of 'democracy'

 

You need a dictatorship to clean up this mess

[mishra]

1 hour ago, Nikhil_cric said:

All slum areas need to be demolished in cities and the dwellers should be rehabilitated into cheap 8 storey buildings.   

 

It's not ideal but vertical slums like the ones in Chinese cities are still better than sprawling slums which just eat up land.  

 

 

What ends up happening is, these guys will create another slum after selling their allocated apartments.

Not sure if its allready followed,

They should be barred from selling their allocated apartments, and regular occupancy verification need to be done if they are living (NOT rented out) these apartments.

 

PS: Slums also have landlord system, Must ensure people living in slums get benefitted, and  not the land lords. Infact it always happens otherway round ie landlords gets the flats. while slum dwellers are moved to another slum by these landlords

Edited May 22 by mishra

[G_B_]

Kuglus clean up op.

[Laaloo]

26 minutes ago, G_B_ said:

Kuglus clean up op.

Need this all over India and send these kanglus back to kangladesh

[IndianRenegade]

This good, but govt needs to ensure the people affected are not left without a roof over their heads.

Edited May 22 by IndianRenegade

[singhvivek141]

1 hour ago, Laaloo said:

Need this all over India and send these kanglus back to kangladesh

 

1 hour ago, G_B_ said:

Kuglus clean up op.

There are easily 8-10 Crore kanglus here...plus few extra crores who are mentally "kanglu".
There is a hill near jogeshwari which has so many illegal houses and slums, with the "special flag"...they'll are kanglus.

[Lord]

3 hours ago, mishra said:

What ends up happening is, these guys will create another slum after selling their allocated apartments.

Not sure if its allready followed,

They should be barred from selling their allocated apartments, and regular occupancy verification need to be done if they are living (NOT rented out) these apartments.

 

PS: Slums also have landlord system, Must ensure people living in slums get benefitted, and  not the land lords. Infact it always happens otherway round ie landlords gets the flats. while slum dwellers are moved to another slum by these landlords

 

Don't give them ownership of  the apartments. 

[singhvivek141]

Just now, IndianRenegade said:

This good, but goi. needs to ensure the people affected are not left without a roof over their heads.

Identify them first...if they're illegals...chuck them into sunderbans or the deserts of Munabao and ask them to find their way.
Affordable housing is welcomed, but these slum dwellers should accept that.
Similar situation is in Delhi Cantt side....

[crictime]

Bandra has always had these slum issues , both in Bandra East and West. In previous decades the slums nearby HDIL office used to be demolished but stone pelting used to happen. Few times there were fires at slums near HDIL. Now after court ruling Garib Nagar slum in vicinity of the Bandra station is being acted upon. This slum is worse than the areas of South Mumbai like Pydhonie, Dongri, Mohammed Ali Road. The slums at Mumbra and Bhiwandi are also illegal with shanties growing into concrete houses. These illegal slums wherein many Bangladeshis stay suck the money of taxes paid by Indian citizens. They also get  electricity by theft from cables, water without any water taxes. Legal property owners pay property tax every year and water bill every month. Bangladeshis and other illegals settling in Mumbai use resources illegally. illegals need to be sent back to the country or city they come from. Not only these illegals bring their whole family in spite of themselves being illegals, but they also bring and tie 3 or 4 goats and what not outside their illegal zopdis. The foul stinky smell emanates from these areas. It really is horrible environment and I wonder how people stay in such  dirty areas with total lack of hygiene. 

Edited May 22 by crictime

[kepler37b]

Demolish all our Tier 1 cities and then construct from scratch. 

 

ALL of them look Ugly AF. 

 

Whenever I see a movie set outside in a Indian city, I fast forward. 

[singhvivek141]

15 minutes ago, crictime said:

Bandra has always had these slum issues , both in Bandra East and West. In previous decades the slums nearby HDIL office used to be demolished but stone pelting used to happen. Few times there were fires at slums near HDIL. Now after court ruling Garib Nagar slum in vicinity of the Bandra station is being acted upon. This slum is worse than the areas of South Mumbai like Pydhonie, Dongri, Mohammed Ali Road. The slums at Mumbra and Bhiwandi are also illegal with shanties growing into concrete houses. These illegal slums wherein many Bangladeshis stay suck the money of taxes paid by Indian citizens. They also get  electricity by theft from cables, water without any water taxes. Legal property owners pay property tax every year and water bill every month. Bangladeshis and other illegals settling in Mumbai use resources illegally. illegals need to be sent back to the country or city they come from. Not only these illegals bring their whole family in spite of themselves being illegals, but they also bring and tie 3 or 4 goats and what not outside their illegal zopdis. The foul stinky smell emanates from these areas. It really is horrible environment and I wonder how people stay in such  dirty areas with total lack of hygiene. 

Saddest part is due to these slums, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Airport can never operate at it's full potential, the structure remained incomplete throughout.
Looking it through Sat images, always gave a weird feeling.

 

[singhvivek141]

5 minutes ago, kepler37b said:

Demolish all our Tier 1 cities and then construct from scratch. 

 

ALL of them look Ugly AF. 

 

Whenever I see a movie set outside in a Indian city, I fast forward. 

Too late to make any such radical change.
Tier 1 cities has tremendous amount of load.
Only thing which they can do is organized expansion. Eventually, the newer areas will become hot bed and older ones will lose their charm and people will move from there.
Then authorities can revamp that as well.

BTW...have you travelled the ORR stretch from Neopolis to Tellapur man ? It seems a new city is altogether under construction, heavy dust and debris and zero plantation.
Once they organize the townships and preserve the greenery, the folks will start migrating from other parts of the city which is already in turbulence due to traffic.

[Mariyam]

14 hours ago, G_B_ said:

Kuglus clean up op.

From the looks of it, this is most likely noise perpetuated by many accounts on twitter and not the reality.

 

Officially, the drive is against *illegal settlement* on railway land. Not against illegal immigrants. Sure there maybe some illegal immigrants there, but there is no concerted effort by the government to repatriate anyone. The focus simply is to get back the land that was encroached upon.

[Mariyam]

17 hours ago, Nikhil_cric said:

All slum areas need to be demolished in cities and the dwellers should be rehabilitated into cheap 8 storey buildings.   

 

It's not ideal but vertical slums like the ones in Chinese cities are still better than sprawling slums which just eat up land.  

 

 

There is a GoM scheme called MHADA. The idea being to rehabilitate slum/chawl dwellers into affordable homes. They have a lottery system which is almost always rigged for the right amount of ₹.

 

One of the reasons MHADA hasn’t worked is that a slum shanty doubles up as a place of work and has visibility because it’s on the ground floor. A slum dweller who runs a chai tapri  and stays in it is not going to be happy if he is provided a better place on the 7th floor of a MHADA construction. Loss of livelihood. Or he would have to pay for his shop now. When people are a part of the unorganised economy, rehabilitation is really difficult.

[jf1gp_1]

In principle almost everyone will agree such drives are a must if we want our metros to remotely come close to looking like a first world city. However, legal / illegal human is human where are these people supposed to go? We aren't China. Give these people a parking place. 

[Nikhil_cric]

2 hours ago, Mariyam said:

There is a GoM scheme called MHADA. The idea being to rehabilitate slum/chawl dwellers into affordable homes. They have a lottery system which is almost always rigged for the right amount of ₹.

 

One of the reasons MHADA hasn’t worked is that a slum shanty doubles up as a place of work and has visibility because it’s on the ground floor. A slum dweller who runs a chai tapri  and stays in it is not going to be happy if he is provided a better place on the 7th floor of a MHADA construction. Loss of livelihood. Or he would have to pay for his shop now. When people are a part of the unorganised economy, rehabilitation is really difficult.

I understand that but there are no ideal solutions anywhere let alone in this low GDP, land scarce country(relative to population)

 

Which is why mass demolition drives are extremely reactionary   What should be done is resettling them in the same general area by replacing 8 settlements a a time with a mid rise of 8 storeys instead of displacing them competely.

 

While simultaneously freeing up a lot of land .  I read somewhere that something like 24 % of Mumbai's land is slums.  That can easily be reduced to 3 % with mid rises.

 

What should happen simultaneously is an authoritarian government that ignores RWA aunties in old suburbs and redevelop those as well for both housing supply and office/commercial use as well but that's harder to do as you well know. 

[crictime]

23 hours ago, singhvivek141 said:

Saddest part is due to these slums, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Airport can never operate at it's full potential, the structure remained incomplete throughout.
Looking it through Sat images, always gave a weird feeling.

 

The temporary or permanent settlements are not possible without political support. No wonder these are known as 'Vote Banks'. I recall that some party (iirc SS) had declared that some slums developed before a specific year would get legal status. Many slums have cropped up even after that year, are those slums going to get legal status by some other ruling.

 

Mumbai needs a proper planning.  The Navi Mumbai airport has been constructed and went semi-operational in Dec 2025 to take care of increased load on the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj airport. It helps in a way that people in adjoining cities like Thane and  Navi Mumbai do not have to used Mumbai roads for traveling using some air routes. I think most of the slums around the airport must be having legal status now. If having legal status, they can be shifted away from airport using SRA etc to free up space for better efficiency in airport operations.

 

A full new architecture planning. Those in power should first show enough selflessness to get rid of  illegal dwellings without  without accommodating them in SRA schemes for these. Every party is having 'Vote banks' (some legal slums) and they look to keep it that way than make proper channelized efforts in city planning.  Every person in a city consumes lot of water a day for various day-to-day purposes like potable water for drinking, bathing, hygiene needs, kitchen consumption. Without going into proper apportioning, let us say about 100 - 125 litres. Imagine how much water can be saved if Mumbai gets rid of lakhs of illegals consuming these resources meant for legal and law abiding citizens of the state / city. It also lessens load on public transport. The indirect effect on the city can be realized in various other aspects as well like electricity consumption of the  city etc.

 

[rangeelaraja]

1 hour ago, crictime said:

The temporary or permanent settlements are not possible without political support. No wonder these are known as 'Vote Banks'. I recall that some party (iirc SS) had declared that some slums developed before a specific year would get legal status. Many slums have cropped up even after that year, are those slums going to get legal status by some other ruling.

 

Mumbai needs a proper planning.  The Navi Mumbai airport has been constructed and went semi-operational in Dec 2025 to take care of increased load on the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj airport. It helps in a way that people in adjoining cities like Thane and  Navi Mumbai do not have to used Mumbai roads for traveling using some air routes. I think most of the slums around the airport must be having legal status now. If having legal status, they can be shifted away from airport using SRA etc to free up space for better efficiency in airport operations.

 

A full new architecture planning. Those in power should first show enough selflessness to get rid of  illegal dwellings without  without accommodating them in SRA schemes for these. Every party is having 'Vote banks' (some legal slums) and they look to keep it that way than make proper channelized efforts in city planning.  Every person in a city consumes lot of water a day for various day-to-day purposes like potable water for drinking, bathing, hygiene needs, kitchen consumption. Without going into proper apportioning, let us say about 100 - 125 litres. Imagine how much water can be saved if Mumbai gets rid of lakhs of illegals consuming these resources meant for legal and law abiding citizens of the state / city. It also lessens load on public transport. The indirect effect on the city can be realized in various other aspects as well like electricity consumption of the  city etc.

 

 

 

A significant portion of these slum encroachments are on extremely pricey land parcels at the heart of the city - because thats where there are economic opportunities. 

 

Easier said than done and harsh- but all of these folks should be rehabilitated on the outskirts of the city with low cost housing.  There is no question of providing them low cost housing near the most exclusive and premium zones in the city center. The large middle class toils for decades to save enough to able to afford a small place in the suburbs and so there no question of providing illegal slum dwellers low cost housing in premium zip codes. It should be on the outskirts of Mumbai Metropolitan region. 

 

If this does not happen - even in the next 50 years - Mumbai will continue to resemble one big slum settlement amidst skyscrapers. 

 

This is not about relegating lower-income residents to distant peripheries - it is about being fair and equitable to the millions in the working class that have been law abiding and toiled for a generation, making countless sacrifices to save and to be able to afford the home of their dreams. 

 

Edited May 23 by rangeelaraja