Saturday, June 02, 2007

Mumbai facelift: is it too good to be true?

Imagine 70 million sq ft land changing from slums to skyscrapers!!! That is the plan IAS officer I.S. Chahal (Vice-President of Maharashtra Housing And Area Development Authority) is looking after.

The plan include giving the land to a builder for development and major points are

  • The slum dwellers will be given 225 sq ft flats in some of those buildings. I know the place would be very small but i guess its still more than the place they have currently.
  • The govt. will get 450Rs per sq ft premium which would not be very great but still worth mentioning.
  • There will be a focus on local amenities like building of schools, colleges, hospitals and police stations.
I know there will be questions about corruption, feasibility, resistance etc etc. But I am happy just to think that there are plans for this thing.
Some of the pluses I see in this:
  • Think of all the problems slum dwellers have from from garbage, sanitation, roads, congestion, etc. Slum dwellers doesn't even have proper sanitary arrangements. It would be a change of lifetime for them.
  • It would solve the land shortage problem of Mumbai to a very great extent.
  • If planned and executed properly, it would have lots of schools, parks, hospitals etc. Social improvement in line.
The story : ibnlive

Do share your views on this.

4 comments:

Sree's Views said...

I only wish there is a way to prevent them from renting or subletting it.

amitscorpio said...

if you are talking about slum dwellers, I don't think there would be much demand for 225 sq ft flats when 70 million sq ft of land is being converted in multi story buildings!!!

Sree's Views said...

During Pushkars land and built-up areas are alloted in a suburb to shift ppl from the town and clear the river area. but within a few years the slums are back . that's what made me wonder.

amitscorpio said...

This is not the clearing of the land only ... the people living there would continue living in a bit better housing. Apart from that the rest of the floor space would be sold.