India Finance
Dharavi: ‘People are nervous that they will be displaced and taken to a transit camp.’
Apr 17, 2024

The Dharavi settlement in Mumbai is internationally famous. Adani has won the right to redevelop it by demolishing this huge shantytown and then re-housing its inhabitants. In this video interview, an advocate for workers in Dharavi’s thousands of enterprises expresses fears for those people’s economic future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogabVUdEb8

Vinod Shetty points out that lots of well-off people in the city of Mumbai, including parties, politicians and agencies, live off the labour of workers in Dharavi, which is home to thousands of enterprises and hundreds of thousands of consumers. He says that Dharavi and its businesses have become a massive 'cash cow' for those who make money from the poor.

'People are nervous that they will be displaced.' Vinod Shetty, advocate for workers in Dharavi.

‘A large number of people get displaced by whatever redevelopment is planned, including the current one,’ says Shetty. ‘Every chief minister regards Dharavi as a hot potato.’

‘What we will be creating is one of the largest displacements of people, because nearly 50% of the people are not even included in the survey of the residents of Dharavi, so these people are out from Day One.’

‘People are nervous that they will be displaced … and taken to a transit camp… and they don’t know their fate. They don’t know when they will come back.’

‘No chief minister wants to end his career with this visual of hundreds of thousands of people packing their belongings and trudging out of Dharavi.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogabVUdEb8

 

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