A Comprehensive Analysis of the Slum Redevelopment Market in Mumbai (original) (raw)

A highly fascinating market to analyse is the market for slum redevelopment in Mumbai. Mumbai is one of the most bustling cities in Maharashtra, India. About seven million people in Mumbai live in slums, which constitutes more than half of the city's population. The country's government has attempted to clear the slums since the 1950's with little success in order to make way for economic development. This strategy was later recognized to be ineffective and the government's focus turned to slum redevelopment in the 1970's. However, the slums in Mumbai continue to be impoverished and persist. In fact, Dharavi, which was known as Asia's largest slum for a few decades, was surpassed in size by four other Mumbai slums in 2011. This means that slums in Mumbai are expanding while the quality of living in slums has not improved significantly. At the same time, redevelopment projects in slums in the city garner lucrative profits, a single project can fetch over Rupees 7,000 crores (approximately 1.29 billion USD). The most conventional reasons for this sluggishness of the market for slum redevelopment has been attributed to bureaucratic inefficiency and governmental corruption. For this reason, many scholars writing on this discourse argue for less state intervention and more private regulation for a more efficient market. However, these calls for lesser state regulation are inadequate as it is important to understand the unique challenges faced by the government, institutions and inhabitants of Mumbai before being able to decide what level of regulation is the most appropriate for slum redevelopment in Mumbai. I argue that the market for slum redevelopment in Mumbai requires a closer analysis of the stakeholders and regulatory structures present in order to evaluate the quality of state intervention.