A house in Dharavi

Dilip D'Souza at Washington Post. [via sqattercity]

Because housing is so expensive, about two-thirds of Mumbai's population live in slums or on the streets. This has been true for decades and remains true in ready-for-boom-time India. Indian politicians have concocted countless schemes over the years to "redevelop" slums, which they consider eyesores. For a variety of reasons, they've never managed to deliver on their promises. But one idea that took off decades ago still fuels the construction boom in Dharavi and throughout the dizzying, maddening city of Mumbai.

The concept, called "cross-subsidy," is simple. The government invites developers to build flats to be sold to slum-dwellers at subsidized prices. In return for their participation, the government loosens zoning regulations, usually in the same area, so that the developers can build other larger and plusher apartments to sell to middle- and upper-class people at the market rate. The profit that developers make on these sales will pay for the subsidized units -- a nice marriage between government policy and private profit-making. Or so the theory goes.

More like this

The Pump Handle and Casaubon's Book are writing posts this week about the global trend of urbanization. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and this shift has implications for the health of the planet. I grew up in suburban Delaware, and my first experience with urban…
From the archives: (13 March 2006) If sellers are allowed to compete freely without any regulations, market forces will inevitably drive down prices and improve the quality of services so that everyone wins, even the consumer--or so the dogma goes. Life is rarely so simple, and markets don't…
SciDev.Net's TV Padma reports that tuberculosis experts are looking to India to develop affordable TB-testing kits. An estimated four million cases of the disease go undetected, and two million TB patients die every year. India has increased its efforts at finding and treating cases of the disease…
Drum responds to a discussion of land use in the era of expensive oil by commenting: A focus on increased density is going to mean a funny political switcheroo for a lot of liberals. We're mostly accustomed to fighting evil corporations on behalf of the little guy, but it turns out that most…

they've never managed to deliver on their promises bcoz of a simple fact mate~~~~ever heard of the term "VOTE BANKS"~~haha