The capture of salt pan lands across Mumbai, set in motion long ago, was completed earlier this month when the central government approved the transfer of nearly 256 acres for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. There could not be a more ecologically disastrous and incoherent decision for the city than this — disastrous because the salt pans literally protect Mumbai from flooding and incoherent because this state government claims to understand the risks of climate change that increase the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. This decision turns the tide of the city towards becoming more flood-prone and, therefore, less climate-resistant.
Opening up the ecologically fragile land parcels along the city’s eastern and western coastlines to construction and development marks a win for the real estate lobby that has eyed the salt pan lands for decades, but puts the city in the path of peril. How do we justify to the generations to come that, one after another, Mumbai’s ecological areas were encroached upon by the power elite of the city in pursuit of development? How can it be explained in the ecological history of the city?
This stretch of salt pans, we are told, will be used for rental houses to the residents of Dharavi who are deemed “ineligible” to get homes in the redevelopment process because their tenements in the slum were dated after the cutoff year of 2000. The very idea of eligibility has been resisted by residents of Dharavi and the Dharavi Bachao Andolan who argue that everyone who lives or works there must be eligible for rehabilitation in the project. This is unacceptable to the Dharavi Redevelopment Project Pvt Ltd (DRPPL), a joint venture between Adani Realty Group and the Maharashtra government that is overseeing the redevelopment of one of the largest slum settlements in the world.
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The slum covers an area of roughly 600 acres, housing nearly a million residents as well as hundreds of commercial units. Its redevelopment had been pending for nearly 40 years when the first Prime Minister’s Grant Project was kickstarted. The questions that stare us in the face about the DRPPL land acquisition have resonance beyond Dharavi to include all of the city: why does the redevelopment project need land far in excess of the existing slum land and why does a portion of this have to be the city’s salt pans?
Since the project was won last year, there has been a flurry of land acquisition across the suburbs to create what’s come to be called ‘Nav Dharavis’ with modern amenities and green spaces. For rehabilitation, rental housing and providing houses to the “ineligible”, the DRPPL has been accumulating land that now includes 64 acres of government land at Mulund, 17 acres at Bandra Kurla Complex, 45 acres of railway land, nearly 200 acres at Deonar, and now these 256 acres of salt pan land.
The total land accumulated would amount to nearly 600 acres — as much as the land available in Dharavi itself. This has led the Dharavi Bachao Andolan to ask why the developer is being gifted a total of nearly 1,250 acres to redevelop a slum half that size. Opposition leaders like Congress MP Varsha Gaikwad and Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray have also repeatedly raised this question. There have been no convincing answers forthcoming from either the state government or the developer.
In fact, slum residents have been demanding that they be rehoused in situ as the current Floor Space Index allows vertical development which can rehabilitate them as well as open up land for commercial transactions. In Mumbai’s slum redevelopment schemes, slum residents have been given houses on the plot itself though these houses have been of a patently poorer quality and with fewer amenities than the houses built for sale. Why, indeed, does the DRPPL need twice the amount of land it is redeveloping? The search for this additional land, almost 600-800 acres, has meant that the long-standing goal of the real estate lobby to open up the salt pan land has been realised.
Salt pans are low-lying areas along the shore or edges of the city where sea water comes home to in low tide allowing the formation of salt and other minerals; they also prevent flooding because they hold water during high tide and heavy rain. Along with mangrove patches, salt pans are the city’s natural buffers and barriers to flooding and house rich biodiversity.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, which is the nodal agency for salt pans, states that the city has nearly 5,300 acres spread in land parcels across Mulund, Bhandup, Ghatkopar, Chembur, Wadala, Trombay, Jogeshwari, Malwani, Gorai, Bhayandar and Virar. Of this, it intends to open up 1,780 acres for development; the 256 acres for Dharavi redevelopment are presumably part of this. But the MMRDA itself, in a report, had stated that “salt pans protect the city from being swamped during high tide and serve as a drainage area during the monsoon”. This report has been conveniently ignored now.
Salt pan lands may look barren and “wasted” in a city that perennially wants more land but they are – or were – classified as wetlands and, as such, were governed by the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules. They were also classified as CRZ-I category under Coastal Regulation Zone rules which meant no construction was allowed. The Wetland Rules were amended in 2017 to remove the restrictions on development and the salt pans were taken out of the highly restrictive CRZ-I category too. Also, the Devendra Fadnavis-led government from 2014-2019 sought to transfer it from the central list to the concurrent list so that the state could decide.
The move to strip away all protection for this ecologically-fragile and important aspect of Mumbai’s natural wealth has been in the offing for a few years now. Notably, the centre had refused to transfer salt pan lands for other projects of the city that were mooted by the municipal corporation or for the metro car shed. The Dharavi project developer’s charms seem to have worked. None of the agencies involved have imagined Mumbai in which these natural buffers from the sea will be deliberately destroyed, but the writing is clear for those who can connect the dots. They have signed the city’s death warrant in heavy rain and floods — inexplicable at a time that the city is trying to operationalise its climate action plan.
Smruti Koppikar, senior journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender, and the media. She is the Founder Editor of the award-winning online journal ‘Question of Cities’ and won the Laadli Media Award 2024 for her writing in this column
