Go ahead, Mumbai

As you read this, gas cutters, crowbars, bulldozers and engineers are massing in secret somewhere in Mumbai. This is day three, round two, of the biggest attempt yet to arrest the decline of India’s financial capital. After a month that saw the razing of 65,000 shanties, the demolition squads are now firmly targeting the city’s richer, more powerful inhabitants: owners of restaurants, five-star hotels, office blocks and residential high-rises. The targets are secret to keep violators from getting last-minute stay orders.

The shift in focus could not be more welcome. While the demolition of shanties is inevitable if Mumbai is to arrest its urban degeneration — about 65 per cent of the city now lives in shanty towns — there were troubling questions of relentlessly targeting an underclass that was in the first place encouraged to encroach by the politician and later condoned by the administrator. So, after relentless pressure from Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil, the demolition squads have turned their attention to some of the most flagrant violations of urban laws India has ever seen. While the preliminary targets are illegal alterations, extensions and some bungalows, the squads hope to focus on not just unauthorised floors but unauthorised buildings, some more than 10 floors high. Cynicism about the demolition drive is all too easy: slums and demolished restaurants will be rebuilt, the cynics say. Indeed, the owner of one restaurant told this paper he would be back in business within 15 days. Some slums have been rebuilt, forcing the authorities to fence recovered land.

This effort must continue and grow in strength. Patil and his boss, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, have together given their officers critical backing and also shown how a coalition government can produce results if it is determined. But Deshmukh and Patil must realise demolitions are but a first step. The archaic rent control and urban land ceiling acts must go and the manipulation of slum rehousing by big builders must stop if Mumbai has to do away with its vast shanty towns. Despite the demolitions, the majority will remain intact: only those built after 1995 are being targeted. And the Rs 36,000-crore grand scheme for Mumbai’s makeover has no plan for the dispossessed. Patil wants them to “go back to their villages”, but will three million — the eventual tally of homeless — really do that?