S’PORE SHEEN
Bhendi Bazaar residents relocated to make way for RM2.64 billion development project
MUMBAI
Bohras often seek guidance from his holiness on many matters, ranging from marriage to naming a child.
The redevelopment was the brainchild of late leader Syedna Burhanuddin, who died aged 101 in 2014, a key reason why residents support it.
“Our families took his holiness Syedna’s advice and supported the project, so we hope it will be good for everyone involved,” said Juzer Morbiwala at a transit home, where he is being housed until his new apartment is ready.
Some 250 decrepit three- and four-storey buildings known as chawls — originally built for single male labourers in the 1800s and where residents often share toilets — are being razed and replaced with 17 high-rise towers across 6.7ha .
Three thousand two hundred families will receive new homes free of charge. Each will be a minimum of 350 sq ft in size with private bathrooms and separate sleeping and living spaces.
It will be a significant improvement on the tiny, dark one-room home Kachwala shares with her husband, daughter and father-inlaw, who moved in as a ten-yearold in the 1930s.
“I’m attached to this place because I’ve lived here almost my whole life, but our children will have a better environment to live and grow in the new home,” said Kachwala, 45.
The demolition and construction is taking place in nine phases. The first started around three years ago and the entire project is expected to be completed by 2025. The only buildings not being torn down are the area’s mosques.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is taking a keen interest, hoping that the cluster redevelopment method can become a model for urban renewal across India.
It is budgeted to cost 40 billion rupees and a trust attached to the Bohra community’s governing body is providing the funding through donations.
Money will also be raised by selling off four of the new towers that could stretch 60 storeys into the sky.
Abbas Master, Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust CEO, said the trust had acquired almost 90 per cent of properties, but that a small fraction of residents were refusing to negotiate.
“To uproot people and to bring them back is a challenge. It happens in places like China, but in a democratic world I think this is the first example,” he said .
Some 1,250 businesses will move from ramshackle shops and stalls down dingy lanes into shopping arcades above street level, which will be connected by pedestrian bridges.
Rapid development has altered Mumbai’s skyline over the past two decades and conservation architects lament the loss of another historic district and the personality attached to it.
“The entire fabric is going to get erased, the history, the artefacts. It’s going to have an impact on the social character,” architect Vikram Pawar said, adding that the skyscrapers would be out of keeping with neighbouring areas.
But that doesn’t seem to concern the majority of residents, including Shirin Electricwala.
“It will change the way we live. We’ll have more space, hygiene and comfort,” she said. AFP