[Reader-list] [announcements] between slums and skyscrapers

[PUKAR]

On 6th April 2005 the city witnessed the city's
poorest citizens - men, women and children -
being brutally lathi-charged while protesting
against the violent demolitions of their homes
and lack of rehabilitation measures for them.
There are many who prefer to gloss over this
violence, believing it to be an inevitable part
of the "solution" to the city's "slum problem",
and avoid its significance as a challenge to the
city's shallow notion of being modern and its
supposed faith in the democratic process. 

This moment calls for a whole-hearted support to
all those who are struggling to maintain
democratic processes in the city in a politically
urgent way. Simultaneously it is vital that side
by side we build on the imagination and knowledge
that debates on housing and slums in the city are
conducted from. This is the context in which
tomorrow's discussion will be placed.



      'Beyond Conservation: Heritage Concerns and Urban Futures'

Venue 

Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai.


Participants

- The residents of Khotachiwadi - an urban heritage precinct in south Mumbai. 

- Rahul Srivastava, Co-Director, PUKAR and coordinator of PUKAR's Khotachiwadi Neighborhood Project.

- Pankaj Joshi, PUKAR Associate, Conservation Architect and Advisor to the Project.

 

Time
6:30 p.m.

Date
Friday, 8th April 2005



How many people know that Khotachiwadi was also
referred to as a slum in the early twentieth
century from the point of view of the newly
emerging planned city? Perhaps it is in the
transformation of our perspective of this habitat
from slum to heritage site that we may find a
clue to the problems that Mumbai faces. 

Perhaps it becomes more pertinent than before to
point out all over again that there is an
ideological side to the city that is alive and
kicking in supposedly modern Mumbai - one that is
endorsed by builders, a certain kind of planning
process and an anti-poor state. It is rooted in a
convenient vision that looks at any ambiguous
habitat as a slum - and quickly endorses this
nomenclature so that sooner or later it is
justified in erasing it. Take a look at the many
middle-class residential colonies in Mumbai that
are increasingly divided on the future of their
neighborhoods. Some decry themselves on being
slummy and want an urgent make over - sponsored
by the builder lobby - while others resist this
label and narrative but find themselves
increasingly in the minority. And the production
of slums continues unabated, produced as much
from such an ideological narrative than from the
usual cause - subsidizing the built environment
and the lifestyles of the privileged through
cheap labor while also making the poor pay a
price for their subsidy.
At the same time the city continues to be
delusional about its modern status - channelizing
all its efforts at furiously looking modern
through a glass and steel make-over while
sacrificing all values of egalitarianism and
democracy that modernity has always predicated it
self on. After all, many modern cities around the
world transformed themselves because they were
ashamed of how they were treating its poor and
not by ruthlessly crushing them - something for
Mumbai to reflect on.

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