There is recently a furore against the BMC's drive to clear Mumbai of its illegal slums (but only those after the year 2000). Evidently this drive is not humanitarian and the governement should not be going out demolishing the slums without providing them free alternative housing.
I find myself on the side of the demolitions.
It is simple the slums are illegal. By providing free housing/land whatever we are encouraging more slums. It is akin to catching a thief and on hearing his sad life story saying go ahead rob me and heres the keys to the neighbours house as well. The maid in our house , herself homeless but whose son lives in an illegal slum tells us how her son pays 4000 a month to a corporator. Poor indeed. It is also heard from the same source how these people sell the home they have got and go back to live in the same slums till the next time they are given another home.
Which is not to say that we should kick these people out and do nothing else . The skewed development in India has to be halted. It is silly that so much wealth is concentrated in so few places. And Mumbai is one of those places. We have to develop other places so that the people there do not feel a need to migrate to Mumbai to earn their living. We must do something about our population. While it continues to increase at this rate no amount of development will serve any purpose. And finally we must stop allowing politics and politicians to interfere in all our public bodies.
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