Contesting the Indian City (Global Visions and the Politics of the Local) || “One-Man Handled”

Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local, First Edition. Edited by Gavin Shatkin. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

“One-Man Handled”Fragmented Power and Political

Entrepreneurship in Globalizing Mumbai

Liza Weinstein

Introduction

The planning pathologies plaguing Indian cities have been widely acknowledged and documented. Master plans are regularly drafted and megaprojects are peri-odically launched, but the promised improvements and rationalizations are rarely realized. Social and spatial changes in the country’s major metros have been understood more through the lenses of insurgencies, negotiations, and accommodations than through the principles of rational planning (Shatkin, this volume; Björkman, this volume; Anand and Rademacher, 2011; Anjaria, 2011; Roy, 2009a; Benjamin, 2008; Weinstein, 2008; Chatterjee, 2004). In few places are these dynamics more apparent than in Dharavi, Mumbai. The iconic “slum” settlement defies most land use models and master planning principles. Directly adjacent to some of the city’s (and the world’s) most expensive commercial real estate, Dharavi houses more than half a million poor and working class people, along with light (and some heavy) industry and countless small-scale enterprises, in the virtual center of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Every few decades, a new effort is launched to improve these conditions, re-house the residents, and bring order to this unruly space. But, as each of these schemes has been abandoned, scaled back, or dramatically altered, Dharavi has remained both a planning quandary and a site of political contestation.

In February 2004 the latest Dharavi scheme was launched by the government of Maharashtra. Announced amid media fanfare and bold assertions that Mumbai would soon be “slum free,” the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP)

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promised to transform the settlement into a cultural, business, and knowledge hub. The centerpiece of the state’s newly launched effort to “transform Mumbai into a world class city,” the DRP appeared to have the political support and financial commitments that Dharavi’s earlier plans had lacked (State of Maharashtra, 2004: ii). Almost a decade later, however, these promises have yet to be realized and the DRP seems poised to become yet another illustration of Mumbai’s planning pathologies. Caught between the pressures to pursue glob-ally oriented urban development and contestations over the residents’ “right to stay put,” the government has recently put the project on hold, as it works to craft compromises between competing groups and interests. But, more than just a demonstration of popular insurgencies thwarting the state’s modernist – and increasingly globalist – imaginings, the stalled DRP sheds light on the institutional fragmentations and political conflicts that continue to hamstring development, even in an era of economic liberalization and global aspirations.

Throughout much of the DRP’s decade-long planning process, it appeared that this time things would be different. This sentiment was clearly expressed to me in mid-2005, when a life-long Dharavi resident remarked: “My father told me since childhood that Dharavi will develop. And now it will.” This belief was pervasive at the time, among both advocates and critics of the project: Mumbai was globalizing and Dharavi, as it was, would cease to exist. What that would mean for the settlement’s hundreds of thousands of residents and productive industries was unclear and subject to fierce negotiations (Weinstein, 2009). In addition to the changing economic context of Indian cities, the DRP appeared to have something that earlier development schemes in Dharavi and elsewhere had lacked: an advocate. Early in the planning process, the state had partnered with Mukesh Mehta, a private developer deeply invested in the project, and had appointed him project management consultant. In fact the entire project was conceived by Mehta, who had brought the state on board with his vision for Dharavi’s transformation. Over the next eight years Mehta would advocate for the project in the face of bureaucratic neglect and political opposition, all the while deflecting criticism from the state’s politically fraught urban renewal agenda. The partnership would be mutually beneficial: the state would give Mehta the legitimacy and resources he needed to pursue his vision, along with some of the financial spoils of development; and Mehta would give the state a high profile, globally reaching development project and a solution to the “Dharavi problem.” The partnership would help the government overcome the structural inertia and resource gaps that had hin-dered earlier schemes – and do so without making administratively difficult and politically risky reforms to the state’s planning bureaucracies.

While there is nothing novel about public–private partnerships in the field of development planning, an analysis of the strategic partnership between Mehta and the government of Maharashtra puts into sharp relief the frac-tured nature of power in India’s largest and most global city. As the fate of the

“One-Man Handled” 93

project is now unclear and Dharavi’s residents, developers, and Mehta himself are waiting to see what will come of the settlement’s proposed transformation, the case gives us the opportunity to reflect on the promises and pitfalls of state restructuring in post-liberalization urban Indian. Among its lessons, the case highlights the disjuncture between global aspirations and local capacities fac-ing India’s cities and Mumbai in particular. A chorus of voices from the local elite and political leadership has vowed to turn Mumbai into a node of global investment and a site of economic innovation, but the chorus has yet to coa-lesce into a unified pro-growth coalition. When the strategic partnership first formed, it appeared that Mehta was forging such a coalition, able to overcome the administrative weaknesses and political fragmentations that have given Mumbai’s planning institutions their pathological character. But one man does not make a coalition. A virtual outsider to the city’s political networks and civil society groups, Mehta has yet to bring these actors and institutions on board with his vision.

Yet, even in the absence of such a coalition, Mehta has worked to fill struc-tural gaps in the state’s development bureaucracies and to overcome inertia through his agency, political entrepreneurship, and sheer tenacity. Speaking about these efforts, Mehta characterized the DRP planning process to me as being “one-man handled,” acknowledging his own distinctive role as the proj-ect’s chief architect and advocate. Bravado aside, Mehta’s assessment seemed accurate and was corroborated by individuals both within and outside of government. Yet, while he is clearly an exceptional individual with a unique role, the political entrepreneurship he has demonstrated reveals a more important set of structural conditions and sheds light on the new state strategies emerging in post-liberalization urban India (see Shatkin, this volume).

This chapter considers these conditions through the case study of the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. I conducted the majority of the interviews and ethno-graphic observations cited in this chapter during 15 months of intensive fieldwork between September 2005 and December 2006. The material cited in this chapter consists of direct quotes from my fieldnotes from this period; the exact date of the discussion or interview is noted in the notes. While I have given most of my informants pseudonyms and masked characteristics that could be used to identify them, I chose to use the real names of certain public figures, including Mukesh Mehta, whose roles on the project have been discussed at length in the media.

I begin the chapter with a brief discussion of Mumbai’s development bureaucracies and emerging institutional configurations, followed by a detailed description of the planning process for the DRP. This section details the means by which Mehta promoted Dharavi’s redevelopment and, in doing so, assumed significant influence over the state’s urban planning agenda. Meanwhile, despite Mehta’s efforts to shield the DRP from political debates and public scrutiny, opposition emerged. Although it has failed to entirely subvert the project, this opposition exposes the narrowness of its political support and

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the fractured nature of power in Mumbai, within both government and civil society. Offering a window into the typical black box of development planning in urban India, the chapter concludes that, while political entrepreneurship is necessary, it may not be sufficient to facilitate development planning amid these institutional fragmentations and political contestations.

Fragmented Power and Strategic Partnerships

India’s urban planning institutions have been characterized as complex and non-transparent networks whose members straddle the lines between public and private, formal and informal, and even legal and illegal (Roy, 2009a; Benjamin, 2008; Weinstein, 2008). Given the informalities and popular insurgencies that “undermine the possibilities of rational planning,” Ananya Roy (2009a: 80) has made the provocative assertion that “India cannot plan its cities.” Rather, urban development tends to consist of highly politicized negotiations around land acquisition and housing tenure. Fueling these fierce contestations is an apparent lack of centralized authority and the virtual absence – or, at least, the regular subversion – of formal regulations (Björkman, this volume; Roy, 2009a; Benjamin, 2008; Weinstein, 2008; Roy, 2003). These failures of rational planning can be attributed, at least in part, to the structural weaknesses of city government.

Given the hundreds of administrative and elected positions in the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and in the dozen other agencies responsible for land use and planning in Mumbai (see Figure 4.1), it seems strange to emphasize weaknesses in local administration. Yet, despite this administrative complexity – and, ultimately, because of it – substantive authority for urban planning is unevenly distributed and overly diffuse. Although the MCGM is the body formally responsible for governance in Mumbai, many substantive powers, particularly those around urban planning and land use, rest with the state of Maharashtra. Within the MCGM, chief executive authority is held by the municipal commissioner, a senior-level member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) appointed by the state government (Pinto and Pinto, 2005). Serving at the favor of Maharashtra’s chief minister, Mumbai’s municipal commissioner is an extension of state-level power in the city. And although the MCGM has a mayor elected from among its ward councilors, the mayor’s authority is minimal and his duties are largely ceremonial. The activities of town planning, land use regulation, and building construction are spread among roughly 15 agencies that straddle the local, state, and national levels of government.

Although the most substantive land use powers rest with the state government, the government of Maharashtra has exhibited a reluctance to devote significant resources to this area. Even though Maharashtra is one of India’s most urban-ized states, a majority of its residents live in rural areas and its politics has


generally been centered outside its major cities. The state’s political leadership, for example, has hailed primarily from the rural Vidharbha and Marathwada regions in the eastern and central parts of the state (Vora, 1996; Lele, 1981). Until the late 1990s none of Maharashtra’s chief ministers had represented a Mumbai-based constituency, and thus they had little incentive to expend political resources in the state’s largest city (Vora, 1996).

Meanwhile, the state’s “politically neutral but professional policy bureaucracy” has also failed to provide the leadership and centralized administrative power needed to promote urban development (Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987: 79). With positions assigned by state politicians, observers have remarked that bureaucrats tend to collaborate directly with the political leadership and are susceptible to

National level Municipal levelState level

13. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) or BMC

14. Mumbai Police

15. Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST)

4. Government of Maharashtra (GoM)

5. Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA)

6. Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA)

7. Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA)

8. Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC)

9. Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB)

10. Public Works Department (PWD)

11. Road Transport Office (RTO)

12. Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC)

1. Mumbai Port Trust

2. Indian Railways

3. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL)

Figure 4.1 Agencies with planning and land-use powers in Mumbai. Source: author.

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similar political pressures (Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987). Mumbai-based political scientists Marina Pinto and David Pinto (2005: 494) have been scathing in their critique of bureaucrats in Maharashtra’s “para-statal” planning agencies:

Often they lack transparency in their functioning and are ridden with corruption. They are highly bureaucratised and lack knowledge and experience of grassroots problems. They not only weaken the MCGM which is a multi-functional body, but also give rise to problems that result from an overlapping of civic and urban functions between them. Besides, their field officers show very little interest in coordinating their activities with others at the local level. Often, their functional autonomy is reduced because of State controls and statutory constraints. Although each quasi governmental organisation has a logic and history of its own which can justify its existence, their proliferation aggravates the problem of coordination, diffuses responsibility and weakens citizen control over local affairs.

These additional administrative layers add further complexity and do little to overcome the political and administrative weaknesses that undermine effective urban planning and land use in Mumbai.

As a step taken to address these problems, the central government adopted a constitutional amendment in the early 1990s aimed at devolving substantive powers and resources to the country’s municipal governments. Among its stipulated reforms, the 74th Constitutional Amendment charged state legis-latures with the devolution of the “powers and responsibilities upon the Municipalities with respect to preparation of plans for economic development and social justice, and for the implementation of development schemes as may be required to enable them to function as institutions of self-government” (Government of India, 1992). Although predictions were made that urban governance would be transformed, local democracy would be invigorated, and municipal representatives would be empowered, the amendment has had little actual effect on development planning in Mumbai. The wording in the amendment was weak, specifying that states should simply put “on a firmer footing the relationship between the State Government and the Urban Local Bodies,” and “recommend principles for” greater revenue sharing (Government of India, 1992). Although some reforms were made, most observers agree that the 74th Amendment has done little to empower Mumbai’s municipal government and ward-level representatives in the area of development planning (Pinto and Pinto, 2005; Bhagat, Guha, and Chattopadhyay, 2006; Harriss, 2007).

Yet, despite these structural barriers and institutional weaknesses, things do get built and development does take place in Mumbai. One of the principal ways in which the city’s political leadership and development bureaucrats have overcome these fragmentations is by forming strategic partnerships with insti tutions and actors that possess the necessary political (and, in some cases, financial) resources to carry out development. As “PPP” (“public–private partnerships”) has become a buzz word across urban India, observers note a


“ paradigm shift from state-run infrastructures to infrastructure that is built and managed by private developers, often granted monopoly powers by the state” (Roy, 2009a: 77). Meanwhile, Nainan (2006) has demonstrated that these partnerships, such as those between the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) and the private sector construction industry, are longstanding and have been buttressed by professional networks in the city. In some cases, these partnerships have been forged with illicit actors and orga-nized crime groups, which are less compelled to work within formal regulatory frameworks and are more likely to have cash on hand (Weinstein, 2008).

A growing number of richly detailed studies of urban politics and planning in Indian cities has centered on the strategic partnerships between the government and such groups as middle-class resident associations, hawkers unions, and pro-poor NGOs (see for example Desai, 2012; Goldman, 2011; Ghertner, 2011; van Dijk, 2011; Anjaria, 2009, 2011; Zérah, 2009; Roy, 2009b; Baud and Nainan, 2008; Nijman, 2008; Ghosh, 2005; McFarlane, 2004; Patel, d’Cruz, and Burra, 2002; Appadurai, 2001). Despite the diversity of these partnerships, however, this literature has focused disproportionately on alliances between the state and NGOs. Whether the authors are critical of this development or identify it as a cause for celebration, the focus on NGOs’ sizable influence on housing policy and slum programs in Mumbai (and often on the role of a single NGO called SPARC) has led many to overlook other partnerships and institutional configurations that may be equally relevant (Roy, 2009b; McFarlane, 2004; Patel, d’Cruz, and Burra, 2002; Appadurai, 2001; Sanyal and Mukhija, 2001). This literature has contributed important insights into the nature of political power, cooptation, and democratic deep-ening, but it has largely neglected questions of state re-scaling and entrepre-neurial governance in post-liberalization urban India.

The remainder of this chapter presents the case of another strategic partner-ship that reflects these new entrepreneurial arrangements. It details the means by which a private developer and the state government forged an alliance to carry out one of the largest slum redevelopment projects attempted in Indian history. It details how the developer, Mukesh Mehta, sold his project to the government, embedded himself within the state’s planning bureaucracies, collaborated with (and, in many cases, bypassed) local elected officials, and worked to deflect criti-cism of the project. A virtual newcomer to Mumbai’s development field, he attempted to position himself as a central node in the city’s webs of domestic and global capital and political and administrative power – with mixed success.

A Man with a Plan

The mid-1990s marked a turning point in Mumbai’s land politics, and particularly in how the city’s densely populated slum lands and squatter settlements were viewed – and ultimately managed – by politicians, bureaucrats,

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and developers. Long recognized as the city’s most intractable social problem, slums would soon be reframed as a development opportunity, and slum redevelopment would become an important part of the city’s new development agenda (Anand and Rademacher, 2011; Weinstein, 2011; Nijman, 2008). Helping to frame this agenda was a new populist political coalition that took control of the Maharashtra government in 1995. One of the first actions taken by the new government (after changing the city’s name from Bombay to Mumbai) was to institute a new housing scheme for residents of slum settlements. Acting on a campaign promise to provide “free and quick housing” to four million slum dwellers throughout the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the program gave residents ownership of small apartments in midrise buildings for the cost of a monthly maintenance fee (Mukhija, 2003; Hansen, 2001). The apartments would be financed and constructed by private developers in exchange for the opportunity to develop and sell other properties at market rates. Although various market-based housing schemes had been devised over the preceding decade, the program marked a dramatic expansion of the role of private developers in housing construction for lower income groups (Nainan, 2006; Mukhija, 2003). More than just a program to improve the housing conditions of Mumbai’s poor, the new Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) also pushed hundreds of acres of centrally located lands onto the city’s lucrative property market, thus enabling new residential, commercial, and infrastructure development consistent with the state’s emerging urban renewal agenda.

Among the investors and developers who recognized the opportunities entailed in this approach was Mukesh Mehta, a Mumbai-born architect and property developer who had been living and working in suburban New York. Like many non-resident Indians (NRIs) who observed the political reforms and economic growth underway in their country of origin, Mehta made the decision to return and explore business opportunities in the “new India.” More specifically, Mehta saw the possibilities entailed in Maharashtra’s new slum housing policy and in Mumbai’s lucrative property markets. He was just one of many builders and developers who recognized these oppor-tunities, but his ambitions were larger than originally envisioned in the slum policy. Up to that point, the SRS had been used only on a piecemeal basis, to re-house clusters of approximately 100 families, who, under the policy, must register with the state as a housing society in order to partici-pate in the program. Although many builders were working on several SRS projects simultaneously, none had sought to redevelop clusters in excess of 100 households as part of a larger development project. Yet Mehta could see no reason why the program could not be implemented on a larger scale, allowing for the redevelopment of larger plots concurrently and thus freeing up even more land for market rate developments. A consultant working with Mehta explained:


The SRA [Slum Rehabilitation Authority] had just been formed. And they were going about – well, they still do today – going about it in this piecemeal kind of approach. So he met with political people at that time and said, look you are going about this all wrong. When you have large areas, you should try to develop them as suburbs … They were like, like what, areas like Dharavi? And he said, well, yes, areas like Dharavi. And it sort of took off from there.

Although it is unlikely that Mehta’s idea of redeveloping the sprawling settlement of Dharavi emerged from a single conversation, this story has taken on something of a mythical quality, as Mehta has worked to portray himself as Dharavi’s accidental developer.

If slums are seen as Mumbai’s most intractable problem, Dharavi is its most tangible representation. It is one of Mumbai’s oldest and most established slum settlements, housing both recent migrants and families who have lived, started businesses, and flourished in the area for generations. Yet photographs taken from nearby high-rise buildings fail to capture this diversity, showing instead a seemingly endless expanse of corrugated aluminum and blue-tarped roofs precariously sitting atop squat shanties. This image has now been seen across the globe, as the world’s leading newspapers and magazines have published recent profiles of Dharavi and several memorable scenes from the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire were filmed in the settlement. Meanwhile, Dharavi is also a visual depiction of the governance failures that have hindered earlier efforts to upgrade slum settlements and to improve residents’ conditions. While piece-meal efforts like SRS have slowly rebuilt some of the housing and improved its basic infrastructures, this program, and several others that preceded it, have done little to transform either Dharavi’s conditions or its infamous reputation. So, when Mehta set his sights on Dharavi in the mid-1990s, he was dismissed off-hand as one of India’s now many ambitious, but ultimately naïve, return-NRIs.

Determined to redevelop the entire 535-acre settlement of Dharavi within the framework of the SRS, Mehta set to work on land use plans and financing formulas. His initial plan proposed to re-house Dharavi’s current residents in high-rise buildings along the settlement’s perimeter, while building up its interior with luxury housing, office buildings, and a golf course. Yet he soon came to realize that his plan entailed too great a financial risk for him to take on alone. “A project of this size needs money,” he explained. “If it got obstructed by government, I could have lost a lot of money. The finances had to come from somewhere else. And government needed to put a guarantee on the financing.”1 In addition to the financial risk, he recognized that the state’s development regulations would have to be amended. Consequently he determined that the project could only proceed if it secured government sponsorship. He began selling his Dharavi plan to the state of Maharashtra.

By the end of the 1990s Mehta was receiving some encouragement from government officials, but he was yet to garner an official pledge of support.

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With the new government’s political base found primarily in Mumbai for the first time in the state’s 40-year history, housing and urban development initiatives were more prominently on the state’s agenda than they had been dur-ing previous administrations (Vora, 1996). In fact the state’s chief minister at the time, Manohar Joshi, represented the Mumbai constituency that included Dharavi. Although Mehta recalls that Joshi remained skeptical of his plans, the project was beginning to elicit support from others within his government. Yet in October 1999, the ruling coalition lost the state-wide elections and the opposition, led by the Congress Party, formed a new government. The political ground that Mehta had gained was lost. Because the previous government had begun expressing support for the scheme, the newly elected Congress Party government took steps to publicly distance itself from it. Mehta went to work again to build political support within the new government. Not being aligned with any of the state’s political parties, he felt free to work with whichever party was in power.

His efforts began to pay off in 2001 and 2002, when his plan won favor with the state’s housing secretary, Suresh Joshi. Mehta recalls:

We had been petitioning them for years. Every housing secretary who came in, we would go straight to him and say, why don’t you get involved? Why don’t you do this? And then [Housing Secretary] Dr. Suresh Joshi came to us. They were interested all of a sudden. Maybe it was destiny, or whatever … Right then the government had taken this huge initiative for infrastructure projects, so I guess it all fell into line.2

Housing Secretary Joshi encouraged Mehta to approach government as a partner rather than as a customer for his plan. Taking Joshi’s advice, Mehta claims that he was able to present the project as a “win-win” situation. “Politicians got a new way to look at slums, and I got the project I wanted.”3

Mehta had begun building support throughout the government, but the chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, still refused to officially sponsor the project. Over the next two years, however, as a new urban agenda came together that was premised on transforming Mumbai into a “world class city,” Dharavi’s redevelopment would rise to the top of this agenda and would eventually garner state sponsorship. Mumbai’s business community had long warned about the city’s declining competitive position, but their concerns moved to the top of the state’s policy agenda after the release of a McKinsey & Company report on the subject in late 2003. Commissioned by Bombay First, a business lobbying group and offshoot of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), the McKinsey report included among its recommendations that the government aggressively promote slum redevelopment. For a variety of reasons such as the report’s timing, the clarity of its recommendations, and the prestige of the global consulting firm, the recommendations caught favor


with the state government. Within months, Chief Minister Deshmukh formed a taskforce to make recommendations for implementation (Weinstein, 2011). Although Dharavi did not receive explicit mention in the McKinsey report, the chief minister’s taskforce recommended the redevelopment of “at least three sectors of Dharavi for commercial or office use” among its short-term objectives (State of Maharashtra, 2004: 14). Soon after the taskforce was con-vened, Chief Minister Deshmukh publicly endorsed Mehta’s plan.

While state sponsorship stemmed primarily from its congruence with the “world class city” agenda, the project’s profile was also raised by growing support from New Delhi. Mehta’s efforts to garner political backing won an important victory in January 2004, when the central government – a coalition government headed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with Manohar Joshi (Maharashtra’s former chief minister and Dharavi’s representative) serving as the speaker of Parliament – made a significant financial commitment to Dharavi’s redevelopment. The move posed a direct challenge to the state government’s authority in the areas of urban development and housing. With these activities deemed “state subjects” in the Indian constitution, it was remarkable that New Delhi would commit financial resources to a project that had not yet received the state’s backing. But, more than just intergovernmental conflict, the subversion of the state’s authority in this case also represents inter-party conflict, as the central government was led by the BJP at the time and a Congress-led coalition was in power at the state level. Mehta’s non-alignment with political parties at either the national or the state level allowed him to elicit support from all the relevant groups. The action, meanwhile, likely shamed Maharashtra’s government into offering its endorsement; the week immediately after the central government pledged its support, Chief Minister Deshmukh officially endorsed Mehta’s plan and committed to support it financially.

The state’s endorsement of Mehta’s plan in February 2004 must be attributed to Mehta’s own perseverance, quite apart from the plan’s congruence with the McKinsey report and the support it garnered from New Delhi. Although he had some professional connections in Mumbai when he returned in the mid-1990s, Mehta was basically an outsider to the city’s political and business communities. But, for the better part of a decade, he had worked tenaciously to elicit this support. Reflecting upon these efforts, Mehta mused:

I am an entrepreneur. I first decided I was going to do it myself, but eventually I had to contract with a developer – in this case, the government. When I sold it to them, I said, only pay me if I’m successful. I should only get paid on the success of the project … There will be two measures of success: first government had to accept the plan. Then, the builders have to give money to redevelop it. Only once the builders make the investments can the project be deemed a success.4

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Once the state announced its endorsement of the project in February 2004, Mehta created MM Project Consultants Pvt., a private entity subcontracted by the state to support the planning for the DRP. Mehta was named project management consultant (PMC), and most of the activities associated with the physical designs, regulatory changes, and community relations for the project were coordinated through his office. For these efforts he would be paid a consultancy fee of 1 percent of the total project expenditures. With the project costs initially estimated at two billion dollars, Mehta’s fee was expected to be roughly US $20 million (Kamath, 2010a, 2010b). Although he noted that his fees should depend “on the success of the project,” as of mid-2010 Mehta had been paid an estimated $3 million even though the work had not yet begun and the builders were yet “to give money” (Kamath, 2010a). Meanwhile, Mehta’s role as project manager and the payments he received would become a contentious political issue in the coming years, leading to calls for his removal and for the government’s withdrawal of support.

“One-Man Handled”

Mehta’s position as PMC represented a novel configuration of power and authority in the area of development planning for Mumbai. Although the state has a long tradition of hiring consultants to design town plans or to advise politicians on development projects, the position that Mehta crafted for himself entailed a more significant scope of authority than has typically been held by a private consultant. Mehta even acknowledged that his role should probably be performed by a government official, but he maintained that only he could see the project through to completion. Mehta once remarked to me:

That’s where the bureaucracy would come in. But I don’t think we have creative bureaucrats. We have very few of them. We have the Dharavi project. It’s virtu-ally one-man handled … I even type letters for them, interdepartmental letters! Why? Because Mukesh Mehta is the only one in the entire universe who wants Dharavi to go on!5

In addition to ensuring that Dharavi “goes on,” Mehta once described his role as one of a coordinator. Given the nature of development planning today, he asserted, someone is required to bring together the various actors and interests involved in a project on this scale. Equating project management with “deal making” and a development plan with a “business model,” he explained:

I am filling a void. That void is of [the] coordination function, to make people talk to each other and make deals. I start by asking the question: what do we need to do to redevelop Dharavi? … And I am coordinating with groups to meet


these needs. We need urban designers, entrepreneurs, service providers. We need the best of the best and my job is to bring them into the project. I am bringing a business model to work through these issues.6

Mehta attributed the void, as well as other weaknesses in the state’s development bureaucracies, to the system of placing bureaucrats in positions and giving them rewards.

The typical government officer won’t do this. They generally believe that, if you don’t do anything, you can’t lose your job – which is true in the current system. They also don’t have deep knowledge on the issues they’re working on. They move from position to position. They may work on education and then housing and then environment. Those running ministries should be experts in those areas of work, but they’re not.7

Despite his attribution of government’s ineffectiveness to structural weaknesses rather than to individual failings, Mehta recognizes that the government’s continued backing of the project has depended on individual advocates within the state’s development bureaucracies. The most crucial position in this regard was that of the head of the SRA, the para-statal agency responsible for implementing the SRS. At the time when the project received state backing in early 2004, the SRA was headed by someone who, Mehta noted, “had an agenda to stop the project.”8 He claims that turf battles and concerns about recognition led the former SRA chief to stall the project. Eventually he was replaced with someone whom Mehta initially saw as an ally, but who he claims proved similarly unhelpful. In mid-2005 IAS officer Iqbal Chahal was appointed by the chief minister to head the SRA with the designation “officer on special duty with responsibilities for the Dharavi Project.” Mehta described Chahal as “very supportive,” noting that he saw the DRP as “the most important project of his career.”9

Despite Mehta’s characterization of the project as “one-man handled,” officials in the SRA were assigned to fulfill certain duties on it. While Mehta may have been filling a coordination function, Chahal’s official role was to communicate between Maharashtra’s chief minister, Mehta, and the SRA staff assigned to help design and implement the project (see Figure 4.2). Two SRA officers reporting directly to Chahal were given responsibilities related to the project’s political and technical aspects. Roopa Shinde, chief community development officer, was charged with community relations, while Rajeev Talreja, was assigned to deal with the project’s technical aspects, including land use and building regulations. Mehta and his staff at MM Consultants worked closely with Chahal, Shinde, Talreja, and others within the para-statal planning agencies on all aspects of project planning.

Rajeev Talreja once confirmed for me the central role that Mehta had played throughout the project’s planning process. Even before the government

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endorsed the project, Mehta had done much of the technical work, including many of the activities that would typically be performed by Talreja’s office in the SRA. For example, Mehta had acquired materials from the city surveyor at the MCGM, including the records of land ownership and the surveys of slum encroachment. This information, Talreja explained, was used to determine the areas of Dharavi that could be designated slum areas and the appro-priate mix of residential, commercial, and industrial activities under the development plan.

By this point Mehta had abandoned his dream of building high-rise low-income housing encircling a golf course. The plan that had come together would divide Dharavi’s 535 acres into five sectors of roughly equal size. Current slum residents would be re-housed in midrise buildings in their current sector and be given 225-square-foot apartments with an enclosed kitchen and an in-unit bathroom. The residential buildings would be inter-spersed with smaller parks, schools, hospitals, other amenities, and office buildings that would be leased at market rates. The polluting industries currently located in each sector, including pottery firing and plastic recy-cling activities, would have to be either modernized or relocated, but some other commercial activities could remain in place. Most of the prime office space would be located on the settlement’s northwestern edge, along the Mahim Creek, overlooking the high-end offices at the exclusive Bandra-Kurla Complex across the causeway. Private developers, preferably with global credentials and foreign capital, would be selected through a competitive

Chief Minister of Maharashtra

ProjectManagementConsultant for DRP(Mukesh Mehta)

Officer on Special Duty (SRA)for DRP – Position laterrenamed CEO of the DharaviRedevelopment Authority

Sub-Engineer (SRA) forDRP (technical aspects ofimplementation)

Chief Community DevelopmentOfficer (SRA) for DRP (communityrelations)

Figure 4.2 Reporting structure for the DRP. Source: author.


bidding process to develop each of the five sectors, to construct the housing, infrastructure, and amenities, and to recoup their initial expenditures with profits made by selling the market-rate developments.

As these plans came together, the SRA’s primary role had been simply that of a regulatory agency designed to ensure that Mehta’s project complied with the state’s Development Control Rules and that the needed changes were made to those rules. But even these activities, Talreja acknowledged, had been undertaken “in close consultation” with Mehta. Once the revised rules were approved by a group of secretaries in the chief minister’s cabinet, an Expression of Interest (EOI) document would be issued and developer bids would be solicited. Even as these activities were underway, Mehta remained central to the process and kept the project moving forward. Meanwhile, con-versations with Roopa Shinde confirmed that Mehta played a similarly central role in the community relations part of the planning process.10

Mehta suggested to me that he had to maintain this centralized authority if the project were to survive or to progress in a reasonable timeframe. Mehta explained:

Dharavi is just one of the million projects the government is working on. So from their point of view, why is Dharavi more important than something else? The government claims that it is a hyper-priority project. This is their claim. But what happens is that the claim might not be percolating to all the people from the lowest to the highest rungs. So it might be a super high priority for the prime minister or the chief minister and the secretaries, but their deputies and the deputies of their deputies might not think it’s that important.11

For Mehta, on the other hand, Dharavi was the only priority. He could not prevent delays by overseeing every step of the planning process, but he could ensure that the project continued in spite of them.

Mehta also attributed the lack of support he had received to concerns about what he termed “turf stealing,” rather than regarding it simply as a matter of priorities. He explained that bureaucrats not only are unwilling to undertake large-scale development planning, but they also want to undermine others’ efforts to do so. He explained that the opposition he had received from bureau-crats was “not based on the merits of the plan, but on what they perceive as turf-stealing. Powerful people are accepting my model,” he added, “so these people are beginning to feel marginalized.”12 Mehta spoke with such a clear sense of ownership about the project that it was easy to forget that the DRP was officially a government initiative. But by this point Mehta had devoted roughly six years of his life to Dharavi’s redevelopment. Determined not to let the project fall between the cracks of administrative authority, Mehta has carved out a space for himself and his project within the state’s fragmented planning agencies.

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Politics at the Margins

Successfully embedding himself in the state’s development bureaucracies, Mehta has maintained considerable distance from the local political networks that reach deep into Dharavi. While municipal politicians have typically been excluded from development planning, recent reforms, including the 74th Amendment, offered the promise of de-centralized and democratic planning. Yet, despite their intimate knowledge of constituent needs and despite their ability to communicate directly with local communities, Dharavi’s ward-level politicians have remained marginalized throughout the DRP planning pro-cess. An analysis of this exclusion reveals the ongoing disjunctures between electoral politics and development planning and the distance that project managers (whether consultants or bureaucrats) have maintained from these local sites of power.

I had been trying for weeks to set up a meeting with Satish Sheynde, the elected representative for Dharavi’s 176th Ward.13 In contrast to Dharavi’s other corporators, who had remained quiet about the project, Sheynde had been publicly voicing his opposition. When I finally had a chance to meet him, it took little prompting for Sheynde to begin criticizing the DRP.14 First of all, he explained, “the public is confused about the plan. Mukesh Mehta is not explaining it very clearly.” He went on to explain that the residents in his ward were primarily business people – industrialists, leather workers, tailors – and that many of them currently have much more space than is promised under the plan: some residents currently have as much as two or three thousand square feet for their homes and businesses. He estimated that 30 percent of the house-holds in his ward have more than the promised 225 square feet; 65 percent have roughly 225 square feet, and only 5 percent have less. “If thirty percent of my constituents are going to be harmed by the plan, how can I support it?” he asked rhetorically. He explained that those who have more space are small-scale manufacturers who need the additional space for their work. He explained that Mehta’s plan “looks nice, with its gardens and hospitals. But how will the people live if they cannot do their businesses?”15

I asked Sheynde how he learns about his constituents’ concerns. Do they come to see him to discuss the DRP? He replied emphatically yes: his con-stituents come to him to voice these fears about losing their homes and businesses as well as other matters. But he quickly clarified that, even if he brings them to the project planners, his constituents’ concerns will not be addressed. “Mukesh Mehta and the SRA will not change the plan. They are making all the decisions themselves.” He further explained that, as an elected corporator, he had little say in “how the city gets run.” The city is run by Maharashtra’s chief minister, he said; local politicians “are not very involved.”


Mehta later concurred with Sheynde’s assessment of municipal politicians’ role in the planning process. He explained that the influence of local politicians over development planning is “negligible.”16 “The MCGM only matters when speed money17 is involved,” he observed. “But speed money isn’t important here.” He said that local politicians “do not operate on conviction, only on what they can get.” But, because the municipal commissioner is in support of the project, the rest of the MCGM will eventually come to support it too. “The Municipal Commissioner will make everyone fall in line,” he noted.

While speaking more specifically about the local politicians like Sheynde, who represent Dharavi’s six MCGM corporator wards, Mehta conceded that they matter because their constituents matter. He thought about it for a minute and then acknowledged that they can ultimately be “managed” regardless of their constituents’ interests. “They operate on the kick and lick theory.18 You can manage them by managing the top party bosses.” This mode of party management is particularly relevant in Dharavi. In contrast to the situation in most other areas in Mumbai, Dharavi’s six ward corpora-tors were all members of the Congress Party, the party in power at both the state and national levels.19 Because the Shiv Sena Party holds a majority of seats in the MCGM, most local wards are run by Shiv Sainiks, which can instigate conflicts between the municipality and the state government and can make it more difficult for party leaders to “manage” the local represen-tatives. But, because Satish Sheynde and Dharavi’s other ward corporators were Congress Party members, Mehta was confident that they would be com-pelled to support the project. He elaborated that the area’s member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA)20 and its member of Parliament (MP)21 – a father and daughter pair who are also members of the Congress Party – “will make them toe the line.”

Although Dharavi’s municipal corporators – people like Sheynde – accept that they have little say over the drafting of the project’s development plan, some continued to express frustration about the situation. In that first meeting in Dharavi’s municipal warehouse district, Sheynde had described the specificities of land ownership and social structure in Dharavi that he suspected would undermine the DRP’s implementation and cause hard-ship for the residents.22 He noted, in particular, the difficulties residents face when living in transit camps or temporary accommodations built during the construction period. “But Mukesh Mehta and the SRA don’t know or care about these problems,” he said angrily. “They haven’t thought through these problems. They are sitting in air-conditioned offices and aren’t thinking about how it will actually work.” Acknowledging that his familiarity with these issues should make him a resource, he speculated that the project will run into problems because Mehta has not valued the embedded knowledge of local politicians.

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This knowledge was revealed one evening as I sat in the ward office of Vishnu Damle, the Corporator for Dharavi’s 177th Ward.23 His office was a small, unornamented room adjacent to the Mahatma Gandhi Municipal School, on a dirt path alongside Dharavi Main Road. Damle sat behind his desk while I sat to the side, leaving room for his constituents on the other side of the desk. An older, soft-spoken man, Damle turned to me and mused about the project between visits from his constituents.

The first person to come in was a small, thin woman whose wrinkles made her look much older than her years. She explained in Marathi that her husband had left her with no money and no family here in Mumbai. She wanted to return to her village, where she had family and people who would help her, but she had no money even for the train ticket home. She explained that her children were hungry and had nothing to eat. As Damle listened to her story, he wore a look of mild frustration rather than one of concern. As he asked her questions about the situation, it was clear that he was trying to poke holes in her story. After the exchange, Damle said that he would buy some food for her and her children, but he would not give her money for the ticket. She thanked him as she was ushered out by Damle’s assistant and taken to a nearby dry goods shop. Once they left, he told me that he did not believe her story but recognized that she was clearly facing other hardships. When I asked whether this type of request was common, he replied that yes, this makes up most of his “political work.” His assessment seemed accurate, as I sat all evening and listened to his constituents telling him of their personal hardships.

Given the condition of his constituents, he explained between meet-ings, the promises being made by Mehta and the other promoters of the DRP did not match the actual needs of Dharavi’s residents. He described the troubles his constituents have faced because of their quasi-legal status and the government’s lack of interest in addressing their basic needs. He explained:

Government has opposed the people and not allowed them to construct a nice space. There are no markets in Dharavi or colleges or even footpaths. But now they are making a full plan for Dharavi, a big plan. But it would be nice if they just did small things to improve the conditions here.

“But,” Damle sighed, “that type of development would not make the kind of money that this big project will.” He commended Mehta for getting the government to go along with his plan when earlier Dharavi schemes had not gone that far. But, even so, he explained, it is not the type of thing his constit-uents need.

While Sheynde and Damle expressed concern that the DRP would not adequately address the needs of their constituents – in Sheynde’s case,


the larger property owners who operate businesses from their homes or, in Damle’s case, the poorer residents who need basic services more than high-end developments – most of Dharavi’s other corporators were more neutral about the scheme. Several of them saw their role on the project as intermediaries between Dharavi’s residents and the state government, helping to make the residents feel comfortable with the development plan. This role was explained to me by Subash Kale, an MCGM bureaucrat working on the DRP. Sitting in the G North administrative ward office about three miles from Dharavi, he argued that the MCGM as a whole is playing a very small role in the project’s planning process.24 He explained that his only role was to work with the SRA and to help it determine which residents were eligible to get housing under the scheme. He acknowledged that neither the MCGM administrators nor the elected corporators would have much say about the project. The corporators’ role, he said, is to convince the res-idents that the project is “a good thing.” “First the corporators will convince the activists and community leaders. And then the activists will convince the people.” He expressed confidence that the residents would eventually come to support the plan.

Alka Korde, the corporator for Dharavi’s 178th Ward, saw her role in much the same way. She noted that her job was to “explain it to the people.” She clarified her belief that the project served the best interests of Dharavi and explained her efforts to help her constituents understand this. She suggested that this would not be too difficult to do, because the project is perceived as a Congress Party project and “the people trust the Congress Party.”

They know that Congress will do a good job for the people. From about 1985, this has been an all Congress area … The Shiv Sena and BJP are saying that Congress wants to pull you out of Dharavi. But people have full trust in the Congress Party. So there will not be a problem. They will not be successful.25

In spite of this perceived role as project translators and advocates, it struck me how little the ward corporators seemed to know about the DRP. Each of them spoke in broad generalities about the project and dodged my questions when I probed for more details about its specific features. This mode of avoidance was apparent when I was talking to Corporator Shivdas Mane of Dharavi’s 175th Ward.26 After dodging several questions about which Dharavi residents would be eligible for the project or how much space those deemed eligible would receive, I asked how he learns about the project’s rules and features as they change. As soon as I asked the question, his assistant sitting next to him jumped in and, in English, said: “He’s the corporator, of course he knows about the project.” After much prodding, he finally explained that the MLA

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keeps him informed about the plan. While it was not clear that they were operating on the “kick and lick theory,” it did appear that information trickled down through the party hierarchy. But when I asked the same question to another of Dharavi’s ward corporators, Seema Joshi from the 179th Ward, she admitted that no one shared information with her. She stated plainly that the government keeps a tight hold on information and keeps it out of the hands of politicians or the public.

Challenging the Strategic Partnership

Despite the resignation expressed by these elected officials, Mukesh Mehta’s position and the centralized planning process he worked to craft did not go uncontested. Between 2008 and 2009 a small but influential group of housing advocates and retired bureaucrats voiced concerns about Mehta’s role and other aspects of the project’s planning process. Petitioning the chief minister to remove him from his post and speaking candidly – although mostly anonymously – to newspaper reporters about their concerns, many members of Mumbai’s advocacy community publicly challenged the position Mehta had carved out for himself. Although the chief minister ultimately maintained his support for Mehta and the DRP, these public challenges revealed the political contestations entailed by state restructur-ing. Despite Mehta’s efforts to keep the project outside the public gaze, the project, and particularly its planning process, had become the subject of heated public debate.

By mid-2007, it appeared that Mehta’s decade-long effort to redevelop Dharavi would finally be realized. In January of that year, the state government had finalized the necessary revisions to Mumbai’s Development Control Rules, thus putting into formal policy the process and procedures for the DRP. Early that summer the Expression of Interest document had been drafted, outlining the project’s objectives, financing arrangements, and the details of the inter-national bidding process that would select the five developers to carry out the work. On June 1, 2007, the EOI document was made public when newspapers throughout the world carried a half-page color advertisement inviting “inter-national developers to transform Dharavi, one of the largest slum pockets in the world, into an integrated township of Mumbai with all modern ame-nities and complete infrastructure” (Slum Rehabilitation Authority, 2007). As domestic and international developers prepared EOI applications, Mumbai’s housing advocates mobilized an opposition and activated their transnational activist networks.27 In a letter emailed to friends and colleagues in India and abroad, Sheela Patel, director of SPARC, a prominent Mumbai-based NGO working on housing and livelihood issues, articulated the position of many of the project’s critics, writing:


Dharavi, we believe, is symbolic of local struggles overcome by global investment in front of whom our governments bow down to deliver projects which are often at the cost of local concerns. We seriously feel concerned about the capacity of the present state institutions to arbitrate between the interests of the commu-nities of the poor and international capital and local and national real estate businesses, who are in fact the new planners of cities.28

In response to Patel’s email, a letter – signed by prominent activists and academics both in and outside of India – was sent to India’s prime minister requesting that the project be placed on hold while the interests of the local communities are better addressed. Even as the project continued to move forward and dozens of EOI applications were received that summer, the opposition remained vocal.

In addition to raising concerns about the influence of global investors, the activists made a direct challenge to the project’s planning process, including the prominent position held by Mukesh Mehta. In August 2008 a delegation of Dharavi residents, led by right-wing political leader Uddav Thackeray, made this charge in a meeting with the state’s chief minister. Meeting some of the del-egate’s demands, the chief minister agreed to establish a committee comprised of Dharavi residents to help ensure a more open and accountable planning process (Times of India, 2008; Daily News & Analysis, 2008). Soon after the meeting a ten-person committee was convened; but, rather than a committee of Dharavi residents, it was established as a “Committee of Experts,” made up of prominent housing activists and former bureaucrats (including Sheela Patel), as well as of the state’s former chief secretary and of the former chief planner of the Metropolitan Mumbai Regional Development Authority.

While the relationship between Mehta and the Committee of Experts were strained from the outset, their conflicts came to a head the following year, when the committee reportedly sent a letter to the chief minister requesting Mehta’s resignation. The letter was never made public, but members of the committee discussed its contents in a June 2009 article published in the Times of India. According to the report, the letter expressed concerns about the way in which Mehta had been selected as project consultant, about his qualifications for the position, and about the size of his consultancy fee (Bharucha, 2009a).

The standard procedure of good governance requires a transparent process of selection, which includes an invitation of expression of interest by agencies which fulfill certain basic pre-qualifications and experience, a rigorous process of scrutiny and objective evaluation. We were however, shocked to find that no such procedures had been followed and the present consultants were arbitrarily and hastily appointed on a colossal fee to be paid from the public exchequer.29

Noting that Mehta’s “further continuance will be detrimental to the interests of the project and the city,” committee members called for his removal (Bharucha,

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2009b). In the following month, the Committee of Experts raised a new set of concerns about the project, in an open letter to the chief minister. The committee decided to make this letter public because, as they noted, “earlier letters to government regarding our strong reservations about the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) have not been acknowledged.”30 Mentioning neither “the present consultants” nor Mehta by name, the July 2009 letter detailed the committee’s concerns about the features of the plan and identified revisions that would better address the residents’ needs. Still unmoved by the committee’s recommendations, the chief minister issued no response to the second letter.

Relations between the government, Mehta, and the committee continued to sour over the next several months. Reports began to surface of newly strained relations between Mehta and the CEO of the Dharavi Redevelopment Authority (the successor to Iqbal Chahal) (Mehta, 2009a), and some political leaders began publicly criticizing the Committee of Experts (Mehta, 2009b). The MP representing the area reportedly raised concerns to the chief minister that the committee was obstructing the DRP planning process. He explained to a newspaper reporter that, “if the committee is fulfilling its role for which the members were appointed, I have no objection.” But, he continued, “the project is meant for the people’s benefit and the local residents have reposed their trust in me by electing me from this constituency” (Mehta, 2009b). In October 2009, when the fourteen developers bidding on the project were expected to submit their final documentation, half of them abruptly withdrew from consideration (Bharucha, 2009c; Mehta, 2009a). Although no public explanations were given, one of the developers, speaking anonymously to a Times of India reporter, simply stated: “it’s a messy affair and we’ve decided to stay out” (Bharucha, 2009c). In spite of Mehta’s efforts and the assurances of local corporators, public scrutiny and a vocal opposition had begun to under-mine the project.

By early 2010, the state government had placed the DRP on hold. With public fights underway between civil society members, politicians, bureau-crats, and Mehta himself, few developers seemed willing to move forward with the bidding process. Maintaining its support for Mehta, the state government began exploring other strategies for bringing the plan to fruition. And, while the project had not been completely abandoned, political fragmentations and its waning political support appeared likely to derail Dharavi’s redevelopment.

Discussion: Political Entrepreneurship and Fragmented Power

Despite charges from Mehta’s critics that his participation has been detrimental to the project, it has clearly been essential. Unlike more typical examples of strategic partnerships in which the government seeks out private


sector involvement, the DRP is Mehta’s project. Maharashtra’s leadership recognized that the project’s survival depended on Mehta’s continued partic-ipation. In the absence of centralized authority within the local government, the participation of a private advocate like Mehta appears to be necessary if planning efforts like the DRP are to be seen through to development.

In broad strokes, this case resonates with the governance shifts identified in the wider global cities literature, which emphasizes the increased centrality of private actors in activities that had been the exclusive or primary domain of the state (Brenner and Theodore, 2005; Sassen, 2006; Shatkin, 2007). Much of this literature has associated this priva-tized authority with a decline in state power – some even suggest that such initiatives represent a “politics beyond the state” (Wapner, 1995). Yet, rather than diminishing the authority of the state, this case reveals the reconfigu-ration and re-scaling of the institutional power required by the Indian state to facilitate globally oriented urban development. A reluctant (and at times inept) urban planner, the government of Maharashtra has viewed Mehta’s project as a way to promote globally oriented urban redevelopment without making significant public expenditures. This arrangement reflects the con-solidation of state power with the objective of “mold[ing] the geography of capital investment,” thereby creating what Neil Brenner has called a “new state space” (Brenner, 2004: 16). Given the fractured nature of power in the Indian city, this state space has scaled outside of the traditional boundaries of bureaucratic and political authority, within the institution of a project management consultant. While similar strategic partnerships, enabling expanded state involvement in the area of development planning, have been recognized by other observers of neoliberal or globally oriented shifts in India’s urban politics (particularly in the context of NGO participation), this literature analyzed these arrangements outside of the framework of state restructuring.

Within this literature, the local Indian state has generally been treated as something of a black box, a nondescript set of institutions and actors presumably acting as a coherent whole. Yet, by looking inside these typically obscured institutions, this case reveals the conflicting and, at times, collaborative arrangements forged both within and outside of the differentiated parts of the local state. Mehta’s claim (confirmed by public officials) that he wrote inter-office letters on government stationary reveals the porous boundaries of the state’s development agencies. Meanwhile, as Mehta inserted himself into structural gaps in the bureaucracy, he relied on locally elected officials to com-municate project objectives and the promised benefits to their constituents. As some politicians voiced concerns about the project’s detrimental effects on Dharavi’s residents, other representatives in the same political party worked to bring their constituents on board. And, as the opposition began to threaten the project’s survival, the political leadership maintained its tentative support

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for Mehta and his project, even through the formation of new governments and with the ascendance of new leaders. Given these fragmentations, both the authority required to undertake the developments most directly aligned with global capital and those acting on its behalf have coalesced outside the tradi-tional boundaries of the state.

The DRP’s survival throughout this period is a product of political entrepre-neurship. Acting more as a salesman than as a technocratic planner, Mukesh Mehta sold his project to the government, sold it to domestic and international developers, and (relying on the political party structure) sold it to the broader public and the residents of Dharavi. Although his salesmanship was not always successful, as is evidenced by the opposition and subsequent flight of interested developers, he maintained an unwavering commitment to his enterprise. This commitment resonates with Max Weber’s classical description of the “political entrepreneur” in his essay Politics as a Vocation. Emphasizing the intrinsic relationship between the entrepreneur and his enterprise, Weber (1946: 85) writes that “it is precisely the entrepreneur who is tied to his enterprise and is therefore not dispensable … it is very difficult for the entrepreneur to be represented in his enterprise by someone else, even temporarily.” Although the context of the quotation is different – Weber is describing a new class of professional politicians rather than a private entrepreneur navigating the political and bureaucratic boundaries of the state – the description reveals the personal skills required to enact this new state strategy. Like Weber’s politician, Mehta has maintained a nearly single-minded commitment to his enterprise and in consequence has become indispensable to it.

The project basis of the enterprise reflects the observation made by Arjun Appadurai (2001) that discrete projects have gained precedence over more comprehensive planning efforts. “Whether it be the World Bank, most Northern donors, the Indian state or other agencies,” Appadurai (2001: 30) notes, “most institutional sources of funding are strongly biased in favour of the ‘project’ model, in which short-term logics of investment, accounting, report-ing and assessment are regarded as vital.” Beyond these short-term logics, discrete projects like the DRP are also sites of consolidated power. Within this structure, Mehta could coordinate between the various public agencies and private entities (including the investors, developers, and service providers) whose involvement was deemed vital.

Meanwhile, this coordination, along with his other entrepreneurial activ-ities, has been supported by Mehta’s NRI status, his professional experience in the United States, and his global acumen. Selling the project to both the state government and the city’s business community as a “global” endeavor, Mehta has relied upon his experience abroad to convince these audiences that he is well positioned to globalize the iconic slum. As he pitched the project at industry conventions and private meetings with potential investors abroad, he presented himself as someone who both possesses an insider’s understanding


of the complex layers of India’s bureaucratic and political systems and can render them comprehensible to those on the outside.

Mehta’s “insider outside” status, however, may ultimately lead to the DRP’s unraveling. With few connections to Mumbai’s professional networks and civil society organizations when he returned to India in the mid-1990s, Mehta has failed to build a broader base of support required for Dharavi’s redevelopment. Deliberately positioning himself outside the political party structure, he was free to work with whoever could garner government endorsement. But, without the institutional support of a particular party, politicians’ commitment to him could prove just as fickle. And by main-taining the marginality of municipal officials he failed to penetrate and sit-uate himself within Dharavi’s local political networks. Once the opposition began to mount, he appeared to have few allies outside of the government. Although the city’s business community and elite civil society organizations had been advocating the types of development that would attract interna-tional investors and global firms, they never explicitly endorsed Mehta’s project as the realization of this vision. In the absence of this support or of a broader development coalition, the DRP has remained the property of a single individual and has failed to transcend the political contestations and institutional fragmentations that have typically hamstrung planning and development efforts in urban India.

Conclusion

Given these fragmentations, it would not be surprising if the DRP comes to a similar end as Dharavi’s earlier, equally ambitious, redevelopment plans. Despite the political entrepreneurship that Mukesh Mehta has brought to bear on the decade-long planning process, development planning in Mumbai remains pathological. With the regular subversion of formal regulations and the virtual absence of centralized authority, the global ambitions of Mumbai’s civic elite and political leadership remain tempered by local realities. Mehta appeared to possess the agency and global acumen required to enact these “world class” imaginings. He maintained a nearly single-minded commit-ment to this enterprise in the face of government turnover, a rotating cadre of competitive yet ultimately uninterested bureaucrats, and ongoing mobi-lizations around the right of Dharavi’s residents to stay put. His sustained involvement at each step of the planning process demonstrates the need for an advocate committed to the enterprise. Yet, in the absence of both deeper institutional change and more broadly based support from civil society, political entrepreneurship may not be sufficient to overcome the fragmenta-tions that continue to give the city’s planning institutions their pathological character.

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This case contributes to a growing literature on India’s contested politics of urban development, which demonstrates the increasingly central role played by an array of non-state actors in land use planning and in the provision of basic resources. While this literature has made important contributions to understandings of privatized power, along with processes of cooptation, nego-tiation, and popular insurgencies, most of these works have left the public institutions of development planning inside a black box and have had little to say about ongoing processes of state restructuring and re-scaling. By analyzing the strategic partnership that emerged in the context of the DRP as a “new state space,” or as a site of reconfigured state power outside of the traditional boundaries of administrative or political authority, I have attempted to detail some of the transformations underway on both the public and the private side of the partnership. While the reconfigurations may not go far enough to consolidate the authority and the resources necessary to overcome the endemic fragmentations, they reflect a new state strategy, aimed at trans-forming Mumbai into a node of global investment and a site of economic innovation.

Acknowledgments

Appreciation to Gavin Shatkin, Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, Smitha Radhakrishnan, Michael Levien, Sheetal Chhabria, Llerena Searle, Nausheen Anwar, Julian Go and the participants of Boston University’s Workshop on Society, Politics, and Culture (SPC) for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

Notes

1 Discussion on November 14, 2006.2 Discussion on June 19, 2006.3 Discussion on November 14, 2006.4 Discussion on August 18, 2006.5 Discussion on June 19, 2006.6 Discussion on August 18, 2006.7 Discussion on August 18, 2006.8 Discussion on August 18, 2006.9 Discussion on August 18, 2006. Personal conversations with Chahal confirmed

his support for the project, but he did not describe it to me as the most important one in his career.

10 For a discussion of Mehta’s engagement with Roopa Shinde and community relations activities, see Weinstein, 2009.

11 Discussion on June 19, 2006.


12 Discussion on August 18, 2006.13 The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is divided into 227

electoral wards, each of which is represented by a corporator elected directly by the voters in that ward. Dharavi is made up of six electoral wards. The names of the corporators and of the wards they represent have been obscured here.

14 The meeting took place on August 4, 2006.15 Discussion on August 4, 2006.16 Discussion on November 14, 2006.17 Speed money refers to the payment of bribes, which is sometimes necessary to get

permits approved or projects moving along. When bribes are not paid, projects can be stalled; then “speed money” can get them moving again.

18 He elaborated that “kick and lick” (kicking down and licking up) refers to their acceptance of intra-party hierarchy.

19 Municipal elections were held in 2007, and two of Dharavi’s congress-held seats were lost, one to the Shiv Sena and one to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

20 MLA is a representative in the state-level legislative body.21 MP is a representative in the national-level legislative body or Lok Sabha.22 Discussion on August 4, 2006.23 Discussion on September 11, 2006.24 Discussion on September 18, 2006.25 Discussion on September 8, 2006.26 Discussion on August 8, 2006.27 For a more detailed discussion of the opposition to the project, see Weinstein, 2009.28 Personal email dated May 30, 2007.29 Quoted in Bharucha 2009a.30 Public letter to Hon Shri Ashok Chavan from Committee of Experts, dated

7 July, 2009.

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Anjaria, J. S. (2009). Guardians of the bourgeois city: Citizenship, public space and middle class activism in Mumbai. City and Community, 8(4), 391–406.

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