State, builders claim Mumbai’s salt pans are key to solving housing crisis. Is their plan viable?
The vast tracts of land are a part of the coastal ecosystem and unsuitable for development. Improving services in slums is a better option instead, say experts.
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Earlier this month, the Union cabinet issued its approval for the Adani Group to construct rental housing for slum dwellers on 103 hectares of marshy tracts in Mumbai that were used to produce salt.
Adani’s Dharavi Redevelopment Project aims to rehouse 6.5 lakh residents who live in the 2.5-sq-km precinct that is considered to be one of the world’s largest slums. It is a joint venture between the Maharashtra government and the Adani Group.
The salt pan land will be used to provide rental housing to Dharavi residents who are “ineligible” to get free homes because they are living in tenements that were built after the cut-off year of 2000 set for beneficiaries.
This cabinet’s decision has been criticised both by the Opposition parties and environmentalists.
Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aditya Thackeray declared that construction on salt pan land would “ruin Mumbai”.
Environmentalists too have long warned against such a move. Salt pans are part of a contiguous ecosystem of wetlands and mangroves that act as natural buffers against floods in Mumbai – a city prone to waterlogging, said Debi Goenka, an environmentalist and the executive trustee of the Conservation Action Trust.
Salt pans occupy 798 hectares of Mumbai’s total area of 45,828 hectares or 4,355 sq km, according to the Development Plan 2014-’34,...
