Slums in Mumbai sell for £100,000

“I don’t want money, I want a new home,” she says. “How am I
going to afford a new flat for my family with the money these developers are
offering? I know it sounds a lot of money, but realistically, in a city like
Mumbai, £100,000 isn’t.”

A huge 496 families lived in the slum in 2008, but today over 350 have been
paid an average of £100,000 and left.

But Ms Pravin is among a small minority still waiting and insisting on a home
exchange.

“Many of us have watched as bulldozers have moved in to demolish the
surrounding buildings. It’s like living on a building site now, and it’s
become quite terrifying when the drug dealers move into crumbling buildings
and hide,” she said.

“But I will stand my ground. I love this neighbourhood. I’ve lived here
16 years. If I have to move to make way for developers and new buildings
then I want a good deal that will help my family’s future and security.”

For other former slum-dwellers who have sold up, the payout has offered them a
new life away from the squalor of the railway shacks.

Lubna Mamin, 23, and her husband Imran, along with his parents and sister,
accepted a new apartment for their filthy slum in Bandra East.

Now life could not be better in Bazar Road, Bandra West, in a flat with a
private shower and lavatory and a separate kitchen.

She says: “It’s so nice to have our own private lavatory and shower. The
security is lovely. We never felt so safe in our old place but now when we
close our door at night we are home, our own home.”

Ms Mamin and her husband’s family were set up in rented accommodation by their
developers while the new apartment block was being built. Once it was
completed they exchanged paper work, and the new apartment was theirs.

For the developers handing over ten or 15 apartments to slum families is
nothing compared to the profits they made from selling the remaining 70
apartments at around £200,000 per flat.

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