India should cash in on slums, not remove them: Urban expert

Instead of clearing slums, India should use them for its poverty reduction strategy, says Jeb Brugmann, an urban planning expert from Canada, who also points out that high rises and shopping malls do not cater to the masses.

Brugmann, who has been in the field of corporate and urban strategy consultancy for more than two decades, said cities like Delhi - instead of aping Western city models blindly - should be developed on the basis of their own uniqueness.

"India has not studied city building and how to tailor it in accordance with its needs. It has been looking abroad, like the US, for its city model, which other countries have done," said Brugmann, who has worked in India.

"But one has to understand that things like high rises and shopping malls cater to a small margin of Indians and not the masses," Brugmann, an American currently living in Toronto, told IANS in an interview here.

"One of the solutions in effective city building is understanding the concept that each slum is unique. People who migrate to a city are risk takers and a creative lot. They find ways of surviving.

"Instead of clearing such unorganised settlements, if they are established, the settlers' savings can be used to develop that part of the city into a lower middle class and later into a middle class society," said the author of "Welcome to the Urban Revolution". He was in the city to launch the book.

Citing the example of Mumbai's Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, Brugmann said despite a GDP of $1.5 billion every year - thanks to a number of economic sectors like retail shops, warehouses and hotels - it is still considered an "urban blemish".

"It's a Raj or British period mentality that India still has about slums and slumdwellers. Much like the movie 'Slumdog Millionaire', which has a positive ending, slums are still shown in a poor light.

"India needs to understand that to tailor its cities it will have to use its feature - high density - to its advantage.

"In a densely populated place like Dharavi, the economy is robust. They have an entrepreneurial nature - like most Indians - and know how to save. If the state can help them in providing proper sanitation and roadways, they can develop into a middle class society," said Brugmann, 52.

Brugmann first came to India in 2004, when he worked in a consultancy firm with management guru C.K. Prahalad. And though he has been to Delhi a couple of times, it's Mumbai and the south Indian cities that Brugmann has worked extensively in.

Having worked across the world, Brugmann said that India should look up to Brazil in the way it has developed itself.

"In the 1960s-70s, Brazil did the same mistakes as India is now making - removing unorganised settlements, relocating them to high rises. But now Rio has a state policy that no such settlement is removed," he said.

"India will progress better if it focuses on the traditional way of building cities," Brugmann added.

(Azera Rahman can be contacted at azera.p@ians.in)

Last updated on Jul 2^nd, 2009 at 14:07 pm IST--IANS