One of Asia's most notorious slums went up for sale yesterday in a US$2.3 billion project to raze thousands of ramshackle homes and create one of the world's hottest building sites.
The filthy and cramped 217 hectare slum of Dharavi stands on prime building land in Mumbai, parts of which have some of the world's most expensive real estate, and has long been an embarrassment to promoting the country's economic capital as a global financial center.
Newspaper advertisements were published in 20 countries yesterday offering "the opportunity of the millennium" for five major developers to take part in the long-delayed and controversial project in one of Asia's largest slums.
Some 57,000 families -- about 300,000 people -- will be moved into free but tiny one-bedroom homes in the area and swathes of land will be cleared for business and high-rise flats bounding some of the city's wealthiest parts.
"Throughout the world slum dwellers are regarded as pests," said architect Mukesh Mehta, who has championed the project for a decade.
"With this, the government of Maharashtra [the state that includes Mumbai] regards them as important human resources and assets.
"You can expect a very beautiful suburb that hopefully other people from around the world will want to emulate," Mehta said.
The project has been fiercely condemned by the slum-dwellers, who have created a vibrant self-sufficient economy of potteries, tanneries and other industry among the warren of narrow lanes.
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