Mumbai is the city of dreams, with hundreds of thousands migrating to the city in search of a living. The government has been scrambling to upgrade and build new infrastructure projects in the city to cope with its growing population. The massive Eastern Express Highway was one such project and it proved to be a godsend to many when it finally opened up, providing much-needed relief to thousands of commuters traveling from south to east Mumbai. But what happened to the thousands of people that were displaced to make way for the project?

Broken promises and an endless wait
When the MMRDA first started construction, the people living here were promised resettlement in new homes in a different area. And while nearly 4,000 were resettled, around 2,000 odd residents have been left with no permanent shelter since 2009. “The MMRDA promised us bigger homes and started demolishing our huts but we never got new homes”, says Rajesh a resident of the area. Alka, another resident is quite bitter about the way the government has treated them. “They made tall promises of providing us new homes in the same area. But that never happened”, she recollects with anger.

Fed up with the long wait, these residents have decided to take to the streets if they are not provided homes within a month. Supporting them in their cause is local MLA Tukaram Kate. “The MMRDA has assured me that within a month 1,300 residents will get homes and remaining 700 will get rehabilitated at a later stage. If this doesn’t happen, I will either block the highway or storm the MMRDA office with all the people here”, he proclaims as affected residents cheer and clap.

This is not an isolated incident. Experts say there are scores of petitions by PAP (Project Affected People) against the government and its failed promises of resettlement and rehabilitation, all of which are gathering dust in the Bombay High Court.

Bad planning plagues resettlement efforts
Experts blame an inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy for the government’s failure to rehabilitate and resettle PAPs, with the government making matters worse through bad planning and implementation. “In one case, the Municipal Corporation rehabilitated PAPs on their land. After several years, they were asked to relocate yet again from the given land. This happens time and again on government projects. These project-affected people are kept in a permanent state of migration and their rehabilitation never happens for decades” says urban planner, Chandrashekhar Prabhu.

Cases like these make it easy to understand why PAPs are an angry lot. And if this continues, experts say it will have a big impact on future infrastructure projects in the city. “When PAPs continue to get affected and promises continue to be broken, in the future nobody will be willing to leave their homes. People will agitate, People go to the police. They may take legal action; try to get stays on projects. All of this will make negotiations very difficult”, says property lawyer Uday Wavikar.

The government can ill-afford such a situation. Timelines for big-tickets infrastructure projects are already plagued by land-acquisition problems that can set a project back by decades. The government needs to have the trust of the people if it wants to upgrade infrastructure in time.

Ashwini Priolker, Reporter, NDTV