Looking for slum solution in Goa

At least for Councillors and officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi any solution to the burgeoning slum problem of the city lies in a trip to Mumbai and Goa.

While the Capital is struggling hard to find a way to deal with the problem — an estimated 30-lakh people reside in slums here — Councillors have made it a habit of visiting Mumbai and Goa almost every year to study the slum problem. For the fourth time in five years, a jumbo team of nearly 20 Councillors, led by the Delhi Mayor, Ashok K. Jain, left for a five-day trip to Mumbai and Goa on Thursday. The Leader of the House, Satbir Singh, and the Leader of the Opposition, Subhash Arya, are also undertaking the trip along with their wives.

Referring to previous trips of the Councillors, a senior MCD official said: “It is nothing but a leisure trip in which several lakhs of rupees are spent. And at the end of the trip, the official accompanying the group makes a formal report.”

Asserting that the slum policy of the Capital was mostly dictated by the Union Government and the courts, the official said the recommendations of the report are hardly implemented. “In fact, these reports are gathering dust and rarely influence the slum policy of the Capital,” he pointed out.

Investigations revealed that after the Congress was voted to power in April 2002, officials and Councillors have made more than a dozen trips to Mumbai and another nearly half-a-dozen trips to Goa to study and get a first-hand information on how they are finding a solution to the slums problem there.

Despite the fact that every visit to Mumbai is justified in terms of studying the famous “Mumbai-model of in-situ development of slums”, the MCD has been following the policy of eviction of slum clusters and relocating them to a new place mostly on the outskirts of the Capital. The only place where the MCD has tried to follow the Mumbai model is at Motia Khan and this has been running behind schedule for more than half a decade, officials conceded. As of now one does not know when this project would be completed, they said.

Though the study trip so far has been restricted to less than half-a-dozen Councillors, this is for the first time that a jumbo team has been sent. Two Councillors – Virender Kasana and Roshan Lal Ahuja – who are not members of the Slum Committee too have gone on the trip to Mumbai. Interestingly, the Deputy Chairman of the Standing Committee in the MCD, Ashok Jain, who for the past two years has been presenting the annual budget of the Slum Department, has not gone on any of these trips. “Solution to the slums lies in Delhi and not in Mumbai or Goa. This is all wastage of people’s money,” he is reported to have told the Mayor while refusing to go on such trips.