TRANSCRIPT: Zafar Iqbal

Fred de Sam Lazaro, TPT: Why don’t we begin with just some overall figures and facts about Bombay or Mumbai? The population is about 12, 12 million?

Iqbal: 12, 12 and a half million last year.

FdSL: How many people would you say the infrastructure - water supply, sewage, electricity - was the city built for?

Iqbal: Oh, the city was built for much less than that, maybe even a third of that. And 60% of this population of Bombay lives in what we call slums, which is unauthorized structures, very small structures, cheek by jowl illegal structures. And so 60% of the people living there they don't pay for the facilities, which is a very sorry state of affairs. And yet there's plenty of water; there's plenty of power. But the way they live is very bad for their living standards, their very lifestyle and it needs to be upgraded for they are also human beings.

FdSL: What's the magnet? Give people who've never been near India some sense of why people would come to a place that frankly looks utterly miserable.

Iqbal: El Dorado, jobs, work - here in Bombay even the poorest of the poor can make as much money - it's about 100 rupees a day - that's a little more than $2 a day, which they can't make in their villages in over a week's time. So even if they have to sleep on the side of the road they would come to Bombay to make that kind of money. And nobody goes to sleep in Bombay hungry. And there are many stories of rags to riches over here. People come; work very hard and in a few years' time they've made enough to buy a small place in their villages back home. So they come here for opportunity, the chance to make a good living and they succeed. And the success story gets repeated. Everybody talk about it. So and so went to Bombay. Why don't you also go? So in the villages there's a lot of peer pressure on you. Far-flung villages, far-flung villages from the north, the east, the south go to Bombay and that's what's been happening to the city. In 1800 Bombay as a town was hardly 10,000 people as population. By 1950, 150 years later it was just about 3 or 4 million people. But it more, grew more than 3 times in the last 50 years because it's become the city of opportunities. There's been so many reasons for that. The biggest thing was the port, the Bombay port. It was a protected port. You could access it in the monsoon and the British encouraged it. After the American Civil War or rather during the American Civil Was a lot of cotton needed to be transported from the hinterland of India to Manchester and Leeds in England, which cotton couldn't come from the south of America. So that give a boost, that war - one man's meat is another's poison as they say - that give a boost to Bombay. And then people got the idea of sending other things there. People got the idea of having their own mills over here. When the southwest, when the west opened again after the Civil War then people said all right let's make our own cloth here. So they opened up the mills. So other chemical industries came with that. The other ancillary industries came with the mills: the packaging industry, the transportation industry. Then over the turn of the century the film industry came into being and that brought a lot of job opportunities. You know for every film unit there are thousands of people employed with the unit, various works to do with them. Then in 1932 Mr. J.R.D. Tatar, a pioneer industrialist of India flew from London to Bombay and that started the air industry coming here. So industries came over here and now of course the info-technology industry is very much ensconced in Bombay. It's a known fact but not very much publicized fact that more jobs in the IT sector or the information technology sector opened in Bombay rather than in Bangalore or Hyderabad put together in any given year over the 5 years. So there's always an opportunity for people to come here and make a decent earning and living out of that.

FdSL: Decent if you can consider sleeping where we saw people today, something decent. What's the solution? The Chinese, for example, have simply hitherto had a system of residential passes or permits so you can only live where you were born and you have to have a reason to move there. Is that something you can even start to consider in India?

Iqbal: Fred, that's a very good question you ask. Decent, you're right. Decent is what can be different to different people. Decent for you and me may not be what is decent for them. They may sleep in the open. They may sleep with the dogs and others lying around but for 10 years, 15 years they're making enough money, which they can for a lifetime and go back and live in their villages with a small roof over their heads, which they own. Otherwise they don't even have that in their villages too. So they have to sacrifice something over here. I agree with you. It's not a human way of lifestyles. Now the problem with Bombay was that until the 50's the people coming in were something like maybe 100 a week or more, 10 days. Now it's something like 100 plus families coming to Bombay every day. Now this real exodus sort of a thing started only the 1960's. Until then people coming in here it was in sort of manageable numbers. The other, the main thing started after the 1962 Indo-China War and the 1965 Indo-Pak War. A lot of people from Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Utter Pradesh, Bihar, these are border states of India, they fled to Bombay. They thought it was a safe city. At that time it was outside the air range of the air forces of these two countries. And they never went back and one thing led to another. So the 60's, 70's, and 80's have seen tremendous amount of people coming in here. It's a very human problem. Earlier the government wanted to prevent them from coming here. They wouldn't allow it. But then you didn't have enough government machinery to control all that. And even there the constitution is such that you can go anywhere and live anywhere. You cannot be legally prevented from going into any place in India except, of course, Jammu in Kashmir, which is a different story altogether. So it, it's been very difficult for the state government to have a kind of a work permit. You can't come to Bombay unless you have a work permit. It's impossible. The constitution guarantees free movement as people. We are a democracy, fortunately or unfortunately. So the people are coming in. What the government was trying to do earlier to prevent them then in the 70's they had this thing what they called the up-gradation of the slums. They started giving them free water and power. I would not say free. They wanted to charge some 20 rupees, which is in today's term a half a dollar a month. But nobody paid for that. So on paper they were supposed to pay for it, which is dirt-cheap. A normal family would have paid $2, or $3 a month for that kind of facility, water and power. Toilets were just made out like a common toilets and they could go there but it didn't work. All right, they got water; they never paid. And government landed up spending a lot of money subsidized that services. So in the 1990's we have come out with a scheme where they will encourage the ownership of the slums from going to the slum dwellers. So a piece of land, which nobody can use because it's encroached today, can be redeveloped and it can be owned by a cooperative society of the slum dwellers. Now who will build it is a question. They've given the choice to the slum dwellers but they say we do not have the money for the construction, which costs quite a bit of money in Bombay today. So they came out with a scheme that private developers or builders will be allowed to help house these slum dwellers. So for every square meter of a slum house rehabilitated they government has allowed them the approximately 1 square meter to be built and sold in the open market. Now the profits from this go for the construction of the slum pocket also. So it's like cross subsidizing the two. It is a good scheme. It did start off very well. It fell foul of lack of adequate finance because the builder cannot get the finance from the bank for such a scheme because there's no land with builder. There's no security. But the land belongs to the government and there are slum dwellers on it. So financial institutions are afraid that if one slum dweller goes to the court there might be a problem. There might be a stay order. Now fortunately in the last 5 years a lot of people have gone to the court and the courts have been positive about the whole thing. They have categorically stated that one cannot spoil the happiness of the majority. So if 70% of the slum dwellers agree to a scheme then those 30% must agree or they can be removed from there. Only thing, only problem at the moment is lack of finance. Products, builders to remove the slum pocket, re-house them in a new building, and vacate the premises for the free sale building this seed finance is what's required. Now the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are willing to help but somehow it didn't click in the last 2, 3 years. Currently the government is still agitated about this idea and would like to know what they can do. So we hope that a more positive policy will come. Now this policy, which gives ownership to the slum dwellers, is a very important thing. It enables them to become flat owners from ordinary slum dwellers. They can use that slum to go to a bank and borrow money for their betterment. Like a lot of slum families I know who I have helped rehabilitate have gone and bought sewing machines to stitch cloth and sell it in the market rather than go and become maids and cleaners and house servants of somebody where they just get about 1000 rupees a month. So it's a step up in a…

FdSL: So the catch-22 is that they become role models for more people to flock to the city?

Iqbal: Yeah, that is the negative aspect of the scheme. The people get to know that there's such a scheme coming in so more and more people want to come in. It is a catch-22 situation. I agree with you but government will have to evolve a scheme that they cannot allow the whole of India to come to Bombay. Currently they have a rule that anybody who was here from the 1st of January 1995, only that person will be allowed to be eligible for the scheme. Anybody who doesn't have this letter - like they've given these letters or certificates to all these slum dwellers, what they call a photo pass - they have given this to all the slum dwellers. So anybody who doesn't have it is not eligible for such a scheme. And yes, there is a set, a step up in this whole system. It is not just the improvement of the living standards; it is the improvement of the lifestyle of a person. He becomes the owner of a flat. Now the other advantage is in the previous situation where you just got water and power from the government the structure may have been built by you. The space belongs to the government but the government is an absentee landlord. So you have other people, the local slumlords, the strongmen from the local area they controlled everything. They wouldn't allow you to sell or buy. So they controlled it. They took a hefty commission out of it. Law and order situations were handled by them. It was quite a bad scenario at that time. Today with the authority to sell given to the slum dwellers, the authority of the slumlord has gone down. There's more freedom. Earlier you could sell it by just giving possession and taking a little bit of money, part of which went to the slumlord. Today the owners have this thing. Okay I can sell it officially a few years from now so I don't really need the slumlord. So that's a positive step. But government really needs to prevent further and future encroachments. They are also being, they are being considered at this moment and we hope the policy what they are thinking of is allowing the private sector to protect public territory. Say the pavement outside my office or the pavement outside my house I'm entitled to protect it from being encroached. So these powers are being considered to be given to the private sector.

FdSL: So that people don't come in and lend this?

Iqbal: That's right. They just - because today I don't have any authority to prevent it from happening.

FdSL: So someone could wind up on your sidewalk and make a home there?

Iqbal: That's right and I can't do a thing about it. But if I have the authority I can tell him sorry, don't go here. You're not allowed to. And well, most of the time a little bit of a force of the, the, the watchman of my building there would have to some kind of human….

FdSL: Intimidate them?

Iqbal: Some human element would have to be - you can't just take a big stick and beat them with it. So you have at least physically they won't be allowed to come in over there. So they'll get tired and go away. The other thing, which the government has done, which has succeeded very well is what they call dispersement of industry. They have encouraged other states and other cities, small cities like Poona, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Am, Ahmadabad, Surat, Gopal, Indor, even Calcutta to have international airports. Calcutta, of course, had it earlier too but these smaller cities have been allowed international airports so there is no need for the people to come to Bombay and go abroad. They can go directly from Bangalore. They can even go from Coimbitore for example, or Madras. Madras also was a, yeah, it also had an airport earlier but Coimbitore is a new one. So they don't have to go to Madras from Coimbitore. They don't have to come to Bombay to Coimbitore. They can go right out. So there's less need for these people to come here. So to a certain extent there is a stiflement of the growth of the service industries in Bombay. And more service industries are opening up in those cities.

FdSL: But that's not the answer is it? Those cities, Bangalore is just bursting at the seams and many of the others are.

Iqbal: True, true.

FdSL: So where then lies the solution? Is it in rural areas? What can be done to keep people in rural areas because they probably are moving because of economic need, dire need? So what can be done?

Iqbal: That's true. See the Indian rural economy is by and large agrarian and it depends upon the monsoon, which is a very seasonal problem. And irrigation potential of the country is hardly used by 30% of soul. And a whole lot of water gets wasted. At the monsoon we have a situation where one locality is flooding. People are dying of floods and a majority of the people up countryside have dropped. There's no rain at all. So that is a very large problem. But by and large what is happening today that urbanization is growing not just in the 4 big cities. See earlier in the 40's, 50's, 60's, Bombay, Delhi to a very large extent - Delhi is also growing very much - Calcutta, and Madras, Chenai as it's called now, they grew only. Today something like 23, 25 cities are also growing. And some of the state governments, the good governments like Andrah Pradesh and Karnataka they are encouraging even the smaller towns to grow. They're providing infrastructure for them, job opportunities, good roads, good sewer systems, more power, and they, they're even giving financial incentives. All right, you go and have a, and to the builders, to the industrialists, okay you go and open your industry over there. We will give you so much money for every job created - 20,000 rupees, something like that. So incentives are being given by the government to disperse the industry, to take it forward, and a good linkage of roads and rail network will come about the situation that the huge and unproductive and uncontrollable influx into Bombay will stop. But ultimately we need to control the population.

FdSL: Because it's growing particularly in the slum areas.

Iqbal: Yeah, we really need to do that. That is something, which the government has to have a political will and all the parties must come together. We can't do it like China but we can definitely do it better. One imp, improvement that's happened is over the last 40 years I've seen the government's policies changing and they are getting adopted. Like in the 50's the government's slogan used to be 2 or 3 children, full stop. Then in the 70's and the 80's was We Two, Ours Two. And the 90's slogan, the current slogan is We Two, Ours One and the stress is on the girl child. And I have seen quite a lot of what I call the DINKS or the DISKS, the double income-no kinds and the double income-single kids in Bombay. Now where you have education you have good family planning situation. Like even in the Muslims I am privy to it because I have been propagating family planning quite a lot rather passionately. And where you educate them and talk to them with reason they listen to you. So it's not that the mullah has said you can't do it or the, or the ayatollah somebody. It's somebody has to go and talk with reason and they listen to you. So I have personally got more than 80 people, 80,000 people xxx who are Muslin way back in 1976. So if you talk to them you - they listen to you. Unfortunately government is not really moving forward very positively in that direction. It has to do. That should be problem number one for the country.

FdSL: What about the projections for this city finally? Are we talking about, what is the projection for Bombay…?

Iqbal: What they have done is, see the earlier; the Bombay city was just the 7 islands...

FdSL: Right.

Iqbal: …with just about 150 square kilometers. They expanded to the whole of suburbs in the 50's to about 467 square kilometers. And in the 70's there was a whole Bombay metropolitan region…

FdSL: Right.

FdSL: And what will Bombay look like with 17 or 18 million people in it?

FdSL: So you think that this will be sustainable then?

FdSL: At 17 or 18 million?

FdSL: And you think 60% of that population is going to be living in slums?

FdSL: Is anything in the history of the city that would suggest that it'll succeed?

FdSL: Has there been a will xxx before?

FdSL: But we went to this gentleman's home today, a gentleman invited us to his family home and you pointed out that building and you said 500 families or 500 people approximately…

FdSL: …live in that structure.

FdSL: And it's 750 per day coming into the town.

FdSL: Bombay will have to produce one of those buildings every single day.

FdSL: Between now and whenever. I mean that just seems too far-fetched as to be fantastical.

FdSL: How can you be optimistic that you can sustain…?

FdSL: That's…

FdSL: But those are middle class, better off people that the…

FdSL: And then it will just have to keep its population down from within?

FdSL: The slum dwelling…

FdSL: And we like to spit.

FdSL: So you are sort of optimistic then about Bombay, about Mumbai?

FdSL: Okay.

FdSL: Then I wish you well.

FdSL: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Nicki, am I leaving anything out?

Nicki: I think there's one thing…

FdSL: Out of 7 million?

FdSL: So it has a long way to go.

FdSL: How much of an issue is corruption. I mean how much does it derail? I'm not sure how you could quantify it but give it a shot.

FdSL: And to build a high rise?

FdSL: So 60 departments?

FdSL: Money to….

FdSL: Sort of an expedite fee is what we'd call it in America.

FdSL: Except this goes into the pockets of the official bureaucrat.

FdSL: And so 150 rupees per square foot, how much on a city wide average does a square foot of real estate cost?

FdSL: No, just to buy it.

FdSL: How much does it cost to build a square foot?

FdSL: So out of a maxim - lets it's 1000 rupees per square foot - you'd have to set aside, escrow 150 rupees just to…

FdSL: …just to grease the palms of people.

FdSL: You're paying about 15%. You're just setting aside. It's the cost of doing business.

FdSL: 10 to 15%.

FdSL: Does that include the real fees?

FdSL: How much of it is the fees to the individual? How much of it is bribery?

FdSL: Of that 15?

FdSL: Okay.

FdSL: Excellent.

FdSL: That's to boost the infrastructure around it ostensibly?

FdSL: Okay but the rest of the money went toward what?

FdSL: That's right.

FdSL: And then it will just have to keep its population down from within?

FdSL: Excellent, sir. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

FdSL: All right. I have no more questions in that case.