Mumbai's oldest red light area Kamathipura and the adjoining lanes including, Kumbharwadi, may be redeveloped on the lines of BDD chawls to make way for sky scrappers. Activists who work in the area say most commercial sex workers have already moved out to rent elsewhere, coming at night only to conduct business.
Minister of state for housing, Ravindra Waikar, said on a visit to the area that they are mulling over the options for redevelopment. Existing landlords and their welfare associations want redevelopment, but fear that they might be short-changed.
Activist feel that this time, redevelopment will sail through due to the government's stand on making more houses. However, this could bring the shutters down on commercial sex work.
"Currently, most women have shifted to faraway areas such as Nallasopara," says Sanjay Shinde, a social worker from the area. "They return to Kamathipura every evening, work through the night and return home in the morning.
After redevelopment, most of these people will not be able to return even for work.
Even the middle class people residing in this area will go away as they will find takers for their homes."
Most of the buildings in the lanes of Kamathipura are nearly 100 years old and the government says that if the residents or landlords comes with all the documents required for redevelopment, permissions could be cleared within a month.
According to Rajendra Satla, general secretary of Kamathipura Landlord Association, the minister's visit to the area means very little as all parties weren't invited for the meeting. "We have been trying to redevelop Kamathipura for more than a decade but unable to find a developer. The buildings are old and dilapidated. We even had a feasibility study done under DCR 33(9), but landlords weren't getting anything while the developer and tenants will reap good homes and profit. We wrote to the Chief minister too and are seeking his help for fair redevelopment."
In December 2014, the landlords' association floated tenders inviting developers to redevelop the nearly 52 acres. However, it didn't work out and now nearly 10 acres of Kamathipura is being redeveloped by an individual developer.
