New Dharavi will produce many millionaires, no slumdogs: Gautam Adani

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Gautam Adani said he intends to not only transform Mumbai's Dharavi into a modern city centre but also preserve and promote the local micro enterprises and small industries. The Adani Group has recently been awarded the ambitious project to redevelop 645 acres of Dharavi — one of Asia's largest urban slum clusters in the heart of Mumbai city.

In an open letter on Wednesday, Adani maintained that the transformation of Dharavi is arguably one of the world's largest urban resettlement and regeneration projects which will touch more than a million lives. «Rehabilitation entails the resettlement of not only the residential units but also of diverse establishments of various sizes and scales dealing with trading, shopping and other business transactions.

The entire ecosphere and business fabric of diverse and distinct trades thriving in Dharavi will be rehabilitated and rehoused,» he said. «I intend to transform Dharavi into a modern city hub by looking at ways and means to support and strengthen existing micro enterprises and small industries and by promoting new age jobs with a special focus on youth and women,» he wrote.

Sectoral experts and civil society will be involved and rehabilitation of livelihoods could involve a combination of training centres focused on upskilling, common facility centres for product-based and service-based entrepreneurship models, R&D centres, data centres and MSME helpdesks, among other things. The project could also look at the creation of organised and systemic marketplaces in line with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).