30 years on, why Mumbai’s slum rehab moves more people into slums than homes

To make Mumbai slum-free. That was the idea behind the Slum Rehabilitation Act, introduced in 1995. Thirty years on, a study of slum rehabilitation projects from 2007 to 2022 has found that for every resident rehoused on site, 9.5 others who are eligible are displaced to other slums.

The finding comes from a working paper by Alishuba Philip, a PhD student of economics at the University of Zurich, presented in July at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Summer Institute 2026 Real Estate conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The task the Act set out to achieve was herculean: rehousing millions of residents from unsafe informal settlements into proper buildings on the same site, while unlocking acres of precious real estate.

As per the Census 2011, 42 per cent of Mumbai's 12 million people live in slums. From its inception till October 2025, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) built 2,79,307 rehabilitation homes. As per the Census 2011, 42 per cent of Mumbai's 12 million people live in slums.