Mumbai’s mill workers housing crisis has outlasted the generation that was promised rehabilitation. More than 100,000 mill workers and their heirs are still waiting for homes, even after the state decided in 2000 to use mill land for free housing and placed construction and distribution under the Mumbai Board of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA). The gap between that promise and delivery now shows how a rehabilitation policy can become an intergenerational administrative process.
The human cost is visible in the accounts of heirs who have spent decades waiting. Harsha Ganesh More told Loksatta that her father worked at Kohinoor Mill in Naigaon and struggled to support the family after the 1982 strike and the closure of the mills. He died in 2015 without receiving the home he had hoped the government would provide. More said her generation had crossed 50 while continuing to wait for a house that was expected to secure the family’s future.
Laxman Walvekar, whose father worked at Jupiter Mill and died in 1998, is also still waiting. His family lives in a rented house in Pratikshanagar and, according to the report, faces financial difficulty. These cases are not isolated appeals for compensation. They represent a transfer of an unresolved housing entitlement from workers to their heirs, with each death making the administrative and legal process more complicated.
The policy originated in the aftermath of the 1982 textile mill strike, which devastated the livelihoods of Mumbai’s mill workers. In 2000, a decision was taken to provide free homes on mill land as part of their rehabilitation. MHADA’s Mumbai Board was made responsible for building the homes and distributing them. The arrangement linked the fate of a large working population to the redevelopment of some of Mumbai’s most valuable urban land.
That land question is central to understanding why the housing commitment remains unfinished. Mill land is not simply vacant urban space. It sits within a city where land values, redevelopment permissions, housing demand and public obligations overlap. The supplied report does not provide a complete account of how every mill property was redeveloped or how many homes were originally promised. It does, however, show that the public housing component has not kept pace with the number of eligible workers and heirs awaiting a decision.
MHADA has conducted four lotteries so far: three for homes built on mill land and one for homes under a rental housing scheme of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. Together, these lotteries have provided homes to approximately 16,000 workers and heirs. Against that figure, more than 100,000 people are still waiting, according to the report.
The application figures reveal an additional layer of the problem. Across two stages, approximately 175,000 applications were submitted to MHADA. About 16,000 applicants received homes, while only 109,000 of the remaining approximately 150,000 applicants submitted documents for eligibility determination. The numbers suggest that the challenge is not limited to constructing homes. It also involves identifying eligible applicants, checking records and establishing the succession rights of heirs.
That distinction matters. A housing lottery can distribute completed units, but it cannot by itself resolve incomplete records, disputed claims or the death of the original beneficiary. Worker organisations have said that more than 50 per cent of mill workers are no longer alive. As a result, applications are increasingly being submitted by heirs. MHADA officials cited in the report said the exact number of heirs is not available with the authority, although the number is increasing as the original workers die.
The absence of a clear heir count creates a basic planning problem. Authorities cannot accurately estimate the remaining obligation without knowing how many claims are active, how many are eligible and how many have changed hands through inheritance. At the same time, families cannot understand their position in the process unless eligibility rules, document requirements and timelines are communicated clearly. The result is a queue whose size is publicly discussed but whose final composition remains uncertain.
This is also why the mill workers housing issue cannot be treated only as a question of lottery frequency. The four lotteries provide evidence of delivery, but the scale of delivery remains small compared with the application base described in the report. The larger administrative task is to convert a historical labour entitlement into a legally valid, documented and transferable housing claim without allowing the passage of time to extinguish it in practice.
The institutional structure adds to the complexity. MHADA’s Mumbai Board is responsible for housing construction and distribution, while the MMRDA is associated with the rental housing scheme from which one of the lotteries was conducted. Worker organisations are pressing the government to act, applicants are seeking clarity, and heirs are negotiating a process originally designed around living workers. The report does not establish whether a single authority currently coordinates all aspects of construction, eligibility, inheritance verification and allotment.
That coordination question is important because each stage can create a separate delay. Construction without a final beneficiary list leaves homes waiting for allocation. Eligibility verification without sufficient housing supply leaves approved applicants in another queue. Inheritance verification can become slower when records relate to workers who died decades ago, particularly when families have moved, changed addresses or lack complete employment documents. The supplied report does not quantify delays at each stage, but its figures show that the process remains incomplete long after the original rehabilitation decision.
The data also shows how time has changed the nature of the beneficiary group. In 2000, the policy was framed around mill workers who had lost employment after the strike and mill closures. In 2026, a substantial share of the claimants are their children or other heirs. The policy therefore operates across two generations, while the evidence cited by the report indicates that more than half of the original workers may have died. The unresolved claim has become part of the inheritance of poverty, rent and insecurity.
For Mumbai, the issue has a significance beyond one occupational group. The mill districts were central to the city’s industrial history and are now part of a wider landscape of redevelopment. When rehabilitation commitments remain pending for decades, redevelopment does not produce a complete urban transition. It may change land use and neighbourhood form, but it leaves unresolved questions about who was entitled to remain connected to the city and under what terms.
The evidence supplied by Loksatta confirms three facts: the government’s mill workers housing policy has produced some allotments; the number of pending applicants remains much larger than the number of beneficiaries cited; and the death of original workers has shifted the process towards heir-based claims. It does not establish the total number of homes still to be built, the current construction pipeline, the precise eligibility rate or a final deadline for completing the programme.
Those missing details are now as important as the next lottery. A credible resolution would require the authorities to establish the size and status of the remaining claimant pool, including heirs, and to clarify how pending documentation will be handled. Until that information is available, each additional year increases the distance between the original promise and the families expected to benefit from it. Mumbai’s mill workers housing crisis is therefore not only a story of delayed homes; it is a measure of whether a city can carry a rehabilitation obligation across generations without losing sight of the people to whom it was made.
