My name is Chandan Das. I live in Venkatesh Chawl in the heart of Dharavi's south Indian district. I have a ration card saying I have lived here since 1994 with my family - father Dharam, mother Parvati, sister Sulekha and brother Ravi Ranjan.

Of course, all this is a big lie. But its the simplest thing in the world to do. But all that later. First:

Tomorrow, I urge you to meet Vasant Kumar. See the belt wounds on his back and waist, the red blotches against his wheat complexion, the marks disappearing into the paunch hair. Meet Harihar Gupta, face completely burnt and almost blind.

They are many of the people I met in the last few weeks spent digging through heaps of papers, interviewing dozens of people and living in the Dharavi slums. The story I found, the story that will be told in this week's 30 Mins called Slum City (Saturday 9:30 pm, Sunday 4:30 pm), is an old story. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich, as Leonard Cohen said.

These are people waiting for a home. A home that they most probably never get.

What is Mumbai? It is the battle for space. Mumbai is finding a corner is a linear city.

I, often termed elitist (I also cover fashion, don't you know?), found my calling in this story. The story of not finding the right space. I, who battle against being put in a neat box (business? politics? defence? bollywood??), identified more than anyone will ever know with people hunting for their space. Their corner, their little heaven.

This is the story of a scheme called the slum rehablitation scheme, the scheme that would make Mumbai Shanghai, as it were. Remove its slums, builds homes, real homes, for real people, not filthy huts for squatters.

This is the story of a scheme that promised a free home to thousands of slum dwellers and then cheated them. It was supposed to be a simple scheme - a scheme based more on simple geometry than anything. The crux - anything horizontal takes more space. If you can convert that into a vertical, you open up more space.

That's what the scheme wanted to do - hand over chunks of slums to developers who would destroy the shanty and build multi-storied buildings. The slum dwellers would be accomodated in those buildings and the remaining land would be given to the builders for commercial development. By its every nature, the scheme has two flaws.

1. Free homes for slum dwellers - No one ever values anything that's given free. You give a slum dweller a free home, chances are he will try to sell it because he needs the money. Also, slums are great economic hubs. Dharavi, long described (wrongly) as Asia's largest slum, has hundreds of small business - everything from the famous leather industries to potters. When you destroy a slum, you must create alternate earning facilities, so that the slum dweller continues to earn. If that is missing, then, many a time, the only source of income for the slum dweller is to sell the free flat. (Anyway, like I said anything given free has less value than something earned)

2. The whole scheme seems to be designed assuming the honesty of that most dishonest of professions - real estate. Around the world, real estate is one of the most corrupt industries. Everything from mob money to mass scale fraud and violence occurs in the real estate business simply because it is so phenomenally lucrative. Mumbai's slum redevelopment scheme assumes that builders would happily give away flats in some of the city's most expensive real estate (what land in Mumbai is not expensive?) even if they were given proportional land for commercial use.

That, of course, didn't happen.

In our investigation, we found a wonderful well-oiled fraud machinery.

According to the rules,

- Slum residents living there since before 1995 are eligible to a 225 sq ft flat

- Proof of residence is usually the ration card

- Ration cards are be faked by paying the slum mafia

Builders, politicians and the mafia con the system by:

- Creating fake identities of slumdwellers

- This is done through fake rationcards and adding fake names on the resident lists

- Many of these names come from voter lists

- Politicians pay voters, buy votes and then add those names to the builders lists

- Like this original inhabitants are paid off

- Fake names of dead people are also added to the lists

- The names of dead voters are used by politicians to cast votes

- And then shared with builders who add them to their redevelopment lists

- Since the names are fake, the number of flats built are faked

- Also the flats that are built to sold in the black market

- Builders make money twice:

By claiming FSI for flats that are never built, for slumdwellers who don't exist

And by selling the flats that are built in the black market

- For every flat built for slumdwellers, builders get proportional FSI (or space) for commercial use

As you marvel at the scam, do not forget who created it. People like Manohar Joshi (ex-CM and himself a builder), Sushil Kr. Shinde, Narayan Rane, and of course Mr. Deshmukh, all the CMs who have headed the Slum Rehabilitation Authourity.

But what does all this really mean? It means that I can become Chandan Das so easily. I become eligible for a slum redevelopment flat. I, Hindol Sengupta, IBN reporter, part-time fashion reporter if you like, a proper resident of Dharavi.

Welcome to my home. No red wine here, unfortunately. Some special cutting chai, maybe?