Dharavi

"The Government doesn’t consult those it seeks to rehabilitate. You want to move me out of my house, but you won’t ask me where or how? Now they say they want to change Dharavi into Shanghai? Why don’t you change Dharavi into Bombay?"

- Jockin Arputham, founder of the National Slum Dwellers Association. 12/12/2006

A lot of people, most notably journalist Kalpana Sharma, in a 2000 book that she wrote, have referred to Dharavi as the "largest slum in Asia." Sharma's estimate of the population is 1,000,000 people spread over 178 hectares (0.69 square miles), but last week I went on a walk with a friend of mine who is a Ph. D. candidate in sociology from the University of Chicago, writing a dissertation on Dharavi, and she estimated that it could be as low as 500,000 people spread over about 350 hectares (1.35 square miles).



Opening up my "calculator" function in my accessories menu, here, and punching a few numbers, that works out to, at the densest: 19 square feet per person, and at the low end, and 75 square feet per person for personal and living space. I've heard it's actually not even the densest part of Bombay (Dadar and Kurla probably hold that distinction), but Dharavi is really unique because it was started as a massive squatters' colony. The people were, and mostly still are, living there illegally on government land to which they have no claim. The difference between Dharavi and lot of other squatter colonies around the city is that Dharavi really took hold and became permanent. In the government's never-ending campaign to drive slum-dwellers from the city limits, Dharavi became subject to the 1995 Slum Rehabilitation Scheme, a Mumbai-wide cooperation with private developers to get people out of their chawls (hovels) and into public housing.

This year marks the inauguration of a new initiative, specific to Dharavi, in which all residents who have lived in the slum since 1995 will be removed from their homes and put into high-rise public housing projects (we visited the inside of one with our tourguide's research assistant, a 17-year-old called Subramani -- it was rather small, but quite nice, with all the modern appliances and a pretty sturdy set-up, overall). Their land (not technically theirs at all) will be sold to private developers, who will build free replacement public housing on one half, and market-rate sale housing on the other half.

This poster is in protest of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority's actions, which many community members -- particularly those affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) -- disapprove, because they don't think the community has had enough say in the matter. It's a bit like the dispute over the East Baltimore neighborhood near Patterson Park that the city seized last year to build the new BioTech park (for those of my readers who are Baltimorons).

The parties who hear, see, and speak no evil, respectively, are the Maharashtra Parliament, the Maharashtra Land Authority, and the City Corporator's Office (torn), which consists in the local governing body of wards.



Here's a little boy, looking for evil...



Here are some popads, these crispy tortilla-like patties that come with my tiffin lunch can every day (more about that in my next post), drying in the sun after they are fried.



Until the 1960's, Dharavi was home to thousands of the untouchable leather-tanning caste, whose very livelihood is somewhat blasphemous, for obvious reasons, even though they only tan the hides of cows that die of natural causes, supposedly. Many of these tanners were also Muslims, and most of them came from Tamil Nadu. Since the 1960's, however, the tanning industry has moved on to Kurla, and what remains are dozens of leather retailers and finish-work shops. I had an extra hole punched in my belt, because lately I've been busting a sag, which is not acceptable professional attire at work, apparently.



These flags, I was told, were hung to celebrate the Muslim festival of "Id," but after some research, I found that "Id" just means "festival" in Arabic, so I'm not sure specifically what the holiday was. Any investigations are appreciated.



And here, we have what I found to be the most fascinating part of Dharavi, the back-lanes of the industrial section. Despite being a "slum," Dharavi offers none of the indigence or abjection that word implies to western ears. Instead, you see productivity everywhere, and as a result, the area has a surprisingly wide array of incomes. This is why, for those of you who were wondering private developers are actually able to sell market-rate housing alongside public projects in a "slum".

Along one lane, we saw and spoke to Bihari workers in a factory shop that recycled ball-point pens. This guy is shovelling literally thousands of pens into an enormous machine that eats them and spits them out as little pellets of plastic, then separates the ink. The room reeked of ink, a smell I'd never really experienced before, and it was strange. The workers wore rubber galoshes and elbow-length gloves.




Clockwise from top left:
- A worker looking out from a welding shop during his break.
- A vacant soap-mixing vat in a chemical shop. The smell was clean and sterile, so I deemed black and white art-style appropriate.
- Welding shop, lit an eerie pale blue-green
- Subramani walking past three enormous sacks of discarded and re-collected audio tape (like, the kind from casettes). A guy poked his head out as I walked by, pointed to the sacks and said, "You see this? 45,000 Rupees." I wasn't sure if he was making an offer, telling me the price, or merely illustrating the fact that some things that others consider trash can actually be quite valuable. I walked on.





Another welding shop:



National Slum Dwellers Association, Dharavi branch.



Thanks for reading.

Now, all of you go support the Boondogglers in the Rickshaw Run!