Day 3: Dharavi

In Dharavi, a sprawling city within a city, I kept on thinking about rural India. The poverty and lack of opportunity in rural communities drives migrants to Mumbai and other cities, sending urban populations skyrocketing. The result is slums like Govandi and Dharavi and the makeshift shelters that line the streets and alleyways. I'm interested in learning more about solutions for rural India. What changes in rural communities would stem the hemorrhagic migration to cities like Mumbai? The longer I'm here the more questions I have!

Dharavi is an enormous slum - the 2nd largest in Asia and home to 1.5 million people- made famous by Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire. Accompanied by labor lawyer Vinod Shetty who runs the Dharavi Project, our group toured Dharavi's industrial section. Yes, you read that right. Industrial. The humming, small-scale recycling industry in Dharavi generates over a billion dollars a year. Passing through winding streets and alleys, I felt as though we were walking through an enormous open air factory. Each cramped room housed a different process - people sorting plastic, deconstructing shoes, and reassembling cardboard boxes (Charlotte Hager’s blog which has some great shots):

The place is a living lesson in microeconomics. Many people start off in lower end jobs – perhaps resizing cardboard boxes or disassembling electronics. Some move up, eventually owning their own operations, employing others and perhaps even moving out of Dharavi. At first glance it seems like an ingenious, bottom-up model for income generation and business development. And in many ways it is. But the industry here, along with the housing, is unregulated. Without land tenure for residents, companies can dump their waste without fear of regulation or consequences. Many companies also buy recycled materials from Dharavi under the table. I was reminded of Hernando de Soto Polar's work on land tenure and the importance of titling. Without formal government recognition, it becomes easy to ignore or abuse people who are officially invisible.

This place and these people are the backbone of the city’s economy, creating value while ensuring that Mumbaikers aren’t totally overtaken by their own trash. Yet, its very existence is a menace to a Mumbai trying to position itself as a global modern city. The land Dharavi is built on is prime land and real estate developers are eager to put up more high rises. Government has begun to slowly chip away at Dharavi’s foundation. Citing the need to create a buffer between the slum and water pipes to Mumbai, around 500 residences built around the pipes were recently razed to the ground. Ironically, razing these hybrid factory-residences also caused massive spillage of a variety of chemicals – the fumes of which you can now smell from where the photo below was taken.

The government’s plan for relocating Dharavi residents has been met with resistance. One problem, noted by Mr. Shetty, was that the plan would place people in multi-rise apartment buildings (which struck me as really interesting since we’re moving away from the development of such “projects” in the US). Multi-story apartment buildings would disrupt and perhaps destroy the network of businesses people have created while interrupting operations. Thus far, the government’s plan has been unacceptable to the people it ostensibly seeks to help. At the same time, can the government continue to allow people to live in the conditions they do? As has become the norm on our travels here, there are no easy answers.