Mapping Slums

Mumbai is an extremely dense city. Almost 12 million people cram in less than 603 sq km. (Some perspective: Delhi has 11 million living in 1,500 sq km; DC has 618,000 people in 177 sq km). In this extremely dense city, most surveys estimate 50-60 percent of the population live in slums. Slums are makeshift communities, almost always on illegally squatted land, for urban dwellers who cannot afford legal housing. The conditions are squalid and lack most essential public infrastructure. The open sewage system and inescapable trash make the smell unbearable in the heat. Single-room homes that could house up to 10 people are commonly sheltered under blue tarps and corrugated irons. There are slums of different sizes, populations, and degree of squalor scattered throughout Mumbai. Dharavi, which we will visit on Friday, was the largest in Asia (apparently it’s now surpassed by the Karachi slum in Pakistan).

Here’s the catch: since slums are established on trespassed land, the government cannot officially provide services like trash pickup and medical care. That’s where NGOs come in to fill the gap.

Our first NGO visit was in the AmeriCares India office in Andheri. AmeriCares is a US-based nonprofit organization that provides medical relief during emergency disaster situations, global medical assistance, and free care. AmeriCares India in Mumbai currently sets up mobile clinics every 15 days in slum areas. Everyone was impressed with AmeriCares’ advanced use of technology to help it serve patients. The organization has adopted biometric tools to track patient visits and are about to launch a cloud-based electronic medical record system called Easy Clinic. That’s more than I can say about many US practices!

Our task for the day was to map the number of homes in areas of the Chandilivi slum AmeriCares is planning to expand into. Once they have an idea of the landscape, staff will go back to further investigate the makeup of individual households. This allows them to identify at-risk patients such as malnourished kids and pregnant women. Eva, Vidisha, and I were assigned an area near a high school. We were accompanied with AmeriCares Medical Director, Dr. Purvish Parikh, and several other staff. Dr. Parikh is a world-class oncologist who was most recently the chief of oncology at Tata Memorial in Mumbai. You would think someone like him would be satisfied with their accomplishments. Nope. When Dr. Parikh turned 50, he retired from hospital care to pursue a new avenue of influencing community-level change. Dr. Parikh’s humor and easygoing demeanor carried us through our first (nervous) walk through a slum. As it happened, this trek was surprisingly relaxing. It wasn’t the chaos I expected. The neighborhood was quiet and the residents were friendly. We spent the afternoon learning mapping techniques, taking pictures, and trying to imagine what it must be like living here.