INDIA's Real-World Slumdogs

By Preeti Aroon

Posted February 2009

With the nomination of Slumdog Millionaire for an Academy Award, it's easy to view Mumbai's slums as wastelands of filth and misery. But they're actually vibrant business centers filled with scrappy entrepreneurs. If some wealthy elites get their way, though, the slums' days may be numbered. Up their alley: About half of Mumbai's 16 million residents live in informal settlements known as slums, the largest of which is Dharavi. Between 600,000 and 1 million people call Dharavi home, but for many, it is also their place of business, the site of approximately 15,000 cottage-industry factories powered by an unflagging entrepreneurial spirit. "You in the West so easily see the slum as a negative concept. ... But Dharavi has also been mirroring India's economic revival," one Dharavi advocate told The Guardian। Above, a boy looks on in an alley at Dharavi on April 5, 2008. Slum sprawl: Dharavi expands across a square mile of prime real estate smack in the middle of Mumbai, between the two busiest rail lines and near the swanky Bandra Kurla Complex, a glimmering corporate center. For the political and business elite, Dharavi is an absolute eyesore. Rats scurry through gutters. Men sit waist deep in trash, sorting it. Bloody viscera from mutton stalls trickle through open drains. The place reeks of sewage. Yet, the land is worth $10 billion by one estimate। Consequently, the city has developed a controversial plan to raze Dharavi, seen here on Feb. 3. Too close for comfort: A man makes chapatis as an Air India jet flies over Mumbai's Jari Mari slum on Feb. 3 as it approaches the landing strip at the airport. Roofs of corrugated metal are known to wink at passengers. But having a squalid slum abutting an international airport doesn't exactly put India's financial capital on the path to joining the ranks of Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo। As with Dharavi, city officials want to redevelop Jari Mari, removing an embarrassing blight from the metropolis. Trash to treasure: Dharavi may look like a junkyard, but there's no such thing as junk here. The community is a superhub of recycling, employing more than 250,000 people who make their living reincarnating others' refuse. Eighty percent of Mumbai's plastic gets reborn in the slum। As seen here on Feb. 3, workers meticulously sort everything from bottles and lids to ballpoint pens and broken toys. The plastic is ground into tiny flakes that are reprocessed into new products. Can-do spirit: Another product that is recycled is metal cans that once contained cooking oil. Workers, similar to those shown here in Dharavi on Feb. 3, hammer dents out of the cans, bathe them in water, and polish them for a second life. One can-recycling entrepreneur told The Observer at his "corporate headquarters": "We process over 400 of these [cans] a day। … We clean them up and sell them back to the oil companies and direct to local consumers." Other recycled products include cardboard and paint chips, which are pounded into a powder that can be reconstituted into paint. Carrying on: Dharavi is famous for its potters' colony, called Kumbharwada. Above, a potter on Oct. 14, 2008, holds earthen lamps used during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Other products manufactured in Dharavi's cottage industries include soap and leather. One leather worker was so successful that he exported 25,000 belts to Wal-Mart in the United States; he has since moved up and out of Dharavi. Although low by Western standards, wages are much more than can be earned in rural India, a fact that attracts migrants. All told, annual economic output in Dharavi is anywhere from $650 million to $1 billion। At home: A woman watches television in her one-room home in Dharavi on April 5, 2008. Although there can be breathing room when workers and children are outdoors, most living quarters are cramped, with extended families of 15 packed into 300 square feet. A 2002 study found that 85 percent of households have a television। Dirty work: A man washes himself at his home in Dharavi on April 5, 2008. In some parts of Dharavi, there is one shared tap for every 10 homes; in other parts, almost every home has a jerry-rigged tap. Often, taps have run for just an hour a day, and additional water, brought in on tankers, must be purchased. Sanitation is also a problem, with only one toilet per 1,440 people. Some areas have latrines that can be used for a fee: 1 rupee (2 cents) for a single use or 30 rupees (62 cents) for a monthly family pass। Something to shout about: Due to Dharavi's prime location, Mumbai officials have created a top-down plan for developers to raze the slum and erect office towers and middle-class apartments. Slum dwellers who meet certain requirements would be relocated to sparkling-new 225-square-foot apartments in high-rises, complete with toilets। Many Dharavi residents are very resistant to the plan. Sprawling cottage industries, artisans' workshops, and recycling centers can't be neatly repacked into vertically stacked 225-square-foot boxes. Relocation would rip the social fabric of cohesive communities. Above, Dharavi residents shout antigovernment slogans during a protest on June 18, 2007. On the right track?: People cross railway tracks in Dharavi on Feb. 2. For the time being, the proposed redevelopment has been stalled by the global financial crisis, bad press, and local protests. Will Mumbai officials heed the will of the residents of Dharavi, many of whom are proud of their community? As one told Time, "We did this. No government, no rich people, no charity. Just poor people, working hard." There's hope: As Slumdog Millionaire showed, sometimes, through street smarts and scrappiness, the underdog can indeed win।