Dharavi - the largest slum in Asia

A few months ago I was given an article about a company in Mumbai called ‘Reality Tours’ who operate a tour of the Dharavi Slum in Mumbai with the goal of dispelling some of the negative perceptions about the people who live there. We had visited a small area of the slum before with NGO’s but this showed us a completely different side of things and certainly opened our eyes to the reality of living and working in these conditions.

Dharavi Slum is the largest slum in Asia with 1.1 million people living in .67 square miles. Our guide was Abi who was brought up here and well known by many people. There was a lot of staring from the residents and we had to get used to the intense heat (and this is winter!), the acrid smells and swarms of flies but this was a fascinating tour.

We have seen ‘rag pickers’ all over Mumbai, usually women or children who sift through the rubbish heaps to collect paper, plastic, cans, etc. which they sell on to be recycled. In Dhavari Slum we found the next stage in this amazing recycling chain. All of these things have a value to people who have nothing and amongst the extremely narrow alleyways we found businesses built around turning these items back in to raw materials to be sold back to industries. Plastics broken down, dried on the corrugated iron roofs , melted down and then extruded and chopped in to small pellets. Cooking oil cans are heated to remove any logos and images and then beaten back to shape and polished to be re-used. Aluminium cans are melted down and blocks of the metal created. The estimated turnover of Dharavi slum is around £350 million a year.

PICTURES ACROSS THE ROOFS OF DHARAVI SLUM : Plastic being broken down and dried before being melted to sell on. Freshly died fabric being dried before being taken down to the workshop below to make in to garments.

Men, women and children are engaged in back breaking work to earn enough to do nothing more than provide food for their families and pay rent to the slum landlords. At the end of the day many have to sweep the floors where they work to give space to sleep. As we coughed our way through the stench from the fires where they melt the aluminium and plastics, and wiped our streaming eyes walking through the thick smoke from the make-shift kiln baking clay pots, there was very little conversation from our small group.

Ideas that slum dwellers sit around all day begging, drinking and sniffing glue were immediately dispelled. There is no doubt the working conditions were horrific, and we were told that workers earn about 120 Rupees per day (about £1.50) for a 10 – 12 hour day. We found Muslim workers building Hindu shrines and heard how, following racial riots here and about 1,000 deaths in the 1990’s, all faiths now celebrate and work together. We found make-shift Churches, Mosques and Hindu shrines amongst the plastic, concrete and sheet metal. A group of boisterous boys in high spirits accidently knocked in to me and a few minutes later two men caught up with us to offer apologise on behalf of the community. I have been in situations before where I have felt humbled, but as I tried to imagine how these people get up each day I was numb with humility. Offering the children a way out of this lifestyle is all about education and the opportunities are few.

If you ever visit Mumbai this is an absolute must.