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Blogs Dharavi Published: May 2007 - ADVERTISEMENT -

Slumdog Millionaire

Does the movie 'Slumdog

Millionaire' tell the truth about
child poverty? Tell us what you
think.

Photo Gallery

Mumbai's Shadow City

Some call the Dharavi slum an embarassing eyesore in the

middle of India' s financial capital. Its residents call it home.
Jonas Bendiksen
Photography

By Mark Jacobson

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/dharavi-mumbai-slum/jacobson-text 31-05-2011 20:08:36

Dharavi - National Geographic Magazine
The poor of Mumbai' s
notorious Dharavi slum find
themselves living in some of
India' s hottest real estate .
Field Notes
On Assignment
Photographer Jonas Bendiksen
covers a festival and gets
covered in red tikka powder.
Video
Dharavi: Mumbai' s Shadow
City
Clay potters hark their wares,
sewing machines hum from
hundreds of sweatshops, and a
warehouse factory steams.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/dharavi-mumbai-slum/jacobson-text
Página 2
Photograph by Jonas Bendiksen
All cities in India are loud , but nothing matches the 24/7 decibel level of
Mumbai, the former Bombay, where the traffic never stops and the horns
always honk . Noise, however, is not a problem in Dharavi, the teeming slum of
one million souls, where as many as 18,000 people crowd into a single acre
(0.4 hectares ). By nightfall, deep inside the maze of lanes too narrow even for
the putt-putt of auto rickshaws, the slum is as still as a verdant glade. Once
you get accustomed to sharing 300 square feet (28 square meters) of floor
with 15 humans and an uncounted number of mice, a strange sense of
relaxation sets in —ah, at last a moment to think straight.
Asia," a dubious attribution
Dharavi is routinely called " the largest slum 灏牥
sometimes conflated into " the largest slum in the world." This is not true.
Mexico City's Neza-Chalco-Itza barrio has four times as many people. In Asia,
Karachi 's Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where
about half of the city's swelling 12 million population lives in what is
euphemistically referred to as " informal" housing, other slum pockets rival
Dharavi in size and squalor.
Yet Dharavi remains unique among slums . A neighborhood smack in the heart
of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and historical pull of a subcontinental
Harlem—a square -mile (three square kilometers) center of all things,
geographically, psychologically, spiritually. Its location has also made it hot real
estate in Mumbai, a city that epitomizes India 's hopes of becoming an
economic rival to China. Indeed, on a planet where half of humanity will soon
live in cities, the forces at work in Dharavi serve as a window not only on the
future of India 's burgeoning cities, but on urban space everywhere.
Ask any longtime resident—some families have been here for three or more
generations—how Dharavi came to be, and they'll say, " We built it." This is not
far off. Until the late 19th century , this area of Mumbai was mangrove swamp
inhabited by Koli fishermen. When the swamp filled in (with coconut leaves ,
rotten fish, and human waste), the Kolis were deprived of their fishing grounds
—they would soon shift to bootlegging liquor—but room became available for
others. The Kumbhars came from Gujarat to establish a potters' colony. Tamils
arrived from the south and opened tanneries. Thousands traveled from Uttar
Pradesh to work in the booming textile industry . The result is the most diverse
of slums, arguably the most diverse neighborhood in Mumbai, India's most
diverse city.
Stay for a while on the three-foot-wide (one meter ) lane of Rajendra Prasad
Chawl, and you become acquainted with the rhythms of the place. The
morning sound of devotional singing is followed by the rush of water. Until
recently few people in Dharavi had water hookups. Residents such as Meera
Singh, a wry woman who has lived on the lane for 35 years, used to walk a mile
(two kilometers) to get water for the day's cleaning and cooking. At the distant
spigot she would have to pay the local "goons " to fill her buckets. This is how
it works in the bureaucratic twilight zone of informal housing . Deprived of
public services because of their illegal status, slum dwellers often find
themselves at the mercy of the " land mafia." There are water goons, electricity
goons . In this regard, the residents of Rajendra Prasad Chawl are fortunate.
31-05-2011 20:08:36
Dharavi - National Geographic Magazine Página 3

These days, by DIY hook or crook, nearly every household on the street has its
own water tap. And today, like every day, residents open their hoses to wash
down the lane as they stand in the doorways of their homes to brush their
teeth .

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http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/dharavi-mumbai-slum/jacobson-text 31-05-2011 20:08:36