"Some call the Dharavi slum an embarassing eyesore in the middle of India's financial capital. Its residents call it home".Dharavi (Portuguese spelling Daravi[1] British Anglicised spelling Darravy, Dorrovy) is a slum and administrative ward, over parts of Sion, Bandra, Kurla and Kalina suburbs of Mumbai, India. Sandwiched between Mahim in the west and Sion in the east, [2] and spread over an area of 175 hectares, or 0.67 square miles. In 1986, the population was estimated at 530,225[3], but modern Dharavi has a population of between 600,000 [4] and over 1 million people[5], and with over 1,000,000 residents per square mile, it may be the mostly densely populated neighbourhood in the world.[6] While still widely regarded as the largest slum in Asia,[7][8] Dharavi was once it's undisputed largest slum[9][10] The number of people living in slums in India has more than doubled in the past two decades and now exceeds the entire population of Britain, the Indian Government has announced.[11]
In expensive Mumbai, Dharavi provides a cheap, but illegal, alternative where rents were as low as 4 US dollars per month in 2006.[6] Dharavi exports goods around the world.[12] The total turnover is estimated to be between 500 million US dollars[13] and over 650 million US dollars per year.[6]
Geography
Dharavi is located between Mumbai's two main suburban railway lines, the Western and Central Railways. To its west are Mahim and Bandra, and to the north lies the Mithi River, which empties into the Arabian Sea through the Mahim Creek. To its south and east are Sion and Matunga. Both its location and poor drainage systems make Dharavi particularly vulnerable to floods during the wet season.
History
In the 18th century, Dharavi was an island.[14] In February 1739, Chimnaji Appa attacked Bassein. Before that, he took possession of Dharavi.
The area of present-day Dharavi was predominantly mangrove swamp prior to the late 19th century, inhabited by Koli fishermen.[15] However, the fishing industry disappeared when the swamp areas filled in. A dam at Sion, adjacent to Dharavi, hastened the process of joining separate islands into one long, tapered mass. Thus began the transformation of the island city of Bombay. In the process, the creek dried up, and Dharavi's fishing town was deprived of its traditional sustenance, but the newly drained marshes provided space for new communities to move in. Migrants from Gujarat established a potters' colony, and Muslim tanners from Tamil Nadu migrated to Dharavi and set up the leather tanning industry. Other artisans, like the embroidery workers from Uttar Pradesh, started the ready-made garments trade.[15]
Bombay's first Tamil school and Dharavi's first school was constructed in 1924.[16]
Economy
In addition to the traditional pottery and textile industries in Dharavi,[15] there is an increasingly large recycling industry, processing recyclable waste from other parts of Mumbai. Financial services is significant; the district has an estimated 15,000 single-room factories.[17]
An urban redevelopment plan is proposed for the Dharavi area, managed by American-trained architect Mukesh Mehta.[15] The plan [18] involves the construction of 30,000,000 square feet (2,800,000 m2) of housing, schools, parks and roads to serve the existing 57,000 families residing in the area, along with 40,000,000 square feet (3,700,000 m2) of residential and commercial space for sale.[19] There has been significant local opposition to the plans, largely because existing residents are due to receive only 225 square feet (20.9 m2) of land each.[15][19] Furthermore, only those families who lived in the area before the year 2000 are slated for resettlement. Concerns have also been raised by residents who fear that some of their small businesses in the "informal" sector may not be relocated under the redevelopment plan. [20] The government has said that it will only legalize and relocate industries that are not "polluting."
Sanitation issues
Dharavi has severe problems with public health, due to the scarcity of toilet facilities, compounded by the flooding during the monsoon season. As of November 2006 there was only one toilet per 1,440 residents in Dharavi.[21] Mahim Creek, a local river, is widely used by local residents for urination and defecation, leading to the spread of contagious disease.[15] The area also suffers from problems with inadequate water supply.[22]
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.
Dharavi is routinely called "the largest slum in Asia," a dubious attribution 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. 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.
The Slums of Bombay
Everywhere on the ground lay sleeping natives-- hundreds and hundreds. They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads and all. Their attitude and rigidity counterfeited death.
Mark Twain, on a nocturnal drive through Bombay in 1896.
The Early History of Slums
Late in the 17th century, Gerald Aungier tried to attract traders and artisans to Bombay. As a result, the population grew six-fold in the fourteen years between 1661 and 1675. Some of the more prosperous traders built houses inside the British fort. The rest lived in crowded "native-towns" around the walls. These were probably the first slums to grow in Bombay.
The problem of overcrowding certainly remained through the 18th century. A count made in 1794 found 1000 houses inside the fort walls and 6500 immediately outside.
All over the world, the 19th century saw the growth of slums give the lie to the idea of progress brought on by large-scale industrialisation and the understanding and control of diseases. Bombay was no exception. The cotton boom, followed by the rapid growth of mills and shipping drew a large population from the rest of the country into a city ill-equipped to deal with them. In the middle of the 19th century slums grew around the mills and other places of employment.
The Birth of Slums
Historically, slums have grown in Bombay as a response to a growth of population far beyond the capacity of existing housing. Migrants are normally drawn to the city by the huge disparity between urban and rural income levels. Usually the residents of these densely populated enclaves live close to their place of work. The residential area itself does not provide employment.
Bombay knows another reason for the formation of slums. As the city grew, it took over land that was traditionally used for other purposes. The Koli fishermen were displaced during the development of the harbour and port. Those driven out of the fishing villages improvised living space that was often far shabbier than before. This process continues even now, at the end of the 20th century.
On the other hand, some villages were encysted by the city growing around them. Dharavi, originally a village with a small tanning industry, has become a slum in this fashion. Many of the older slums in Byculla and Khar were initially separate villages, with their own traditional industries.
Modern Efforts at Slum Rehabilitation
During the early years of this century, in the aftermath of the plague epidemics, the first systematic efforts were made to rehabilitate crowded living areas and slums. The City Improvement Trust was set up with this mandate. However as Bombay continued to draw migrants the growth of slums could not be checked even with the development of low-cost housing. Post-independence efforts at providing better standards of living to this section of the population are documented elsewhere.
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