Scrapyard that never slumbers

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This was published 13 years ago

Scrapyard that never slumbers

Men work on roof-tops to recycle waste in the Dharavi slum.

Men work on roof-tops to recycle waste in the Dharavi slum.Credit: Getty Images

Desperation, enterprise and community combine to make Dharavi a lesson in living, writes Lee Atkinson.

I'M STANDING in a sea of rubbish. From my rooftop vantage point in Dharavi - the biggest slum not just in Mumbai but in all of India - all I can see are hectares of plastic baking in the sun, every available centimetre of rooftop space covered in bags of broken bits of coloured junk. But proving the truth in the adage that one man's trash is another man's treasure, what I'm actually looking at is a slum-dweller's version of a bank.

These piles of plastic are the raw materials of a recycling industry worth millions of US dollars a year. Storing the plastic in the sun makes it brittle and easier to break up.

Unlike Australia, where our plastic recycling is largely limited to empty soft drink, milk and takeaway food containers, in Dharavi, they recycle everything, or so it seems.

The plastic casings of old-fashioned computer floppy disks, Barbie dolls and even the inner workings of washing machines are dismantled, broken up, sorted, melted down and remoulded into plastic beads and strings ready to be sold and shipped and made into something new.

It's not the only recycling going on. Next door, three young men are sorting out paper and cardboard boxes; across the laneway, two men are hunched over a leaning tower of car batteries; in other nearby shacks are heaps of glass, wire, plastic bags, empty paint tins, oil cans, computer parts and scraps of soap retrieved from Mumbai's mountainous rubbish dumps. Nothing, it seems, cannot be recycled or remade in Dharavi.

The recycling industries are inspiring but a visit to Dharavi is confronting, to say the least. More than 1 million people live in this triangle of reclaimed swampland wedged between the two main railway lines in the middle of Mumbai's chaotic urban sprawl, an area of less than two square kilometres. They live in tiny one-roomed houses, made mostly from scavenged scraps of tin and plastic tarps, with sometimes as many as 10 people crammed into a space less than 10 metres square.

There's power, sometimes, and water for an hour or two each day, although most people don't have a tap - they need to wait in line with as many buckets as they can carry.

The streets double as drains and there is less than one toilet for every 1500 people and the smell is overwhelming. Disease is rife and there are no government-run health facilities. Chickens, goats, dogs and the occasional cow roam the streets and children play barefoot next to open trenches thick with goodness knows what type of industrial (and human) waste.

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I'd hesitated before signing up for the four-hour walking tour but this was not a sightseeing tour where cashed-up Westerners come to gawk at the poor people before retreating to their five-star hotel.

Mumbai's Reality Tours is an NGO and 80 per cent of post-tax profits are ploughed back into the Dharavi community. We visit the kindergarten and primary school, the training centre for teachers who work in the school and the community centre where English and computers skills classes are taught. No photographs are allowed and guides work for a wage rather than tips (you are actively discouraged from tipping) and many are recruited from the slums. The focus is on the positive aspects of the community - about fostering understanding, not pity.

For all the squalor, Dharavi is in essence a city just like any other, albeit without public services or city planning. It might be a shanty town but the streets are lined with shops selling everything from deep-fried dumplings to household items.

Barbers do a roaring trade on street corners and tea sellers carrying trays of tiny glasses of sweet milky chai are everywhere. There's a clear demarcation from the industrial area - the recycling sweatshops, potteries and tanneries - and the residential area, although the bakeries that churn out hundreds of neatly packaged pastries for the city's upmarket cafes and hotels in mediaeval conditions seem to straddle the line between the two areas; women roll out pepper-studded poppadams and sun-dry them on upturned baskets in the dust amid it all, shooing away curious goats.

Not once during our tour were we asked for money or gifts. Unlike the streets of greater Mumbai, there is no begging in Dharavi. There are no hawkers trying to sell you a trinket you don't want. Its economy is thriving - there are more than 15,000 single-room factories here and annual turnover is more than $US665 million. There's next to no unemployment and very little crime. We are told that many slum-dwellers choose to live here, despite owning investment properties across the city. The sense of community keeps them here.

As we spend time chatting with the locals, sharing cups of tea, cuddling babies and learning about how they live their lives in such a densely packed neighbourhood, we come away with an appreciation of how well the community functions despite the gut-wrenching poverty.

The writer flew courtesy of Thai Airways and was a guest of JW Marriott Hotel Mumbai.

Trip notes

Getting there

Thai Airways has daily flights to Mumbai via Bangkok for about $1000 one-way. www.thaiair.com.

Staying there

JW Marriott Hotel Mumbai overlooks Juhu Beach and is about a 20-minute taxi drive from Dharavi. Rooms start about $260 a night. marriott.com.au.

Touring there

Reality Tours & Travel has two guided walking tours of Dharavi — of 2½ hours' and 4½ hours' duration. You can also arrange a private tour with pick-up from your hotel. Tours cost 500 to 800 rupees ($11-$17) respectively a person; a private tour for up to five people costs 3200 rupees. +91 98 208 22253, realitytoursandtravel.com.

More information

www.visitindia.com.

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