Blog courtsey: http://www.thisworldrocks.com/
The slums of Mumbai: To tour or not to tour?
We’ve had mixed feelings about whether or not we wanted to take a
tour of one of the many slums here in India. Slum tours are not unique
to India, but India is definitely one of the countries at the forefront
of the ethical issues that slum tours raise: Are slum tours helping people in the slums or just a way to profit off the poor? or Why are we encouraging foreigners to gawk at the poorest of the poor?
The debate can rage on forever, but we have three days left in
Mumbai, and need to make a decision. To us, there is no right or wrong
answer about slum tours, and the biggest factors of whether slum tours
are ethical fall on the tour operators and the tourists themselves. We
want to tour the slums in order to learn about the realities of life
here as well as to test our prior assumptions about what life in a slum
is like. Our goal here is not to gawk but to respectfully learn and
maybe we can help to clear up misconceptions that we and others have
about slums.
The second important factor for us is to find a tour operator that is
clearly not just here to exploit people. After doing some research
online, we stumbled across a small company run by three young tour
guides called Slumgods Tours.
These three, early-20’s guys are all residents of the slum, and all
used to work for some of the larger slum tour operators, but have since
broken off to do things their own way. After talking with Akash, one of
the owners, we feel extremely comfortable with how his business runs
their tours. He tells us their business’s objective is to dispel the
negative image of the Dharavi and other slums in India. This is exactly
the type of tour operator we were looking for, and we were even more
excited to find out we were only his 15th and 16th customer!
Misconceptions about slums
We are the only two on the tour this afternoon, and we will be
touring Akash’s own slum, known as Dharavi. We are given all the rules
of the tour, like no pictures of any people without having Akash first
ask permission. He tells us to try to be as invisible as possible and
that he will take us through areas that he knows we won’t be disturbing
anyone.
We start by walking over one of the main entrances into Dharavi, a
small, crowded railway bridge. We stop at the top of the bridge and
Akash asks us what we know about slums and what our preconceived notions
are about life in slums. We feel nervous to tell him our assumptions
about slums, and more embarrassed to tell him why we have those
assumptions. He senses our apprehensions and jumps right into it by
asking if we have ever seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Dan
then has to admit that many of his assumptions about slums come from
that movie. Akash tells us that those in Dharavi hate that movie (which
is set in Juhu slum near Dharavi), because it shows many parts of slum
life that are not true and doesn’t show many of the good parts of the
slums. We admit that our assumptions are that slums are crowded and
dirty, that children work instead of go to school, and that the living
conditions are overall very poor.
After we pile on insult after insult of our ignorant assumption after
ignorant assumption, Akash just smiles. He says this is what he is
used to, and this is why he gives these tours. To open up the World’s
eyes to what life is really like. And so the tour begins, with
interesting fact after interesting fact. In the first five minutes we
learn:
- Dharavi is 175 hectares in size (about half the size of New York’s Central Park or about 90 football fields)
- Over 1 million people call this slum home.
- Over 90% of the children here go to school full time
- Occupants can get everything they need here. Running water, bathroom facilities(shared), electricity, televisions, mobile phones, internet, etc. There are fresh food stalls, clothing stores, schools, banks, hospitals, clinics, dentists, wedding banquet halls, you name it. It is a city within a city.
- Moving to Dharavi is difficult – because of the prime location in the center of the city, the proximity to 5 railway stations, and the ban from the government of expanding, rent outside the slum is very expensive.
- Many families have owned their home for generations, since their ancestors started squatting here.
- Akash lives in his mother’s home with 16 other people. The house consists of 5 or so rooms, all the size of most American bedroom closets.
Business as usual inside the slum
We start our tour on the west side of the area, the commercial side.
It is surprising to learn how much industry there is inside of the
slums. We had always assumed slums were 100% residential, when in face,
this slum has an economic output of around $500 million USD. We walk
past factory after factory, all full of hard-working men making goods
from local recycled materials. We see plastic, paint cans, leather,
aluminum, and pottery all made from materials collected throughout the
city or from the waste materials of large manufacturers. The working
conditions are pretty rough – dark, dirty, and poorly ventilated – and
we don’t see any safety equipment. Most of the workers here earn
150-300 rupees per day, about $2-$5. Many of them actually live in the
rural areas of Mumbai and come to Dharavi during the dry season to find
work because of their lack of education. They often get free
accommodation on the floor of the same factory they work all day in.
A bag of collected keyboards awaits its turn to be recycled in Dharavi
The plastic factory was especially interesting: bags of recycle
plastic are purchased from “scrap beetles” scrounging the city. The
plastic is shredded with electric machines that are built right here in
Dharavi by the same men with low education. The men here have become so
good at creating these specialized machines that they now even export
them to China. The plastic is sorted, shredded, washed, dried, melted,
then formed into pellets. The pellets are then sold by the kilogram for
about four times the price of the materials to manufacturers of various
toys, electronics, automobile parts, etc. (they aren’t safe for food
containers).
Living conditions inside the slum
After the commercial region, we cross a busy road named ’60 Feet
Road’ to enter into the slum’s residential area. At this point, Akash
jokes, “if you get lost, don’t use Google maps, because it won’t help you here.”
He’s right. We follow him through a labyrinth of alleys, some so
narrow they block the light like a tunnel. Some kids say hi to us, but
most people ignore us. I’m sure we don’t blend in, but there is a
steady stream of people walking around, doing chores, and running
errands. He shares another surprising fact: that there are people living
here from many different economic statuses. Rich people, such as
politicians (“legal mafia”, in his words), doctors, and police are among
the residents. There is a common misconception that everyone in a slum
falls into one category: poor. When in fact a slum has levels of
status and income just like any other city. Living in a slum and being
poor aren’t mutually exclusive groups here. Maybe by Western income
standards everyone here is poor, but when you walk around in Dharavi and
see a family living comfortably, happy, like any other middle-class
family, the last word that comes to mind is poor. The thought that every person who lives in a slum is miserable and would do anything to move is 100% not true.
This isn’t to say the residents here are living any type of luxorious
or glorious lives. They face countless challenges and hardships every
day. However, living here is still the best option for them when you
compare it to the alternatives. (i.e. living on the streets, moving to
rural areas where there are no jobs, or trying to afford rent in Mumbai
which is basically the New York of India’s housing market.)
Another misconception about the slums is the religious tensions.
Akash explains that there are people from many religions – Hindu,
Muslim, and Christian mainly – living here. They live separately, in
their own communities, but they don’t fight. There are many temples,
mosques and churches in Dharavi and all coexist peacefully.
We walk to the edge of the buildings and see one of the 600 community
toilets, 1 for every 1500 people. Less than 2% of Dharavi residents
have a bathroom in their home. Also on the edge of the rows of elaborate
tin shanties are a few more traditional, cement and brick apartment
buildings. Apparently the government built these in 2004 as part of a
project to get rid of the slums, but no one wanted to move in. In an
apartment, families lose the ability to build up as they need/can afford
to. Also, Akash explains the loss of community feeling that residents
of the building report.
A bathroom in Dharavi, shared by over 1,000 residents.
We witness some other industries run from the homes. Women don’t
work outside their homes, but many of them are hired by a local
manufacture make papadums, a type of bread/cracker, to make extra money
for the home. We also walk through a neighborhood solely populated with
families who have been making clay pots for generations. We walk by one
of the kilns, a pit in the ground with burning garbage – cotton rags,
waste from the leather plant – and hurry upwind as I hold my breath.
Around the corner, kids are playing cricket in an empty lot. Dan asks
for a turn to bat, and the kids laugh as he knocks a few “4’s”. I
think he hoped they would mistake him for some famous Australian cricket
player, but I could tell the kids weren’t fooled. They were all much
better at cricket than he was.
Dan taking the first cricket at-bat of his life. In his words: “I crushed it!”
Akash’s home
We finish the tour at Akash’s home. It’s large by Dharavi standards: 5
rooms for 16 people. We meet his mother, one of his sisters, his
nephew, and his future wife, 17 years old, promised to him when she
turns 21. We have a friendly conversation and his mother jokes with us
while Akash translates. She offers us fried breaded fish with roti
(bread). The fish is delicious, and another misconception is crushed.
Not all food in a slum is bad. In fact many of the foods that people
here eat, in one of the world’s biggest slums, is fresher and healthier
than most Western diets.
Meeting Akash’s family was a wonderful experience
Overall, the tour was a positive experience for us. I never felt like
we were intruding on anyone, only walking through the streets like any
walking tour. I’m sure the people living in Dharavi wonder what is so
interesting to us, but they didn’t seem annoyed, even the few times
Akash asked them questions for us. Our guide definitely dispelled some
myths about slums, such that everyone who lives there is miserable and
poor. The truth is they all have jobs, though low paying and often
dangerous, but in general they have enough to feed their families
without begging. The government provides basic health services (doctor
visits are cheap), the drinking water sources are improving, and they
even clean the sewers at least annually before rainy season.
Again, we think a positive tour experience depends on the tourist –
stay in a small groups, don’t invade private areas (or book tours which
do), and smile at locals who acknowledge you. It is up to us as
tourists to ensure tour companies don’t impede on peoples’ lives. If there isn’t a market of unethical tourists, then there won’t be any unethical tour companies.
From Left to Right: Akash’s Mother, Dan, Alissa, Akash, Akash’s Fiancé
More info on slum tours
If you are interested in reading more about the controversies surrounding slum tours around the world, our friend Stetson put
together a good list of articles about the subject: He has been living
in Brazil for the past couple of years, another country that is at the
center of the slum tour debate:
- Do Slum Tours Profit Off the Poor? (BBC Travel)
- Globalization or Zoo-Like Exploitation? (Racialicious Blog)
- Poverty Tours: A Learning Experience or Simply Gawking? (CNN.com)
- Next Stop, Squalor (Smithsonian Magazine)
- Slumming It (Video) (Huffington Post)
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