Mumbay Day 31: On Dharavi
With a population of more than one million, Dharavi is often cited as Asia’s most populous slum. Located in the heart of Mumbai, and covering just two square kilometers of land, it is also one of the world’s most dense urban conglomerations. If the population of Manhattan were re-housed in such a compact form, Manhattanites would occupy only one third of the island’s present land area, with no structure taller than three stories in height.
On Saturday, I had the opportunity to tour Dharavi with an NGO by the name of Reality Gives (we were not allowed to take photos, out of respect for residents). Myself and four other tourists, two from both Germany and Ireland, were led through its maze-like streets by a former resident of the slum. In the face of the staggering numbers mentioned above, it is easy to preconceive Dharavi as a place of squalor, a zone in complete isolation from the rest of Mumbai. Constructed on a former swamp, its legitimacy has always been tenuous; many have framed its confines as a blight on the city, one which resists the “progress” India is so intent on developing within its borders. While this may hold true from the most rudimentary analysis of the slum, deeper investigation yields Dharavi as not only a fantastic economic engine of Mumbai, but also a place of profound social implication.
In many ways, Dharavi is an unrelenting distillation of Mumbai’s functionalist doctrine, one in which form and function, aesthetic and value are completely divorced from normative Western associations. It is also a gleaming example of the intelligence of self-organized urbanism. Our tour’s path first took us through the commercial district of Dharavi, which houses industry not suited for cohabitation with the slum’s residences. Here, a myriad of generic rooms are packed tightly against one-another, each accommodating a wildly idiosyncratic industrial production facility: plastic recycling, aluminum smelting, engine manufacture. Without central planning, urban designers, or architects of any kind, residents have managed to extract every inch of useable space from its occupied territory: some estimates cite fifteen thousand single-room factories within the slum alone, in addition to thousands of residences and commercial spaces. At every turn, each surface is utilized to its maximum potential. Rooftops, for example, are covered with products in the midst of a drying process, among them dyed cloth, plastic pellets, and freshly-painted oil drums.
It is jaw-dropping to consider Dharavi’s urban and economic impacts in relation to its entirely self-organized nature. With each business compressed to its spatial and functional limit, its economic production as a whole is enormous. Dharavi produces over five hundred million dollars in turnover each year, a substantial component of the city’s total economic production. Many of the industries described above––plastic recycling, oil drum repair––hinge on the immediate availability of otherwise-unwanted raw materials within Mumbai itself. As a result, the slum not only holds tremendous economic importance for Mumbai, but also ingests and transfigures its byproducts and waste: it operates in symbiosis with the city at large and, without its presence, Mumbai’s environmental impacts would likely be far more severe.
Most surprising, however, is the social cohesion generated by such dense urban development. Away from Dharavi’s centers for industrial production, tightly-packed neighborhoods occupy every available inch of space, leaving only foot-wide corridors as public access. It is not uncommon for extended families to occupy single rooms within these residential zones, and each space is used to sleep, eat, bathe, socialize, and work throughout the day. No zone is mono-functional. Though our tour admittedly took us through the most tourist-friendly portions of Dharavi’s residential fabric, our passing visit showed an incredible––and, at times, emotionally overwhelming––sense of kinship amongst residents. Small courtyards within assemblages of housing yield communal spaces for residents; programs such as religious temples, schools, and even gyms open onto these small voids, which are in turn subjected to a twenty-four-hour cycle of activity and program. Much to my surprise, those with whom we came in contact seemed unrelentingly happy, part of a social network nurtured by their unorthodox living conditions.
Despite the enormity of the settlement, endlessly-revised plans have been made to re-develop Dharavi––and not all without cause. Residents in the slum lack basic necessities, the most urgent of which are undoubtedly related to sanitation: as another shocking statistic, there are only seven-hundred toilets in Dharavi, with each toilet used by over one thousand people every day. Yet, during my brief time in the space, I became ever-more convinced that simple demolition, or grand reinstatement of a tabula rasa, would be a thoughtless excision of one of Mumbai’s most innovative urban assets. Indeed, many Indian architects today call for a retention of a “local” architectural vernacular, one which seeks to authentically express the myriad of reagents found in India’s rich architectural history. Surely such thoughts should similarly be given to urban development: Dharavi is an awe-inspiring example of a uniquely organic urban formation, one which should be improved, not abolished.
Small-scale interventions, which aim to provide Dharavi’s residents with a higher standard of living, may be a promising, and immediate, way forward. The improvement and proliferation of toilets, for example, would make an immediate impact on the lives of thousands. The distribution of materials which seek to better-insulate homes from inclement weather would undoubtedly raise standards of living for many in Dharavi’s upper reaches. Such strategies could be implemented easily and organically, and would not rely on the relocation of millions in order to enact change. Yet politicians are often hesitant to legitimize slum developments, and corruption in India exacerbates attempts to reach the urban poor on this scale.
What's more is the matter of image. Though many architects and urbanists find Dharavi endlessly fascinating, those concerned with the depiction of Mumbai––and often those with political control––see these developments in direct conflict with Mumbai's future "world city" image. In sharp contrast to gleaming high-rises and sprawling shopping centers, Dharavi is not attractive in a purely aesthetic, Western sensibility. But, as mentioned above, its aesthetic qualities have little correlation with its economic, social, and urban importance. Given time, Dharavi's urban implications may be far more profound than any intervention conceived by architects, urbanists, or politicians; it is our collective responsibility to allow it to mature.
Residents and bureaucrats alike must attempt to see Dharavi's reality and promise. Mumbai does not need to "look" like any other city (and especially not Shanghai) in order to become one of the world's most important urban centers. What matters here, above all, is content. The ingenuity seen in Dharavi's informal sprawl may well be a powerful means for India to innovate at the scale of the "local," to nurture an unassuming yet radical urban condition in the heart of a truly global metropolis.