Dharavi in reference to the government

Shirish Patel ©Dante Montella

By Arjun Maniyar

With absolute clarity, I see truth in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien when he said, "not all who wander are lost". Dharavi is a community of wanderers; a group of people who journeyed from wherever to get to Mumbai and make a new and improved life for themselves and their family. 100 years ago, Dharavi had virtually zero residents. Today though, this area acts as a home to at least 600,000 people. I bring this up because the fore-mentioned journeyers, who would later become "squatters", came to Mumbai with nearly nothing but a desire to put food on the table for their family. Consequently, these men were by no means lost. Yes, they were wanderers, but wanderers with a purpose and sense of direction. So I will say it again, these people are not lost. In fact, it is the government that is lost; the Indian government has been lost in discriminatory customs against Dharavi since people first began to trickle to the land. These customs date back to the caste system in which members of lower castes were not even allowed to look at people of a higher caste. The government, in essence, endeared the caste system because it was financially and socially viable for them to turn their backs on the residents of Dharavi. Financially, quite simply, the government felt that it was unnecessary to spend money on those they viewed as "second-class citizens". Instead, they wanted to improve and clean up the already nice areas of Mumbai for the affluent people living there. Socially, the government met no protest from lawmakers or non-Dharavi residents. Amazingly, in spite of governmental negligence and complete lack of support in basic municipal services, Dharavi has blossomed by creating business through offering unbeatable prices and taking care of the work nobody else in the city wants to handle (recylcing, textiles, garbage).

When the Dharavi residents realized that it was socially acceptable by the rest of Mumbai for the government to allow them to squander, they simply built industries in Dharavi from within. In other words, residents control industries in Dharavi without ever having to set foot in the "financial" areas of Mumbai. For many decades, residents of Dharavi took care of themselves, relying only upon themselves and the community which they had helped build. In the truest sense of the phrase, the residents of Dharavi are "self-made men". So now that the government has a vested interest in Dharavi (according to Mukesh Mehta, they stand to make $2-3 Billion) and the media is taking a larger interest in the slums, they are pushing their plan forward in typical fashion- with little regard to the wants or needs of the residents. It is now about developing this highly desirable piece of land and not about developing the people. Retired architect Shirish Patel described the plan, telling us that the government is taking the people and putting them on half the land they were on. They are taking the other half of the land and making it commercial, which will pay for the "free" housing to be provided to the original residents of Dharavi. Mr. Patel says that this kind of plan works in cases in which there are not astronomical densities. In this case, Dharavi is the densest community in the world, and thus, this redevelopment project has a serious and realistic chance of failing.

Personally, I think the government should open its eyes a little wider and try to address the needs of the people. But of course, that will not happen, it is not the government's job to care about the needs of the people...not in Mumbai at least.