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| Dharavi Ariel View Source: filmapia.com |
“Mother of cities to me,
For I was born in her gate,
Between the palms and the sea,
Where the world-end steamers wait.”
-Rudyard Kipling
Dharavi, a
city, within a city. Perhaps let’s start with some mere facts about this place,
an area of 557 acres which is a home to more than one million souls.
Approximately 18,000 people stay in a single acre which is 0.4 hectares, says
National Geographic Report, May 2011.
Small
Scale Industrial Unit
|
|
Unit
Name
|
Number
|
·
Textiles
|
1039
|
·
Porters
|
930
|
·
Leather
|
539
|
·
Embroidery
|
498
|
·
Recycle
|
722
|
·
Restaurants
|
111
|
·
Boutiques & Shops
|
Over thousand
|
(Source: Be
the local tours and travels)
|
|
There is a
lot more to the life of Dharavi except poverty, depression and need. One might
find here a sense of friendliness and always a ray of hope for the better and
for the best. Nothing can match the 24/7
decibel level of Dharavi, where work never stops and dreams never ends. While
Dharavi has a reputation for having shacks of every size and shape piled on top
of one another, the area is also a thriving place of business.
“This is a
parallel economy, in most developed countries, there is only one economy. But
in India, there are two,” says Mahender Tripathi, a BMC official of G ward.
A study by the Center for Environmental
Planning & Technology found that Dharavi has close to 5,000 informal
businesses (For details refer the table). Dharavi could be called a
self-created special economic zone for the poor. People here work on a
triangle of land barely two-thirds the size of Central Park in Manhattan, says
a report by Deccan Herald, October 2012.
 |
| Dyeing Unit Source: mid-day.com |
“While some
people might consider this place as an embarrassing eyesore to India’s
financial capital. We tend to call it our home, our heaven,” says Salman Ali, a
resident of Dharavi.
Strolling
through those narrow lanes or walking down those tiny arterial ways, one find
scenes of robust businesses and small enterprises. The leather industry here is
a sector that each and every resident of Dharavi feels a pride to talk about.
The leather products that are manufactured here are exported worldwide. Now a
day many boutiques have started participating in famous festivals held at
various cities to promote their products.
“The name of Dharavi reached an epitome level,
due to the leather market. From about 500 units many of them work in collaboration
with each other. We work with 8 major units here and our work is quite in
demand, especially the products that are made up of crocodile skin, we are one
of the major exporter here. Our goods are exported all over Europe, United
States, and many other places,” says Danish Khan, owner of Danish leather. Who
is the fourth generation of his family working in this business and is
expanding their work around the globe.
 |
| Pottery Unit Source: urbanphoto.net |
People here
are ingenious, industrious, promethean and each have their own success story which
can be an inspiration for tons of people out there. This muti-faceted city
demands you to dig below its surface and discover the undiscovered. It’s about
discovering those stories that gave Dharavi an identity.
Jameel Shah’s
saga is what you can call a genuine Dharavi 'success story'. Unlike many of the
resident living here, it wasn't his forefathers who settled here when it was
marshland. Jameel came to Dharavi at the age of 12 from a small village of
Darbhanga district in Bihar, in the year 1992. Like any other young boy, he
became a kaarigar at a workshop for mere salary of Rs 1800 a month.
Today almost
20 years later, he is running his own workshop. And to be precise it’s not just
any workshop. Jameel Shah designs shoes' for the most exquisite feet in the
country. His clients are famous bollywood stars like Kajol, Priyanka Chopra,
Abhishek Bachan,Hrithik Roshan etc.
Everyone
has a story, so Dharavi have millions of stories. Every story holds the power
to leave its imprint on one’s mind forever.
 |
| Recycle Unit Source: planetizen.com |
Sandeep
Singh (36), owner of Singh Recycling talks about his life journey. A worker who
now owns 5 recycle units. “I came to Mumbai at the age of 17 and since then I
have been working. I started with cleaning government offices, that ofcourse
wasn’t my dream, it was just the start. I started living in Dharavi along with
9 other roommates. Soon I joined a recycle unit, my job was to separate the
things, eventually things started falling in place. Today I own 5 units and
will soon expand it to 7 units.”
Garbage from all over the world is brought
here and is sorted by us. We recycle every product from laptops to toothpaste
caps. Some recycling units invent unbelievable unique products and sell them,
while other manufacture plastic pellets and then it is shipped to China for
manufacturing. Did you know we make around 60,000 recycled products from them?
We are innovative people, explain Singh.
Sandeep
Singh is said to be an inspiration for many youngsters around 90 feet Dharavi, named for its alleged width (the denarcation of the area is based on its wideness, even if 60 Feet Road, the slum's other main drag is considerably wider). "I want to be like him and everyone likes and respects him. Everyone here tells us to be like him," says Nishi, a 10 year old.
 |
| Smile that can brighten your day. Source: journals.worldnomads.com |
There are
many other who are inspiring, the youth of Dharavi. In one area, called
Kumbharwada, you will always hear stories about “Sakshi Pottery” unit. A unit
started by a teenage woman, Saundarya Kumari, a B.A. graduate from Sathey
College. “I started this unit for my mother Sakshi, it was her dream, we started with 2 people, me and my mom and
today 47 women works with us.”
You will witness dozens of women sitting
together on the ground beating a slab of clay with her hands and then rolling
it into a large ovular sphere. Barefoot men walking around them, humming their
traditional songs, carrying clay pots from inside their homes and placing them
to dry outside in the sun.
Moving on
to the educational sector of this area, one might be surprised to find that
kids here are quite fluent in their English speaking language. Around 80% of children here attend school.
There are around 60 municipality schools, 6 secondary schools and 15 private schools
in Dharavi, states Kush Kumar, an intern from NGO Akhansha. It’s fascinating to
see these kids wanting to learn new languages and explore the world, to make
their home a better place.
 |
| Wire Unit Source: .thepolisblog.org |
“Maybe to
anyone who has not seen Dharavi, Dharavi is a slum, a huge slum,” said Gautam
Chatterjee, the principal secretary overseeing the housing ministry in Maharashtra
state. “But I have looked at Dharavi as a city within a city, an informal
city.”
What is
particularly remarkable about Dharavi is that its residents have managed to
build themselves homes and find or create jobs that support them and their
families with virtually no support from the state.
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