Going slumming

World's largest outdoor laundry, Mumbai, India.
Workers wanted:
Hours: 3AM to 10PM. Basic job: pound clothes on stones while standing in detergent filled water. Pay: $3 per day.
Send references.

I was totally amazed by a tour of the Dharavi slums in Mumbai I took yesterday. Created by Reality Tours, a socially conscious group that uses its proceeds to support educational efforts in the area, it taught me a lot.

Let me confess, I was sort of anxious about the tour. Spending time looking at human misery is not my idea of a good time. But it was recommended highly by several websites and guide books and, well after seeing Slumdog Millionaire, how could I not?

First, the Wikipedia entry for Dhavari is pretty good for the basic facts, so I'll just give some personal  impressions.

• I was totally in awe of how hard working the residents of the area are. Dhavari is a recycling center of plastics, cardboard and other materials, a leather processing area, pottery making industry and home to many in-home bakeries. Working from before sunrise to after dark, many of these people are making 250 rupees a day - about $5. Most jobs looked just horrifyingly, mind-numbingly repetitive.
• Everyone I saw looked healthy, well-fed and well-dressed. The kids were just a charming and cute as anywhere I've been. No beggars, no crime and no religious intolerance. The rooms, while about the size of my bedroom's walk-in closet, were clean (at least the one I visited).
• Education is important. We visited an elementary school. Education is mandatory in India, but as my guide liked to remind me, "laws were made to be broken." India has one of the highest child labor rates in the world and in some of the "sweat shops" the workers looked to be in their early teens.
• Kids were playing marbles, cricket and, in one case, chasing a rat with blocks of concrete. (Reminds me of when my sister and I chased mice when the corn on the farm was shelled.) This is a genuine "community." The guide told of one slum dweller who won the lottery, bought a house and car, but wound up moving back because he missed his community. While there are many single men working away from home, the rule seemed to be families.
• The government seems to be ineffectual at improving conditions in the slums. Try this - one toilet per 1,500 residents in the area. There were open sewers and wiring looked strung when Edison was a baby. There is no real solution to providing housing to the over 1,000,000 workers coming in from the rural areas where there is NO work. The government keeps selling slum land for big development projects, forcing the poor into ever smaller, more densely populated areas - or onto the street.
• Interestingly, the guide claimed that 20% of the homes in Dhavari have computers, 95% have TVs, and 99% have mobile phones. At the community center, anyone could take computer classes - the kids there went I visited were learning Microsoft Office - and English. (The kids also said they had Facebook pages!) How does society tap into this technology to educate and improve the world? I'm beginning to think projects like Negroponte's OLPC may be the only hope.

The tour was conducted with empathy, dignity and good information. No photos were allowed within the area itself, but there are some good pictures that reflect my experience on the Reality Tour webpage (linked above). Oh, the laundry photo above is NOT in the Dhavari area.

My parents had an expression - "There but for the grace of God, go I." The incredible luck that most anyone reading this has had of being born to the right parents, in the right place, at the right time to me, overshadows any kind of personal accomplishment and should humble all of us who claim to be a "self-made" man or woman.

Somebody once said that it is pretty easy to think you've hit a homerun with your life when you were born on third base. My little dose of reality reinforced this.

Comments

[Jim Randolph]

Thanks for this.

[Charlie A. Roy]

@ Doug
I've always wondered when an American developer will take a shot at actually developing land into a slum. If we could get rid of open sewers perhaps a good many people miight be interested in living in actual communities instead of gated sterile suburbal aluminum sided monstrosities. I partly comment in jest but you never know.

[Deanna Reilly]

Doug,
Thanks for sharing your trip with the rest of us. Amazing.

[Doug Johnson]

I have a lot of fun writing these kinds of posts.

Doug

A nice house or a nice community? Actually, I'd like both, but we've certainly chosen architeture over neigborhools in the US!

Doug

Hi Deanna,

Hope you can tell I love to travel. I am hoping one day these blog posts will provide good memories for me as well.

Doug

[M Vaske]

I had the great fortune to visit Dhavari today. My intent in going was to see how our foundation could help with educational needs. I too was pleasantly surprised by the children in their school uniforms, everyone going about their daily business, and not begging. I spent time in homes and business and was invited off the street by a nursery to take pictures of the children. I was able to take photos and made sure that I the ones I took did not show only the poor living conditions but smiles and pride.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi M Vaske,

Thanks for sharing your observations. I hope you had a good guide for your visit. Mine was very helpful.

Doug