Exploring The Dharavi Slums With Be The Local Tours

If you live in India long enough, you can grow very blind to the growing poverty all around you. But for the rest of the world, India’s poverty can be a really harsh slap in the face. As cliche as it sounds, nowhere is the extreme divide between the richest of the rich and poorest of the poor more obvious than in India’ city of dreams – Mumbai. So after a couple of days of being tourists and taking in the sights of Mumbai, when Johnny suggested we do a slum tour I said yes.

After a quick Google search, TripAdvisor pointed me towards Be The Local Tours, run by a guy called Fahim. I rang him and we quickly arranged a tour for the next morning. I was curious and apprehensive about seeing  what used to be Asia’s biggest slum – THE Dharavi slum of Slumdog Millionaire fame. I was worried this tour was a bit voyeuristic but I couldn’t help wanting to see for myself before I made up my mind.

We met Fahim’s tour guides at the Mahim railway station, from where we headed towards Dharavi for a two hour walking tour of the slum. Our friendly guides – two young college students who grew up in Dharavi – were quick to hit us facts and stats about Dharavi that were astonishing. Sample:

Dharavi has an estimated population of about 1 million – around 500,000 per square kilometre where the rest of the city is 30,000. This is six times denser than Manhattan.

They showed us around the various self-sustainable industries Dharavi has set up to support its residents – from recycling plants to embroidery; from detergent production to pottery; from block printing workshops to a leather industry that is believed to produce a majority of the world’s leather.

Dharavi’s industries bring in an annual income of about $1 billion USD

About halfway through the tour, we were taken to one of the spots at which Slumdog Millionaire was filmed. He asked Johnny.. “So you know the scene from Slumdog Millionaire where the boy is running….” and Johnny had to admit he hadn’t watched the movie. I think our guides were pretty stunned by it and ended up asking “Oh…how do you know about Dharavi then?” I think it’s pretty obvious they are used to people coming to Dharavi only after having heard about it thanks to the movie.

At this point I had to ask to them if they (and the rest of the people in Dharavi) thought Slumdog was a good thing for the slum. I was expecting a 100% negative answer but they surprised me. They told me they thought the movie had done well by making the world so aware that Dharavi existed and they appreciated that. But, the movie had also painted a really negative image of Dharavi as an unsafe, drug peddlar’s haven, ridden with prostitutes, filth and abject poverty and they really disliked that; because Dharavi is more than just that. They hoped their tour would dispel the negative stereotypes about their home.

We were told redevelopment plans have been in the works for several years but these new apartment buildings are only likely to accommodate those who have lived in the slums since before the year 2000. Hundreds of migrants from the villages arrive in Dharavi every year so the redevelopment wasn’t likely to help the newer migrants. Better infrastructure was also likely to affect many of the small scale industries in the area. For reasons like these, redevelopment plans continue to be stalled but life in Dharavi goes on.

So what was it like? It was an experience I’m grateful for. Dharavi was dirty, but so is the rest of Mumbai (and India). The tiny box rooms next to open sewers that some of the people lived in was pretty gut-wrenching. But as our guides were quick to tell us…”Dharavi has a lot of poor people but we’re not sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. We’re not depressed. Look around you, there are no beggars like you will see in the rest of Mumbai. We’re trying to be independent with the resources we have“. And he was right. Unfortunately, with a population of over 1 billion, a large chunk of India’s population gets left behind. You can indignantly ask “why doesn’t the government do something?” or you can see the pride with which Dharavi residents will tell you that even though there is no government to look out for them, they are self sufficient and making the most of the little they have.

Don’t misunderstand me – never for one second will I think that it’s okay for them to continue living the way they are while millionaires live in houses adjacent to them with more luxuries than they need. This is a problem not just in Dharavi but all over the world…But Dharavi doesn’t need rescuing, it has learnt how to make a life for itself despite or maybe because of, the odds.

Later that evening when I told my friends in Mumbai we had been to Dharavi, the unanimous answer was an incredulous “why?” and it disappointed me that they didn’t understand Dharavi was as much a part of Mumbai and India as the swankiest restaurant in Bandra.

Unfortunately we could not take any pictures while on the tour. Understandably enough, the locals don’t like being photographed – it must make them feel like animals in a zoo but here are some pictures I got off the Be The Local website. I cannot recommend Be The Local Tours and the Dharavi experience, enough. It’s not voyeurism, I promise you.

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Here are a couple of pics we took with our guides at the end of the tour –