Dharavai, featured in the Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire, is one of the largest slums in India’s Mumbai with over a million residents. Poverty is widespread in Dharavi, but its residents have found ways to survive, and businesses to thrive, by doing the work that others avoid. This work is low-skill, labor intensive and dangerous, often dealing with toxic substances and with minimal safety protection. Workers are paid little, but this labor enables them to survive when they have few other options. The slum hosts an ever-expanding economy specializing in pottery, textiles, soap-making, leather tanning and recycling. Official statistics are 650 million dollars of economic activity, but as most of the businesses are not registered, the actual figure is probably several times higher. Dharavi challenges our notion of slums as sites of inactivity and indolence.
View of downtown Mumbai from the Dharavi slum
Every business opportunity is seized upon in Dharavi. Here a man provides a typing service to fill out government forms.
Tailor shop
Recycling business manager
Tattoo
Recycled containers
Plastic debris is gathered for recycling.
Workers sort plastic by color and type.
Cleaning lids for reuse.
Stripping wire to separate the plastic insulation from the copper to recycle both.
Cardboard recycling
Superman carrying used food oil drums.
Shopkeeper
Buying beans at the market
Butcher
Food Vendor
Health and Beauty Aids
Barber Shop
Variety Store. Manufacturers create smaller packaging for the poor who are unable to purchase standard sizes of the same products. This "convenience packaging" costs consumers substantially more per serving.
Mother and son outside spice manufacturer
Juice vendor crushes sugar cane to serve fresh, sweet drinks.
