Dharavi, Asia's largest slum located in the middle of India's financial capital, Mumbai, is the green lung of the city. It stops the city to choke to death on its own waste.
A 175-hectare maze of impenetrable dark alleys and corrugated shacks, Dharavi swarms with more than a million residents.
Dharavi turns around the discarded waste of not only Mumbai's 21 million citizens but from all around the country and abroad as well.
All along the squalid streets, hundreds of barefoot street children, human recycling machines, scurry back and forward, hauling bundles of waste - plastic, cardboard or glass. From every alley comes the sound of hammering, drilling and soldering. In every shack, dark figures sit waist-deep in piles of car batteries, computer parts, fluorescent lights, ballpoint pens, plastic bags, paper and cardboard boxes and wire hangers, sorting each item for recycling.
Workshops reveal everything from aluminium smelters recycling drink cans to perspiring bare-chested men stirring huge vats of waste soap retrieved from rubbish tips and local hotels. Walking through Dharavi, home to an estimated 15,000 single-room factories, it becomes difficult to conceive of anything that is not made or recycled here.
Dharavi remains a land of recycling opportunity for many rural Indians. The average household in Dharavi now earns between 3,000 and 15,000 rupees a month ($60-$300). The new money through recycling has in effect spawned a new slum gentry. Certain corners of Dharavi have even gone upmarket with bars, beauty parlours and clothing boutiques. Last week a major bank opened the slum's first ATM.
But the future of the slum is uncertain. The government has provisionally approved a plan called 'Vision Mumbai' - to create a world-class city by 2013. But internationally renowned architect Charles Correa, who has worked in the city for 50 years, says: 'There's very little vision with this plan. They're more like hallucinations.' Demolition work has begun and police are forcing out inhabitants, leaving thousands homeless and jobless. Author and architect Neera Adarkar is among hundreds of activists who see Vision Mumbai as impractical and inhumane because it ignores both the industry and hope of the slum.
A 175-hectare maze of impenetrable dark alleys and corrugated shacks, Dharavi swarms with more than a million residents.
Dharavi turns around the discarded waste of not only Mumbai's 21 million citizens but from all around the country and abroad as well.
All along the squalid streets, hundreds of barefoot street children, human recycling machines, scurry back and forward, hauling bundles of waste - plastic, cardboard or glass. From every alley comes the sound of hammering, drilling and soldering. In every shack, dark figures sit waist-deep in piles of car batteries, computer parts, fluorescent lights, ballpoint pens, plastic bags, paper and cardboard boxes and wire hangers, sorting each item for recycling.
Workshops reveal everything from aluminium smelters recycling drink cans to perspiring bare-chested men stirring huge vats of waste soap retrieved from rubbish tips and local hotels. Walking through Dharavi, home to an estimated 15,000 single-room factories, it becomes difficult to conceive of anything that is not made or recycled here.
Dharavi remains a land of recycling opportunity for many rural Indians. The average household in Dharavi now earns between 3,000 and 15,000 rupees a month ($60-$300). The new money through recycling has in effect spawned a new slum gentry. Certain corners of Dharavi have even gone upmarket with bars, beauty parlours and clothing boutiques. Last week a major bank opened the slum's first ATM.
But the future of the slum is uncertain. The government has provisionally approved a plan called 'Vision Mumbai' - to create a world-class city by 2013. But internationally renowned architect Charles Correa, who has worked in the city for 50 years, says: 'There's very little vision with this plan. They're more like hallucinations.' Demolition work has begun and police are forcing out inhabitants, leaving thousands homeless and jobless. Author and architect Neera Adarkar is among hundreds of activists who see Vision Mumbai as impractical and inhumane because it ignores both the industry and hope of the slum.
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