I have had strange interactions with Dharavi, dubiously honoured as Asia’s largest slum. Perhaps because of them, I can understand why it is a muse for filmmakers, a haven for criminals, a vote-catcher for power-seekers, and an economic engine that powers the storied mansions and skyscrapers of Mumbai.
One of my early impressions was watching Varadarajan Mudaliar, don of the Dharavi underworld. He was on stage at a Ganesh Chaturthi celebration as a key benefactor, and the auntie who briefly housed me in nearby Matunga as a paying guest was pithy in telling me why he mattered: “People may say things about him, but he does a lot of good things for our temples.”
‘Varadabhai’, who was immortalised by Mani Ratnam in the Kamal Haasan-starrer Nayakan (Hero), came bouncing back to memory as I read how the current plan to ‘redevelop’ Dharavi is a matter of political slugfest at election time. About $237 million of the $2 billion project has already been spent.
The Dharavi project, a key issue for Mumbaikars at the assembly elections next week, will directly or indirectly touch the lives of nearly one million people. Not all of them are likely to be amused by big money chasing the livelihoods of small people—with the clear and present prospect of their being shifted out of the area.
I had a trainee-day visit to Dharavi soon after my glimpse of the don when a Catholic church charity took me on a ‘slum tourism’ tour to showcase the social work it was doing. I recall two things from that visit: the Christian priest wanting a transfer out of the dreaded zone and his talking of slum kids carrying broken halves of shaving blades as ‘gateway’ weapons.
Five years after Nayakan was released in 1987, Dharavi became a Bollywood backdrop again in a Sudhir Mishra movie named after the area. It went on to win Mishra the national award for the best feature film, just as Haasan had won the national award for the best actor for his portrayal of the don.
The Wikipedia description of Dharavi’s plotline remains relevant to this day: “The film follows [the protagonist’s] fortunes as he tries to break out from the clutches of poverty, devising plans and investing all his money in dubious schemes which eventually blow out on him, coming under the eye of unscrupulous politicians and local goons... still, he perseveres for his dreams.”
A year before the movie’s release and long before the current project, I had my own brush with the idea of a makeover of Dharavi when I met the then chairman of the National Housing Bank (NHB), Manohar Pherwani, for a casual afternoon chat in Delhi. The man had fallen into some disrepute for his alleged mistakes as the chairman of Unit Trust of India and had been transferred to the NHB; but he was his feisty self before his premature death during the Scam 1992 months that followed. The scam involved stock market manipulation by disgraced broker Harshad Mehta, with whom NHB had a link.
Pherwani discussed Dharavi with me, and when my publication ran it as front-page news, he was not amused—he clarified that his talk about rehabilitating slum dwellers while developing a corner of the area for high-rise commercial development was only “loud thinking.”
Dharavi was and is a touchy subject. Can one really reverse-swing it to some glory? I do not know much about the government’s joint venture, but can say for sure that such projects involve high risks—economic, political and social. That is precisely why any attempt to explain its redevelopment in simple terms is met with cynicism. Another party plans to build an international finance centre in the area. I wonder what shape that will take, but know that the area is more than a highrise or two.
Dharavi alone is as populous as Solapur in Maharashtra or Austin in Texas, US. It must also be remembered that Dharavi is estimated to process 60 percent of Mumbai’s plastic waste—it houses an underbelly that supports the city’s swanky, not-so-sustainable lifestyles.
Like the protagonist in the eponymous movie, the typical Dharavi slum-dweller is a struggling soul chasing dreams that are not easy to realise. A few wads of cash and even a roof promised over his head are not substitutes for a livelihood that would give him a sense of long-term security and growth.
Is it this angst that leads slum-dwellers to make heroes out of dons? Tall talk and tall buildings are beyond their everyday understanding of life. Come election time, they often like those who oppose changes because they give out a promise that their life would not get worse even if it does not get better.
Maybe this project can beat that jinx. A little south along Mumbai’s suburban railway tracks, we have seen closed textile mills of Lower Parel spring back as high-technology office parks. That holds out hopes as a precedent. But Dharavi is no private compound. It is a sprawling swathe of shanties, streets and spaces that offer succour to struggling souls. For any meaningful redevelopment, its denizens must be treated like hard-working shareholders.
(Views are personal.)
Madhavan Narayanan (On X @madversity)
Senior journalist