DHARAVI REVAMP THE BIG ADANI GAMBLE

CAN THE TYCOON TRANSFORM ASIA'S LARGEST SLUM?

- DHAVAL S. KULKARNI

A walk through Latur Galli in Mumbai's Dharavi is not for the faint-hearted. The passage to Basavraj Swami’s 70 square feet home involves ducking iron beams, sidestepping covered drains disguised as walkways and navigating alleys barely wide enough for a single person. Swami, 58, lives here with eight family members, packed like pieces of a puzzle into a room with no ventilation. At night, he sleeps under the bed, while his daughter, Swanandi, nods off on top of it. His elderly mother stretches across a mat on the floor. Other family members scale narrow metal ladders to reach tiny lofts, while the main door remains tightly shut mainly to keep out the rats.

This is not a story of urban poverty of the monetary sort. It’s a daily neg otiation with indignity. One in which 15 families share a single tap, and 250 people have to make do with one toilet. Dharavi, said to be Asia’s largest slum, is home to around 1.2 million people, a tenth of Mumbai’s estimated 13 million population. It’s so densely packed that over 400,000 people occupy a sq. km area in the slum, compared to Mumbai’s average of 28,000 (this translates to a 5x5 ft space per person in Dharavi, while in the rest of Mumbai they get 19x19 sq. ft per person, nearly 15 times more). Most Dharavikars, like the Swamis, are migrants, and have been waiting for decades to see a change.