MUMBAI MAKEOVER TRANSCRIPT

India these days along with China, one of the world's rapidly emerging economic powerhouses. But prosperity and progress wherever they occur invariably come at a price and, as always, it looks like India's poor who will suffer most, including those in old Bombay, these days Mumbai.

REPORTER: Jonathon Matthews

KRISHNA POOJARI, TOUR GUIDE: Welcome to Dharavi, guys. How did you hear about the tour?

Krishna Poojari conducts guided tours of one of the world's least glamorous destinations, Mumbai's Dharavi slum. Each day he leads small groups of foreigners deep into the maze of hundreds of tiny lanes and alleyways, some no wider than a bodywidth, twisting and turning amongst the hutments. The Dharavi slum covers 445 acres of what was once boggy marshland. It's home to an estimated 1 million people. There's only one toilet for every 1,500 residents. Sewage runs through open drains. In the monsoon rains and summer heat it's a health nightmare, but Krishna also tries to show his customers another side of the slums.

KRISHNA POOJARI: The area that you be in, that's mainly a commercial area of Dharavi, business area of Dharavi.
When I came to Mumbai there was a lot of negative images about the slums. When I first came to Dharavi with the plan of slum tours, I found Dharavi was completely different. I found everywhere people are working, dashing here and there with some stuff, with plastic, there are places where they are making, you know, recycling. Dharavi is a village, you know. It's a village in the middle of the city because there is everything.

Everything from heavy machinery manufacturing to a pottery factory to the large-scale recycling of plastic. These unpromising digs have even spawned some proud export businesses.

MAN (Translation): I make plastic-crushing machines which are exported to Dubai and other places around the world.

The cash turnover of this slum runs to $700 million a year. It's said that without Dharavi and the recycling that goes on here, Mumbai would disappear under a mountain of garbage. Amidst this hive of activity I find the Zabair family out buying the goods for their own tiny business, preparing meals for fellow slum-dwellers. They have to make the best of what they have, which isn't much. Climb up this ladder to an airless loft and you find the Zabair's home, a tiny room no more than 2m by 3m.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): There are six of us, we all live in one room. We've been here for the past 16 years in the same alley. We squeeze in as comfortably as we can. It gets pretty hot in summer. Sometimes when I'm cooking the heat gets unbearable and I have to send the children out.

Zabair used to earn good money, but since he injured his back the family have been doing it tough.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): My husband got sick and had to have an operation, so I now have to cook for a living to support my family. Today is Sunday so I cook roti, chapatti, vegetable, rice and dahl and the like.

Each day Neema Zabair prepares meals for her six customers who work in a nearby factory. For her efforts she earns 200 rupees, around five dollars a week, barely enough to feed the family. Once the meals are ready the children are drafted in to help with the deliveries.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): It’s really hard, it’s so difficult. Very young kids have to cross a busy road daily. I worry about them, we are in God’s hands. They come home from school and then they have to go out to work, sometimes without eating.

But despite the hardship, the Zabairs say they are happy where they are and they work to maintain a quiet dignity in their tiny home.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): Look how hard she's studying.

GIRL (Translation): I've been here since I was born and all my friends live here, so I don't want to live anywhere else. My school is close by. All our neighbours are our friends.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): I'd like to stay in Dharavi. I'm able to make a living here and the children are in the local school. We've been here for a long time and the neighbours are known to us and we like it here.

But unfortunately for the Zabairs, their days in the slum may be numbered. Dharavi sits in Mumbai's geographical heart, sandwiched between two major commuter railway lines. It's a prime piece of real estate in a city with some of the most expensive property in the world, and now the government is talking redevelopment. These slums are about to undergo major change.

MUKESH METAH, ARCHITECT: The government's vision is that we must integrate the slum dwellers of Dharavi with the mainstream citizens of Mumbai by providing sustainable redevelopment and rehabilitation package for them.

The plan for Dharavi is the brainchild of architect Mukesh Metah.

MUKESH METAH: This is a shift in paradigm for all slum rehabilitation throughout the world. People are going to look at slum rehabilitation in a different way after Dharavi.

This is what Mumbai has done in the past to rehouse slumdwellers. The Dharavi redevelopment plans to give each family a 225 square foot apartment. For some that will be an improvement, but for many of Dharavi's businesses that will mean financial disaster. The Khumbar potters have lived and worked in Dharavi for decades, but they're not hopeful about the future.


MAN (Translation): If Dharavi was to be redeveloped, our business would wind up. We would not have this large area, we would be allotted less space, therefore it would be impossible for us to continue our present work. We would be given alternative accommodation a long way from Bombay which is of no help to us.

But the government's developers see little wrong with the new plan.

MUKESH METAH: The workshops and potters will almost get the similar amount of space that they already have. The real estate will not get lost they just have to change their use or make it non-polluting and they'll get almost the same amount of space with maybe marginal 15% to 20% cut.

How much space people get is one thing but to get anything at all, first you've got to be eligible. That means proving you've lived in Dharavi since 1995. Thousands of residents will fall through the cracks. They just don't have the proof to show how long they've lived here. The Zabair family says the redevelopment will force them out of a home.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): We rent this room. It belongs to the owner so if it's demolished, we'll be without a home. Worrying about this has affected my health. I've been taking medication just so I can carry on looking after the family. Three weeks ago I was so sick my family thought I would die. In the last few days I've been taking the medicine and my health has improved but if it gets worse and I die, who will look after the children? All the stress is making my hair fall out and I always get sick.

KRISHNA POOJARI: Only 57,000 families get the free housing of 225 square feet, but in Dharavi 200,000 families live here. All those people they have to leave from Dharavi, they have to go out of Dharavi, so where they will go?

Dharavi's developers argue they are only following the rules.

MUKESH METAH: There's a government law that only those who are eligible will be shifted into transit tenements. The rest will have to go. They'll probably settle in another slum, somewhere else.

Professor R. N. Sharma is Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Tata University. He believes that the current redevelopment plan for Dharavi will only add to Mumbai's slum problems.

DR R.N. SHARMA, SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR: The moment you implement the Dharavi plan as it is proposed today, the possibility could be that one level of the population, a section of that population, quite substantial, will be forced to move outside. And then they will create their own slums.

Here at Boravali, a suburb of northern Mumbai, people have already suffered a similar fate to that which awaits Dharavi's slum dwellers. Families had been living here for over 30 years and in that time had built substantial houses. But when the government decided to widen the train line their homes were simply bulldozed, leaving them huddling under plastic and tarpaulins.

WOMAN (Translation): We are living in filth. Our brick house has been demolished. We are living in dirt. We have been living in this filth for the last two years, which is unbearable.

DR R. N. SHARMA: The cake actually has to be shared, really, by the bigger stakeholders, and the poor are spectators, really, or maybe a little bit of benefit here and there they may get. But there's not really the model for sustainable development of Indian society as a whole.

The issue of slum redevelopment is a major challenge for India. Here in Mumbai more than half of the population live in slums, and while the country's economic growth has been as high as 12%, it hasn't flowed down to the poor.

KRISHNA POOJARI: I don't think the government want to develop the life, you know, the people of Dharavi. They just want to develop the land, because they're just keeping an eye on the land, you know, the money.

DR R. N. SHARMA: Is Bombay going to be the model of future development in this country? Will it be able to tackle vast inequalities which are in the system? What is the future for 1,000 million population? Turmoil, disappointment. I'm sorry, I'm very pessimistic to be honest with you.

And so is the Zabair family with no idea of where they'll go when the redevelopment begins, they are simply waiting for the bulldozers to arrive.

NEEMA ZABAIR (Translation): Where will I get a house? God knows where we will go. We will stay here until they demolish. Then we're in the hands of God.

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Feature Report: Mumbai Makeovers

Reporter/Camera
JONATHON MATTHEWS

Writer/Editor
PRU COLVILLE

Producer
AARON THOMAS

Subtitling
AESH RAO