Dharavi’s garments business, unlike the leather trade, seems to have remained immune to the ups and downs of the export trade because it caters mainly to the local market. You will find evidence of this in one of the lanes of Social Nagar where there are over a dozen shops on either side selling clothes and ready-mades.  This is your typical souk, your kapda bazaar that can be found anywhere in India. Daylight never reaches the lane separating the shops. All the shops have tubelights, fans, linoleum floors and some, have fancy shelves packed with shirts. There are few other...

The Kumbhars of Mumbai came from Saurashtra to Bombay in 1877 when their region was ravaged by drought and set up their kilns in an area in south Bombay. But as the city grew, and with it the needs of the elite who lived in the southern part of the city, the Kumbhars had to be pushed further north. So they were packed off to Sion, on the northern edge of the island city. But once again the land on which they set up shop was needed—for a British army camp.     So they were relocated, this time to...

While the days of leather tanning are more or less over in Dharavi, finished leather goods have taken over as the main leather-based business. As you come to the end of 90 Feet Road and turn onto the Sion-Mahim link road, you see gleaming leather showrooms with names like Jazz, Leather craft, Step-in and Ideal Leather on either side of the road. Behind their plate glass windows are displayed the latest designs in leather handbags as well as briefcases and suitcases.  Within their air-conditioned confines you find wallets, belts, photo-frames and all manner of leather goods. Many of these are...

‘My motto was that if I work hard, God will honour me. I would tell the workers that one day I too would own a factory’                                                                     - a local worker turned factory owner Dharavi is a story of ingenuity and enterprise; it is a story of survival without subsidies or welfare; it is a story that illustrates how limited is the term ‘slum’ to describe a place that produces everything from suitcases to leather goods, plastic recycling to pottery, Indian sweets, papads and gold jewellery. What distinguishes Dharavi from other slums is its productivity. It is more like an industrial...

Dharavi is an extraordinary mix of the most unusual people.   Their lives are the story of Dharavi, Their lives are Dharavi. Once, Dharavi was a swamp, a fishing village. Today it is a slum, rather a collection of slums. Once it was open marshy land with tall grass. Today  it is a compact, bereft open spaces centre which unleashes energy  and enterprise,  demonstrates deprivation and desperation which epitomizes the crisis of all fast growing Indian cities, not just Mumbai.  Dharavi is the reality of half of our people who have been forced by chance and circumstances to live for generations in subhuman...

    Add movie link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O7y-jeLumA  ‘Dharavi-A World Within Narrow Lanes’ is a short documentary made by TV channel Sahara Samay for their programme ‘Roots.’ It shows Dharavi’s cultural, entrepreneurial and development aspects, ignored by most mainstream media, especially commercial cinema.’’ (Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/216254/dharavi-self-created-special-economic.html)