Adani Enterprises, the billionaire’s flagship firm that has a market value of $55 billion, outbid top developers at $612 million to lay claim to what Indian authorities call “the world’s largest urban renewal scheme.” Dharavi is the world’s most recognisable slum, and was made internationally famous by Hollywood director Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. 

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For Adani, Dharavi is one of many ambitious development projects in India, as he expands his empire exponentially. This year, his business grew to make him the world’s third richest man.

For the people of Dharavi, the news comes after decades of failed attempts to drastically redevelop an area that symbolises the country’s vast wealth inequalities, but also holds lucrative investment opportunities. 

Over 40 percent of Mumbai’s 22 million population live in slums. In Dharavi, 60,000 cramped shanty homes house a million people. Dharavi is surrounded by swanky skyscrapers, and is on a piece of land that is barely two-thirds the size of Manhattan’s Central Park.

A Dharavi resident, Bhau Korde, said many like him are confused as to what the redevelopment plan entails. “Without any concrete solutions to specifically address the problems of Dharavi, we might just end up in a multi-storied slum,” Bhau told VICE World News. 

So far, the state promises resettling 68,000 people in 300-square-foot houses for free for those who moved there before the year 2000, and at a price for those who moved there after. But Bhau said details such as the kind of housing, its facilities, and its distance from Dharavi haven’t been shared with residents. 

Despite the optics, Dharavi is a real estate gold mine. It’s located near India’s richest business district and its informal economy is estimated to be worth $1 billion. Indian urban and public transport planner Bhaumik, who goes by just one name, told VICE World News that Dharavi is a location of significant importance in Mumbai, which has been expanding to fix its overpopulation problem. 

“It makes more sense for Mumbai to provide new infrastructure in existing areas, rather than build them in new areas,” said Bhaumik. “Dharavi sits on nearly 700 acres of landmass in the heart of the city, sandwiched between an international financial district and the airport. It makes sense to develop this land.”

The big question, Bhaumik added, is: “How will they do it? How will they accommodate so many people, or convince them to move into other buildings? This is a very sensitive subject in India.”

The city’s redevelopment projects and resettlement of economically disadvantaged communities have run into controversies in the past for massive delays, corruption and poor quality resettlement packages. 

SVR Srinivas, the CEO of the Maharashtra state government’s Dharavi Redevelopment Project, which put Dharavi up for international bidding, :text=MUMBAI%2C%20Nov%2029%20(Reuters),state%20official%20said%20on%20Tuesday.” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Reuters that the plan is to make a “a city within a city” covering 253 hectares, which will provide housing to half of Dharavi’s residents. 

For as long as the state government has been calling for bids, some Dharavi residents have been pushing back on aspects of the redevelopment plan. The two-decade delay only adds to the frustrations. 

Raju Korde, who heads the Dharavi Redevelopment Committee made up of residents, said that from the beginning, local communities haven’t been involved in redevelopment planning. “According to our state’s slum act, any redevelopment requires people’s participation. In our case, we weren’t given a chance,” he said. 

Dharavi, which started as a fishing settlement, has a thriving and shifting population of migrants who have lived there for generations. 

Bhau Korde said that this will put migrants, who have been living in Dharavi houses without proper documents for decades, in trouble. “They will be forced to be on the streets,” he said. 

Bhaumik agreed that the “redevelopment plan has to consider and integrate them.” 

“People call Dharavi a slum but the truth is, it’s a revenue-generating ecosystem, with its small-scale industries and migrant workforce,” he said.  

Varsha Eknath Gaikwad, a state opposition politician, brought up controversies Adani’s other infrastructure projects have run into, most recently the massive $900 million port in India’s Kerala state, where fishing communities have been protesting the last four months. In Jharkhand state and Goa city, locals are also calling out his coal mining projects. Before this, a coal mining and rail project financed by him in Australia received severe backlash. 

“My question therefore to the Maharashtra govt is have they considered any special steps to ensure Dharavikars interest is protected and Adani’s interests come later?” she tweeted. 

Raju Korde said that people of Dharavi aren’t opposed to redevelopment and “want a better life.”

“Especially small scale industry workers who aren’t working within the legal framework,” he said. “But our big fear is: Will Adani develop it according to our needs? Will he have the machinery to solve the problems he will face while redeveloping Dharavi?” 

Previously, Srinivas, the CEO of Dharavi Redevelopment Board, had told The Indian Express that Dharavi poses unique problems because of its high density and the complex demography of the slum. Until this week, multiple bidding invitations failed, according to news reports, because of how they wanted to use Dharavi land and their eligibility criteria for inhabitants.

Matias Sendoa Echanove, a founding member of Dharavi-based urban design collective called Urbz, told VICE World News that top-down redevelopment plans, which didn’t factor in the residents, have “always failed” in the slum. 

“The solution can’t be the destruction of the neighbourhood and the expulsion of a major part of its population,” said Echanove. “What [Dharavi] needs is not redevelopment but help in the form of tax breaks and infrastructure provision.”

He added that Dharavi is not a slum but a “homegrown neighbourhood” that is a “laboratory of community-driven urban development. Mumbai should celebrate Dharavi and not destroy it.”

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Spread within 2.5 square kilometres, Dharavi has a population density of 227,136 per square kilometre. That’s almost a million people occupying less than a mile.

It was not feasible to implement COVID-19 measures such as social distancing and home quarantine in the neighbourhood where 80 percent of the population depends on 450 community toilets, and the majority of households don’t have kitchens. In many houses, families of up to eight sleep in one room.

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Dighavkar, the assistant commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC)—the governing civic body of Mumbai—had a huge task at hand.

Before the official announcement of the outbreak in March, the 38-year-old had just returned after holidaying at the beaches in the Indian coastal city of Goa. “Back then, we were only tasked with reviewing and screening high-risk cases, mostly foreigners,” he told VICE News.

When he landed back in Mumbai from his vacation, he had no clue about the severity of the virus.

“And then the first case hit Dharavi,” he said. “It was April 1, and we rushed to the patient’s house to trace his contacts. Unfortunately, this high-risk patient died within a few hours in the hospital. When we traced his contacts, we were looking at tracing 72 people. We had just one day.”

Today, as Dharavi gains international recognition for controlling the spread of the deadly virus, Dighavkar looks back at how it all started. There is relief in his voice, along with the heaviness from the enormity of labour in this unlikely success story.

In a country where the public healthcare infrastructure continues to crumble under immense pressures from the pandemic, the Dharavi model has been called a “miracle”.

India has the second-highest confirmed cases of COVID-19, at 7.1 million, second only to the US. Last month, the country was averaging almost 100,000 cases a week.

On Monday, October 12, the latest official data from Dharavi showed five new cases in the active caseload of 162. The neighbourhood has had 3,336 total cases in all, and 2,872  people have recovered.

The unlikeliness of the Dharavi story comes from the fact that in the face of escalating COVID-19 cases, a potential hotspot has managed to control it the most.

In July, the World Health Organization lauded the Dharavi model for breaking the chain of transmission and fighting the virus. In August, the government of the Philippines reached out to the BMC to implement the Dharavi model in its densely populated slums. Last week, the World Bank praised the “customised solutions” in the slum.

From the first COVID-19 patient—a 56-year-old garment shop owner, who succumbed on the same day he was admitted—to now, Dighavkar has a team of around 4,000. Out of that, 2,500 are permanent staff and 1,250 doctors and others.

They knew that going after those who report high-risk symptoms would be too little, too late. With no vaccine in sight, or antidotes such as Remdesivir in hospitals, Dighavkar and his team faced an unknown enemy in a familiar battleground.

“We knew from the beginning that the traditional methods of contact tracing and social distancing would be impossible in Dharavi,” said Dighavkar. “When the first case turned up, we realised that we will have to devise our own methods.”

While they were contact tracing, the team realised that a lot of people were contacting various hospitals for breathlessness. “This is how we set out to nip the bud. We decided to screen the entire Dharavi.”

At the time of such adversity, the BMC found overwhelming support. Private doctors practicing in Dharavi reached out to the task force after they had to down their shutters due to the pandemic. NGOs sent food, grocery parcels and huge donations, along with medical equipment such as masks, sanitisers and PPE kits. “In fact, our team didn’t have to buy a single mask, sanitiser or a PPE kit while working in Dharavi,” said Dighavkar. “Such was the power of the community.”

The task force screened almost 50,000 people, identified 600 suspects and out of those, a little over a 100 tested positive—all in the first week of April. “Instead of waiting for the virus, our goal was to chase it,” said Dighavkar.

Weeks later, and the whole neighbourhood had community kitchens, medical camps, 24/7 doctors and medical staff, labs and even institutional quarantine centres. “Since home quarantine is not possible here, we converted everything from the sports complex to marriage halls into quarantine centres,” he said. There were provisions of food as well as medical facilities. Anyone with the slightest symptoms voluntarily informed the officials and turned up.

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This is in stark contrast to stories from other Indian states at the time, where those quarantined in government facilities were running away, or dying by suicide. A major reason was attributed to the lack of faith in COVID-19 government infrastructures, along with fear of stigma and misinformation about the virus.

Another strategy in Dharavi was to identify containment zones, in which barricades were installed and police reinforcements were brought in. For every containment zone, there were provisions for food and utilities. The BMC also built its own hospital with 200 beds within 14 days, equipped with oxygen supply. There is a “war room” too, for the residents to check in with the officials any time. Around 90 percent of Dharavi patients were treated inside Dharavi, according to BMC officials.

“We saw the real results in June and July,” said Dighavkar. “In July and August, we literally saw just single-digit cases.”

There have been concerns ever since the Indian government started easing lockdown restrictions to restart economic and commercial activities across the country. There have been reports of a second spike, too. “Dharavi is not an echo chamber,” said Dighavkar. “The neighbourhood houses migrants, and most of the residents step out to work and come back. Yesterday (October 11), Dharavi saw 12 cases. It usually stays below 15 cases.”

The team suffered one casualty of an inspector during the operations as well. “I was on the call with the officer until the last moment,” said the official. “It felt horrible. I was shaken, struggling to motivate my staff. But I had to show that our resolve must not break. Every day, I showed up with the team in Dharavi.”

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Last month, the father to two children—one aged 10 and the other six—Dighavkar took his first holiday after isolating himself away from his family for months and working weekends. “I went back to Goa,” he said with a laugh. “But we have a new challenge for now: behavioural change.”

Dharavi, which is also the hub of the informal economy in Mumbai worth an estimated USD 1 billion, mostly comprises lower-middle economic strata and those below the poverty line.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Wear a mask.’ Here, if you stop anyone for not wearing a mask, they’ll turn around and say, they can barely afford food, let alone a mask,” said Dighavkar, whose task force now distributes free masks and sanitisers to Dharavi residents.

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When it’s not being appropriated by the film industry, Dharavi plays host to tourists who want a whiff of what life is like for slum-dwellers in India. These are mostly small-group tours that walk you through the narrow alleyways of the slum and include ‘attractions’ that showcase the area as the hot business hub that it is, with pottery craftsmen and leather shops making appearances. And on June 20, TripAdvisor announced that these tours have made it to the top of the list of ‘Traveller’s Choice Experiences 2019 – India’, beating bike tours in Old Delhi and even the superfast train journey to Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. It has also featured on the Top 10 Asia list, bagging the 10th rank after the jungle swing in Ubud, Bali, and a biking tour in Tokyo. This was determined by an algorithm used by the website that took into account the reviews and popularity these destinations had with travellers over the last year, which means that while the tours wouldn’t really have brought in more numbers than the Taj sees annually (a whopping 7 to 8 million), Dharavi might be attracting more attention as a package destination to be booked online.

While these tours have become famous after being featured in films like the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire and the more recent Gully Boy, many have questioned whether such tours of poverty-stricken areas are ethical since they can be reduced to a voyeuristic experience, where tourists are made to acknowledge their privileged existence at the cost of those less fortunate. Still, these visits are said to be sensitively conducted in a way that includes the locals in the area for max authenticity. However, this win comes amidst concerns that plans to redevelop the Dharavi slum into a skyscraper conclave will tear away at its social fabric and give property developers the upper hand.

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CRG Architects cites the statistic that six out of every ten people in the world are expected to migrate into urban areas by 2030, with 90% of this growth taking place in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The press release writes, “effects can already be felt: lack of proper housing and growth of slums, inadequate and outdated infrastructure—be it roads, public transport, water, sanitation, or electricity—escalating poverty and unemployment, safety and crime problems, pollution and health issues, as well as poorly managed natural or man-made disasters and other catastrophes due to the effects of climate change.”

Steel City would consist of two cylindrical towers made from 2,344 cheap and available recycled shipping containers from the port city of Mumbai. The twisting, stacked structure of the skyscraper optimizes wind flow and natural ventilation, while providing a 360-degree view of the surrounding city. The two towers differ in height, at 400m for the taller, 139-floor tower (1,312′), and 200m for the 78-floor shorter one (656′). At capacity, Steel City would be inhabited by approximately 1,400 Families, and 5,000 total residents, and would be the new height marker-to-beat on the Mumbai skyline.

The existing useable containers are painted in an array of different colors. After studying the solar exposure of the site, Gomez and his team developed a color arrangement that optimizes the paint of each facade based on the heating rate of each side, an attempt to combat the high temperatures during the summer in Mumbai. “We gave the warmer colors to the south side, and colder colors to the north side, reproducing colors of transition between each of them, along the east and west sides of the towers,” they explain.

The buildings are set to include a collection of public spaces, promoting a communal and integrated residential environment, as well as “vertical gardens, medical services, small markets, schools for children and for adults, entertainment areas, allowing those people of enjoying the great views in height and the fresh air, escaping from the polluted lower areas of the slum.” CRG also plans to build coiled ramps centered around the vertical core of lifts, providing a network of channels for residents to move through the structure.

Gomez tells The Creators Project that the cost savings the shipping containers offer haven’t been calculated in detail, but he approximates it could be 1/3 less than the cost of a normal construction. He explains that the maximum number of stacking containers is between 8 to 9 units, so a main structure will have to divide these units into sections for support if they want to achieve their goal of 400m. “Having a look at the section and at the schematic structure 3D image, you can see a concrete structure of columns and slabs, every 8 or 9 levels. The strength will not be compromised by using a cylindrical form due to this main concrete structure, that actually is responsible for holding all the containers.” With offices in New York, Barcelona, Lagos, and Shenzhen, Gomez has his eyes set on building sites all over the world to employ his eco-driven designs.

A cross-section of a typical floor plan

On August 5th, CRG announced that the Steel City project placed third in the SuperSkyScrapers competition. Stay updated on the latest projects from Carlos R. Gomez and his team on Facebook and Twitter.

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The future of the neighborhood, amid India’s drive for “smart cities,” is up in the air. Rather than rehabilitating and integrating the slum while taking into account the needs of residents, the state and municipal government are trying to appropriate and clear out their land for redevelopment.

Dharavi, which is represented by a member of Parliament in the central legislature and six representatives in the state assembly, continues to resist a cabal of politicians and developers. Once a fishing village on the periphery of Mumbai, Dharavi was swallowed by the city in 1956 and now sits on some of its most valuable land near a new business district and between two major railway lines. But one of the only low-income residential towers constructed as part of a wide-scale, decade-old redevelopment effort remains vacant as the city’s housing authority determines the list of eligible residents.

Other efforts to implement infrastructure improvements also languish as developers and real estate speculators vie for approval to simply bulldoze the neighborhood. The rhetoric of how to handle “slum” reform is mired by private interests.

Devotional posters and family portraits hang in the Dharavi home of Gauri Shankar Vishwakarma and Maltidevi Vishwakarma.

But there is an empowering discourse emerging from the ideological gridlock over the future of Dharavi. A growing movement within the activist and urbanist community is trying to dispel the onerous “slum” classification in order to emphasize that Dharavi, among many other slums, are also incubators of enterprise and community. To give recognition to the full rights of the citizens who live in Dharavi, and more participation in the redevelopment process, requires searching for new ways to depict the neighborhood.

“There is straightforward prejudice operating,” said Rahul Srivastava, cofounder of the experimental urban lab and action collective URBZ. “If you belong to a sociological marginal community in the city, then your habitat is almost de facto a slum… This attitude, this prejudiced eye, this treatment begins to leach all possibilities of improving civic infrastructure.”

Momentum is growing to recognize Dharavi as an essential part of Mumbai, deserving of the public services that have been long promised, especially as the rest of the city continues to be transformed into a chaotic assemblage of walled compounds and malls mired in staggering traffic jams. Carefully used, new technologies like drones can augment the efforts of government to monitor construction, report problems, and re-visualize urban landscapes to address a range of infrastructure and design concerns across the city. Instead of relying on expensive and often-outdated satellite imagery, drones can be deployed to survey hard to reach or hard to quantify informal developments in order to implement infrastructure improvements. (See the video below made by The Megacity Initiative exploring Shivaji Nagar and Dharavi.)

Over 50 percent of the global population now live in cities and the number is expected to reach 66 percent by 2050 according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. That’s an additional 2.5 billion people moving into metropolitan regions around the world to pursue the socio-economic opportunities of urban living. This mass movement is especially pronounced in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the past few decades, China led this charge in infrastructure development, but India is now setting its sights on catching up with the rest of the world and dealing with its growing urban slum population.

Kannan Ayyapa Yadav runs one of the many small convenience stores scattered through Dharavi.

But it is also becoming apparent that the prevalent vehicle-centric, consumer-oriented development model is a dubious approach to urban expansion. Another 2.5 billion more people on this planet cannot live and work in the same manner as urbanites in developed countries, let alone the 400 million India will contribute to this urban migration.

These dramatic statistics, and the potential repercussions, are not lost on world leaders, especially India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Last month, Modi launched a “Smart Cities Campaign” with the aim of meeting the challenges that arise from “a small European country” being born every year in cities across India. In its most basic sense, a smart city is one that is driven by improvements in communication and information technologies that can enhance quality of life, reduce municipal costs, and better allocate natural resources by effectively engaging and responding to needs of constituents.

“It should be bottom up,” stressed Mr. Modi. “A smart city means a city which is two steps ahead of the basic necessities of a resident.” Throughout India, however, cities rarely are able to provide basic sanitation, clean water, and consistent energy to residents.

Those deficiencies are especially pronounced in Mumbai, where an estimated 9 million people—over 60 percent of those living in the metropolitan region—reside in areas designated as slums. Dharavi looms particularly large in the consciousness of the city. Irregular growth within its two square kilometers also left it largely without access to clean water, despite its proximity to major water lines, and roughly one toilet for every 1,400 residents. Preventable waterborne diseases such as dysentery, typhoid, and cholera can run rampant among households, especially during the monsoon. The most basic municipal services are not provided to a majority of Dharavi residents, let alone the modern trappings of a smart city.

Ramesh War, Mahesh Kumar, and Bablu work in many cottage industries scattered across Dharavi.

The developmental hurdles now facing Dharavi were largely compounded thanks to outright municipal negligence and graft. Over the past decade, the neighborhood was caught in the politically-charged campaign of creating a “slum-free” Mumbai by 2022. Rehabilitation funds were often diverted or pocketed once Dharavi was deemed an area to be excised from the urban fabric in order to create a “world-class” city. Dharavi’s very existence is thus constantly in limbo, and municipal authorities charged with overseeing its redevelopment, namely the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), have done little in the past decade to improve living conditions.

“The slum rehabilitation has become a good tool for people to make money,” said Jockin Arputham, president of Slum Dwellers International and longtime activist within Dharavi. “Politicians misuse it.”

Akash Rajesh Chaurasia runs a cane press in Dharavi.

In many ways, Dharavi is one of the most dynamic neighborhoods in Mumbai. It’s real face is one of hope and aspiration. Despite its designation as a slum, the economic output of cottage industries within the neighborhood reaches upwards to $1 billion annually. Homes are kept neat and tidy. Dharavi residents also recycle much of the city’s trash, leaving experts to believe that Mumbai would quickly be buried in its own refuse without its help. Many residents want to build upon what is already there and let Dharavi adapt and improve itself in a manner that keeps the value of the neighborhood in their own hands. If the SRA expanded access to clean water, constructed more public toilets, and provided better sanitation services, vast improvements in quality of life could be quickly realized, encouraging residents to invest more in their community.

Despite attempts to change the discourse regarding the future of Dharavi, the threat of imminent destruction remains. Rampant real estate speculation continues to warp the future of Mumbai and the fate of the neighborhood. The Maharashtra state government, which has jurisdiction over Mumbai, is trying to pass legislation that eliminates the ability of residents to oppose SRA redevelopment plans if a majority of the community decides to opt out of their neighborhoods. Such a housing policy compromises the land rights of millions of people living in designated slums who are not satisfied with the compensation offered by developers. It is widely understood that the contracts for redeveloping the land are potentially worth billions of dollars.

Such developmental quagmires facing major metropolitan regions across India undermine the chances of Prime Minister Modi meeting the goals of the Smart Cities Campaign. India cannot simply leapfrog into the era of smart cities. Basic infrastructure improvements are in high demand throughout the country, and reducing neighborhoods like Dharavi to rubble will not magically make Mumbai “smart” or slum-free.

Namdeo Shinde shows off his bodybuilder physique in his Dharavi home.

“Developing a new protocol for how [redevelopment] is done is what people of Dharavi want,” said Sheela Patel, founding director of the SPARC advocacy group, “It’s amazing—from 2004-2014, [Dharavi] resisted these external plans, and it’s been very unfair to them because they haven’t been able to do any projects in that time.” Current housing policies do not address the long-term developmental hurdles facing Mumbai, nor do they take into account the great social capital lost by tearing these communities asunder, she said.

Even though neighborhoods like Dharavi are integral to the makeup of the city, private interests still trump those of the greater public good in Mumbai. Many communities live in fear of losing everything to powerful developers with political connections. Corruption runs deep within the 17 byzantine state and municipal authorities managing the growth of Mumbai. All of them want a piece of the real estate speculation pie. Such internecine rivalry will only make matters worse in the long run, activists say, especially as the population of the metropolitan region breaches 40 million, which it’s expected to do by 2050.

One municipal ward officer in Mumbai, who wished to remain unnamed, indicated that alternative development models, such as those enacted in Medellín, Colombia, are now being considered. Medellín’s sustainable and more equitable developmental programs are slowly transforming once downtrodden and dangerous neighborhoods into active and engaged communities.

Children in Dharavi grow up in tight knit communities and roam between homes.

Attempts to address developmental impediments would be derived after engaging with the particular ecological and cultural makeup of each neighborhood. There is no easy way out. Otherwise top-down developmental models will continue to tear the city apart. So far developers have shown no remorse in pursuing their private interests and rarely recognize the inherent social and economic value of neighborhoods such as Dharavi within the city.

Although the odds are stacked against Dharavi, many remain hopeful that municipal authorities will wake up to the fact that simply bulldozing neighborhoods cannot be the first step in redevelopment. The very same communication and information technologies that are driving the Smart Cities Campaign are also being used to report corruption and organize protests. The first steps of a real smart city are to protect land rights and ensure full access to basic municipal services. Millions of people living in designated slums will not simply disappear, especially in a neighborhood like Dharavi, which is showing an ever evolving sense of community and pride.

“It’s not that they don’t want development, they do,” said Sheela Patel. “But they want development that works for them, works for their family to produce neighborhoods, ways by which they can keep growing and developing both their work and home spaces.”

The goals of the Smart City Campaign are laudable. They show foresight and a clear dedication to sustainability that countries like China never implemented at the start of its own construction craze. In the meantime, however, communities of all sizes and backgrounds are waiting for a developmental lifeline to be implemented and maintained. Then residents can really take advantage of the socioeconomic opportunities of urban living.

Dharavi, long in the media and political spotlight, could be an excellent place to create a developmental model that exhibited sensitivity to residents and allowed their participation in an equitable redevelopment of their neighborhood. Effectively engaging and responding to the needs of constituents will always be the most important cornerstone in establishing a smart city and help engender a new paradigm of participatory design in India and elsewhere.

Reporting for this story was made possible with support from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, and The Megacity Initiative.

A New Vision for Mumbai Slums from Sensorium.Works on Vimeo.

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