Mumbai

          This past Wednesday the Alliance program took a trip to Mumbai for the week. Though I have always considered myself a city person, because I was born and raised in New York City and am currently living in Washington D.C., Mumbai overwhelmed me. The sheer number of people and things was more than I have ever experienced at one time in one place before. Aside from the sensory overload, some social and economic aspects of Mumbai proved surprising to me and my mostly American sensibilities. Yet, after a deeper investigation of the city, I also learned of a number of similarities between Mumbai and my hometown. Yet again, to get a fair sense of any city I prefer not to compare cities with each other.

            The first evening the group arrived in Mumbai a few of my fellow students and I walked to the Gateway of India and then to and into the Taj Mahal Hotel. During that excursion my jaw literally dropped at the opulence and wealth on display in the Hotel. On the walk back from the Taj Mahal Hotel to the YWCA Hotel where we were staying, and which was rather nice, we passed by some shanties and some poorly dressed people living in them, selling some wares nearby them on the side of the road, and others with a few blankets sleeping underneath a close by tree. This instance of economic disparity is unfortunately common around the globe, so it in itself was not very surprising. I was unsettled by the proximity of the disparity. Most American cities are highly segregated along class and socioeconomic lines. There, again unfortunately, exists a negative image of poor people in the minds of some upper class people which causes such socioeconomic segregation in American cities. Furthermore, ghettos are part of the structure of many American cities. While Mumbai is home to one of the biggest slums in India, the amount of urban poor living in some of the wealthiest areas of Mumbai was interesting.

            The group also spent a day visiting Dharavi. The vibrancy, industry, and population density of Dharavi stood with me, as well as its dearth of a sanitation infrastructure, and transportation infrastructure. The interaction the group had with members of the LEARN organization and our visits to a recycling plant and a potter’s home and workshop left me with some very positive impressions of the community  in Dharavi. The amazing stories of the obstacles some women in the LEARN organization faced in their efforts to organize, fight for their rights, and for equality will never leave me. Such instances left me with a feeling for the strength, determination, and intelligence women in Dharavi have. Similarly, the work I saw and learned that men do in recycling and pottery also left me with a sense of the knowledge, skills, and strength of the men in Dharavi. I have never experienced a community with so many contradictions as I have of Dharavi. While so many of the people living in Dharavi are industrious and intelligent, the basic infrastructure for toilets, for trash, and for transportation is almost nonexistent. Everything is cleaned, moved, and handled by hand. Such conditions left odors of human urine and feces in many parts of the community.

            Furthermore, the discussion the group had with a professor on the last day of the visit about Dharavi enriched my understanding of the community. I instantly related the history of Mumbai going from a mill city to a mall city and its relevance in the current fight the people of Dharavi are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods to the gentrification process happening in both New York and Washington DC. The professor noted that 50% of the population of Mumbai live on 6% of the land. Most of this 50% can be accounted for by Dharavi, and almost all of the people of Dharavi don’t own their land, but are legally seen as squatting on city land. The current push towards moving people into vertical slums and the problems and attempts at solutions to these problems hit me on a global scale. The effects of globalization on Mumbai, influencing it to seek to become an “international city,” are similar to the process cities in America, Europe, China, and Japan underwent and in a different way are undergoing now. Ultimately, learning about this global phenomenon left me asking more questions about its causes and solutions to problems people face because of it.

                          

                                             
                                                  Photo Courtesy of Isabel King