I decided to spend a day on a paid walking tour …. Priced at Rs 500 but with tips it came to Rs 600. It was not the usual kind of walking tour for it was a walking tour into the slums of Dharavi at the heart of Mumbai city India. It was also one of the scenes from the famous movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which I have not seen.
The tour was unique for, slum tours was done by many tour operators made of independent people trying to earn a buck but I went with this organization recommended by the hostel called Reality Tour. It was a NGO …. I dunnu how much I trust NGO nowadays for it just means so many things and nothing sometimes.
They claimed that 80% of their nett profit after tax is given back to the slums in the form of community education and help program. Nett profit as I heard it means they still make a profit. Big companies as far as I know takes a lot of salary and only produce a small nett profit in the end of the year. Still no point judging I guess.
We were told to get to Mahim Train station and locate this Café where the guide would meet us. We were also warned that some random strangers might pose as the company and we were to look out for the actual guide which should be wearing a company t-shirt. True enough a guy in plain white shirt tried to pass off as the company but Zack (from England but is a mix race of British and Thai) decided to spend international call to get the hostel guy to find us the right guide. The guide came in good uniform and we were set on our way.
There is so many lechers in India
The tour took us into the slum which was a misconception of the name explained the guide. Slums means people who occupy government land without permission. That’s all. So a slum is technically a free place to stay. Reality tour mission was to bust the misconception of slums and to show people the actual reality to the world. Slum has a very negative word and is not really what it describe when we see it.
The slum was quite organized. There was heavy industrial area which was basically hazardous to anyone who works there. Mainly on recycling they showed us a few of them. The production of plastic crushers in factories, homemade with steel and welding’s and simple motorized mechanism to actually crushing all kinds of plastic they could find, melting and dyeing them to form plastic pallets before it was sold to big factories to be made into new plastic products.
Recycling of paint cans … stripping of paint, marks, logo and labels and make new for reuse and after a few times of recycling paint cans the cans themselves is being cut and bend and used as sheets for building more slum houses.
They say there is no waste in Dharavi.
The most highly paid work was the aluminium recycling … here they collect all the aluminium cans and melt them in a small room which is filled with toxic fumes and chimneys that pump out who knows what like a train hopper. Melted and formed into pure aluminium bricks they are then sold to big factories who use them to make new product.
These industries only survive because of cheap labour …. Labours was intensive in sorting and making all these rubbish pure enough for the factory to use. If it were sorted before recycling factories would have ran the job more efficiently and cheaper and much safer but then most people heap their rubbish together in 3rd world country.
Then the next industry was located further away from the heavy one … the non-hazardous to health sits between the hazard and the residential area of the slums. There was large industrial no food inspection bakery which supplies puff to all of India …
*Gasps*… I probably ate some of those somewhere in India
Then there was the leather factory, wood work and even hand rolled manufactured papadam by household wife as part time job.
The residential sits at the far end far away as possible from the toxic hazard and these are a clusterfuck of house shacks, string and woven so close together that you have to kiss someone if he was coming from the opposite direction. They are not poor thou …. A keen eye will notice the hi tech plasma TV in the small house of 5 by 5, computers, and a hoard of satellite dishes which supply endless TV channels to the slums.
It was free land ….. if you stay there long enough it will be yours ….
Interestingly no one pester us for money … they have pride here in the slums …. Hard work drive them but they have the pride of one who knows he is better than a beggar.
Note : No photos in the slums ... coz some stuff seriously is against health codes ...
Travelled on : Aug 2015
The tour was unique for, slum tours was done by many tour operators made of independent people trying to earn a buck but I went with this organization recommended by the hostel called Reality Tour. It was a NGO …. I dunnu how much I trust NGO nowadays for it just means so many things and nothing sometimes.
They claimed that 80% of their nett profit after tax is given back to the slums in the form of community education and help program. Nett profit as I heard it means they still make a profit. Big companies as far as I know takes a lot of salary and only produce a small nett profit in the end of the year. Still no point judging I guess.
We were told to get to Mahim Train station and locate this Café where the guide would meet us. We were also warned that some random strangers might pose as the company and we were to look out for the actual guide which should be wearing a company t-shirt. True enough a guy in plain white shirt tried to pass off as the company but Zack (from England but is a mix race of British and Thai) decided to spend international call to get the hostel guy to find us the right guide. The guide came in good uniform and we were set on our way.
There is so many lechers in India
The tour took us into the slum which was a misconception of the name explained the guide. Slums means people who occupy government land without permission. That’s all. So a slum is technically a free place to stay. Reality tour mission was to bust the misconception of slums and to show people the actual reality to the world. Slum has a very negative word and is not really what it describe when we see it.
The slum was quite organized. There was heavy industrial area which was basically hazardous to anyone who works there. Mainly on recycling they showed us a few of them. The production of plastic crushers in factories, homemade with steel and welding’s and simple motorized mechanism to actually crushing all kinds of plastic they could find, melting and dyeing them to form plastic pallets before it was sold to big factories to be made into new plastic products.
Recycling of paint cans … stripping of paint, marks, logo and labels and make new for reuse and after a few times of recycling paint cans the cans themselves is being cut and bend and used as sheets for building more slum houses.
They say there is no waste in Dharavi.
The most highly paid work was the aluminium recycling … here they collect all the aluminium cans and melt them in a small room which is filled with toxic fumes and chimneys that pump out who knows what like a train hopper. Melted and formed into pure aluminium bricks they are then sold to big factories who use them to make new product.
These industries only survive because of cheap labour …. Labours was intensive in sorting and making all these rubbish pure enough for the factory to use. If it were sorted before recycling factories would have ran the job more efficiently and cheaper and much safer but then most people heap their rubbish together in 3rd world country.
Then the next industry was located further away from the heavy one … the non-hazardous to health sits between the hazard and the residential area of the slums. There was large industrial no food inspection bakery which supplies puff to all of India …
*Gasps*… I probably ate some of those somewhere in India
Then there was the leather factory, wood work and even hand rolled manufactured papadam by household wife as part time job.
The residential sits at the far end far away as possible from the toxic hazard and these are a clusterfuck of house shacks, string and woven so close together that you have to kiss someone if he was coming from the opposite direction. They are not poor thou …. A keen eye will notice the hi tech plasma TV in the small house of 5 by 5, computers, and a hoard of satellite dishes which supply endless TV channels to the slums.
It was free land ….. if you stay there long enough it will be yours ….
Interestingly no one pester us for money … they have pride here in the slums …. Hard work drive them but they have the pride of one who knows he is better than a beggar.
Note : No photos in the slums ... coz some stuff seriously is against health codes ...
Travelled on : Aug 2015
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