All cities in India are loud, but nothing matches the 24/7 decibel

level of Mumbai, the former Bombay, where the traffic never stops
and the horns always honk. Noise, however, is not a problem in
Dharavi, the teeming slum of one million souls, where as many as
18,000 people crowd into a single acre (0.4 hectares). By nightfall,
deep inside the maze of lanes too narrow even for the putt-putt of
auto rickshaws, the slum is as still as a verdant glade. Once you get
accustomed to sharing 300 square feet (28 square meters) of floor
with 15 humans and an uncounted number of mice, a strange sense
of relaxation sets in—ah, at last a moment to think straight.

Dharavi is routinely called "the largest slum in Asia," a dubious

attribution sometimes conflated into "the largest slum in the
world." This is not true. Mexico City's Neza-Chalco-Itza barrio has
four times as many people. In Asia, Karachi's Orangi Township
has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where about half of the
city's swelling 12 million population lives in what is
euphemistically referred to as "informal" housing, other slum
pockets rival Dharavi in size and squalor.

Yet Dharavi remains unique among slums. A neighborhood smack

in the heart of Mumbai, it retains the emotional and historical pull
of a subcontinental Harlem—a square-mile (three square
kilometers) center of all things, geographically, psychologically,
spiritually. Its location has also made it hot real estate in Mumbai,
a city that epitomizes India's hopes of becoming an economic rival
to China. Indeed, on a planet where half of humanity will soon live
in cities, the forces at work in Dharavi serve as a window not only
on the future of India's burgeoning cities, but on urban space
everywhere.

Ask any longtime resident—some families have been here for

three or more generations—how Dharavi came to be, and they'll
say, "We built it." This is not far off. Until the late 19th century,
this area of Mumbai was mangrove swamp inhabited by Koli
fishermen. When the swamp filled in (with coconut leaves, rotten
fish, and human waste), the Kolis were deprived of their fishing
grounds—they would soon shift to bootlegging liquor—but room
became available for others. The Kumbhars came from Gujarat to
establish a potters' colony. Tamils arrived from the south and
opened tanneries. Thousands traveled from Uttar Pradesh to work
in the booming textile industry. The result is the most diverse of
slums, arguably the most diverse neighborhood in Mumbai, India's
most diverse city.

Stay for a while on the three-foot-wide (one meter) lane of

Rajendra Prasad Chawl, and you become acquainted with the
rhythms of the place. The morning sound of devotional singing is
followed by the rush of water. Until recently few people in Dharavi
had water hookups. Residents such as Meera Singh, a wry woman
who has lived on the lane for 35 years, used to walk a mile (two
kilometers) to get water for the day's cleaning and cooking. At the
distant spigot she would have to pay the local "goons" to fill her
buckets. This is how it works in the bureaucratic twilight zone of
informal housing. Deprived of public services because of their
illegal status, slum dwellers often find themselves at the mercy of
the "land mafia." There are water goons, electricity goons. In this
regard, the residents of Rajendra Prasad Chawl are fortunate.
These days, by DIY hook or crook, nearly every household on the
street has its own water tap. And today, like every day, residents
open their hoses to wash down the lane as they stand in the
doorways of their homes to brush their teeth.
 Mumbai's eye in the sky
The ruling son-of-the-soil party in the city council is
putting the finishing touches to a plan to erect a huge
Ferris wheel-like structure at Land's End. Whether
any real Mumbaikars want this, or can afford it, is
very doubtful, says Darryl D'Monte.

19 October 2008 - It is • Write the author

amazing that Mumbai's elected • Cities
representatives, like those • Maharashtra
elsewhere in the country, are smitten head • Send to a friend
over heels by symbols of so-called • Printer friendly
modernity. In the heady 1970s, Mumbai version
claimed to have the second revolving
restaurant in the country; breasting the tape
was, surprisingly, Surat, fuelled by wads of black money from
smugglers and their ilk. The tallest skyscraper in the country is
something else that Mumbai builders vie with each other to claim
the credit for, with Burj Dubai and the Petronas Towers in Kuala
Lumpur looming large in their fantasies.

Singapore and Hong Kong have never been far removed from
many Mumbaikars' wishful thinking either. This is presumably
because these are Asian cities - the first, a city state - which have
made it into the big Western league. During the protracted struggle
by Mumbai's cotton mill workers over the land that is being
vacated as these units close, trade unions leaders would remind
their followers that they wanted Shramapura (The City of Labour),
not Singapore.

Burj Dubai

But the latest self-indulgence by the Shiv Sena councillors, who

dominate the municipal corporation, really takes the cake. The
ruling party in the council is putting the finishing touches to a plan
to erect a 160-metre-high 'Mumbai Eye' - a huge revolving Ferris
wheel-like structure similar to one that is the pride of London and,
more recently, Singapore. This will, to the regret of Ravindra
Waikar, the Sena standing committee chairman who spied the
London Eye on his visit to that city earlier this year, be less than
200 metres tall, which is what Beijing is building - the world's
highest Eye. Here, there is unfortunately a monsoon to contend
with.

The location is at Land's End in Bandra, the northern coastal

suburb, where some 14,000 sq metres of land have been identified.
It is not clear, at this nascent stage, whether this is land which
already exists, which seems unlikely, or which will be reclaimed,
like much of the island city of Mumbai. Either way, the
consequences will be disastrous. How tourists, in whose name
many ill-conceived projects are planned, will have access to this
slowly revolving marvel defies the imagination.

The site is where the first coastal highway, called the Bandra-
Worli Sea Link, will also be situated. How this revolving structure
will gel with the link is far from evident. Bandra, once the link is
completed - after some 15 years' delay, due to obstruction by fisher
folk, environmentalists and disputes with the World Bank and
contractors - will see a stream of something like 170,000 cars
heading south every day to Mumbai's central business district, and
lemming-like, in the reverse direction in the evening. To think that
visitors to the Eye will have to contend with a never-ending stream
of traffic is sufficient to cause any motorist nightmares.

It is true that the site will afford a magnificent view of the Mahim
Bay. This, incidentally, was guarded on both the northern
extremity in Bandra and southern in Mahim by the Portuguese
from the 16th century in order to protect their stronghold in this
trading port. The two forts' remains still exist, but everything is
now overshadowed by the cable-stayed bridge that has cost some
Rs.1500 crores - four to five times the original estimate.

At that height, the visitor will get a ringside view of Dharavi, often
dubbed Asia's largest slum, which is itself undergoing the painful
throes of a huge make-over with the state government granting
local and international builders three times the permissible height
to rehouse the 300,000-strong slum dwellers in high-rise
apartments and sell the rest of the real estate on the market. If, as it
is entirely possible, the make-over of Dharavi never takes place,
due to residents' opposition and other reasons (not least, the
financial squeeze on builders throughout the world at present),
visitors to the Mumbai Eye will be faced with the unedifying
spectacle of having a bird's eye view
of the squalor that epitomises
Mumbai. It illustrates, to put it
bluntly, the paradox that the country's
arguably richest city also has the
largest number of homeless people:
nearly 9 million.

There is another, less obvious flip At that height, the visitor

side to the preoccupation with
constructing such fanciful and
wholly unrealistic urban symbols.
Anywhere in the world, locals tend
not to patronize them for the simple
reason that they are too expensive
for most residents. It is another
matter that foreign tourists might not
think twice about spending upwards
of Rs.100 a seat for a half-hour spin.
But, even on that score, Bandra is
located at least an hour way from
fancy hotels are located, and it is
will get a ringside view of
Dharavi, often dubbed
Asia's largest slum.
• Port Trust lands in the
dock
• Mumbai sinking
• Forget Shanghai
south Mumbai, where most
unlikely that tourists will
make a beeline for a ride in the sky when they have to battle
Mumbai's formidable traffic en route.

To compound the confusion, the Congress-NCP coalition in the

state, ever mindful of Lok Sabha elections next summer, is trying
its damnedest to outbid the Sena and its splinter Maharashtra
Navnirman Sena in demonstrating its nativist and chauvinist
credentials. It is going ahead with its harebrained scheme to put up
a Rs.200 crore statue of Shivaji in the Marine Drive bay -in full
view of one of the city iconic landmarks. Marine Drive is often
dubbed the "Queen's Necklace" for its glittering display of lights at
night, an alluring curve in the all-enveloping darkness.

The precinct, incidentally, is world-famous for possessing the

second biggest ensemble of Art Deco buildings after Miami. It has
recently undergone the first phase of a state-sponsored make-over
at the cost of Rs.30 crore. In the second phase, each of the
buildings will have an informative board embedded in the
promenade directly opposite, with details like its style, year of
construction and architect.

Kumar Ketkar, the intrepid editor of Loksatta, the biggest-selling

Marathi daily, almost lost his life when NCP goons attacked his
home in Thane a few weeks ago. They were incensed at his
column in his paper, where with dripping sarcasm he extolled the
state government for ushering in Shivshahi, the mythical era of
milk and honey during the reign of Shivaji - just by building the
statue. To add insult to injury, the state government has decided to
do away with the last stretch of what begins with the Bandra-Worli
Sea Link, which is the bridge across the bay, linking Raj Bhavan to
Nariman Point, only because it would hamper the unrestricted view
of the Shivaji statue! For this construction too, a few acres will
have to be reclaimed - a costly proposition, given the depth in the
middle of the bay.
The Shiv Sena never loses an opportunity to proclaim that it
represents the sons of the soil, but Waikar and other leaders don't
think twice about taking their cue from our former colonial masters
and other industrially advanced countries. On his educational trip
to London - presumably at the height of summer, when a strange
urge to educate themselves grips all politicians - he was also
smitten by Madame Tussauds and wants to build a desi version in
one the few remaining open spaces: 56,000 sq ft at Birla Krida
Kendra at Marine Drive. For all the party's claims about
representing 'Mee Mumbaikar', one wonders how many
beleaguered, homeless and unemployed citizens of the city will be
able to enjoy these diversionary fantasies. ⊕

Darryl D'Monte
19 Oct 2008