Slumdog Recycling

One of the best things that we did in Mumbai was visit the slum, Dharavi. Many of you would recognize the place as it is the the backdrop for the opening scene in Slumdog Millionaire. There is an NGO that runs an educational center in Dharavi that offers tours to small groups of people who want to see this way of life. The money from the tours goes back to the educational center and supports other projects that are happening in the slum. Seeing the squalid conditions in which people lived was definitely eye-opening, but what was way more fascinating was the amount of industry that was happening all around. Old computer monitors, plastic bottle is, large tin drums, cardboard boxes, anything that can be recycled is being recycled right there in Dharavi. Though in this context recycling does not refer to just sorting out the contents of the garbage into different categories. No in Dharavi each item goes through the entire sequence of processes until it is usable again. For example a plastic bottle is first melted, then colored, then transformed into large strands, then turned into pellets which are sold back to the outside so that they can be turned into buttons or zippers or some other part of one of the thousand plastic products that we mindlessly use everyday. Each one of these steps occurs in a separate micro-factory, which essentially consists of one machine and one worker. The whole concept of recycling takes on an entirely new meaning as you watch this process unfold on one of the many narrow streets deep within Dharavi. Seeing all of this gave me a totally new appreciation for the power and potential of recycling. Of course there is another side to this inspirational story. The conditions under which all this work takes place are extremely unsafe. We were told that the number of injuries and even deaths that occur while people work in these tiny rooms without much light or ventilation or safety equipment is quite high. And just standing there looking in from the outside it was often difficult to breath. Yet I'm not sure whether these single machine enterprises could afford to stay in business if they were forced to comply with safety and health regulations. And there you had a perfect example of the complexities of poverty alleviation through economic development.  These tiny micro-industries were providing thousands of people in Dharavi with jobs. To add a little bit of perspective to the size of this industry, Dharavi generates over $650 million dollars worth of income a year. This is an incredible number when considering that not too long ago this place was considered illegal and everyone living there were classified as squatters.  The success of Dharavi is another example of the price of development, while these industries employ a large number of workers it puts them at risk every day they go off to work. Seeing this place that was on one hand so inspirational and on the other hand so challenging made me think about why on so many occasions back in class we wrestled with these exact same questions.

To see some incredible photos of Dharavi check out:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/dharavi-mumbai-slum/jonas-bendiksen-photography