India: Slum Stereotypes

As I mentioned in my first post about India, there are a lot of people squeezed into this country. There is also a huge difference in the amount of money people have. Lots of Indians live like we do in Canada, in houses or big apartment buildings with electricity and running water. There's even a twenty-eight story single-family home! India is the home of their own Hollywood, like LA in the United States. It's the major city Mumbai that is also called Bollywood, and there are big movie stars who live there.

Embroidery Workshop

But many people are extremely poor and live in very unhealthy conditions on the street or in makeshift housing. That's where big sheets of plastic or aluminum or whatever old construction material that can be found is pushed and strung together to make shelter. Some people live in tents under big highway overpasses, or beside garbage dumps and sift through trash to find recyclable materials which they sell to recycling factories to make enough money for food.

One image we have when we hear about thisaw,,ind of housing is a slum, and there are some pretty bad impressions of what slums are like. But when I was in Mumbai, I took a tour of one of their slums, called Dharavi, and got to see what it is really like!

Paper Recycling

The first thing I learned is what the word 'slum' really means. It stands for any housing that's on government owned land. Most of the slums in India have been created in places close to areas where there is a lot of construction work, like the airport. So technically, the government could come in and tell all those people they have to leave, but that would be over a million people who would be homeless! So for now, they're allowed to stay.

Plastic Recycling

Dharavi is called the 'Five Star Slum' of Mumbai because there is a different section in it where people work and live. We visited the industrial section first (where people work). One of the main industries in the slum is plastic recycling, where they actually collect recycled plastic containers, sort them, chop them up, wash them, dry them, turn them into little plastic pellets, and sell them to a factory outside of the slum where they can turn them into new plastic products. Another is aluminum recycling, where a similar process is completed. The making of soap and pastries are also profitable. Then there were the neighbourhoods of potters and leather-makers. All in all, the streets were no dirtier than most areas in India, the people were very friendly, and the businesses make money. People are very hard-working.

Aluminium Recycling

I do want to be honest, though, of the conditions people are living and working in. Most houses have water pipes running to them, but the government only turns on the water for three hours a day. Almost no one has a bathroom in their home, so they need to share three public toilet stalls with roughly 500 other people. And workers are exposed to many dangerous chemicals and machinery. The population of the slum is also outstanding. In 1.75 square kilometres, over one million people live there.

It was difficult to see so openly the differences between the rich and the poor, and it's not a problem that India alone has. Canada needs to do more, too, to improve the quality of life for our less fortunate. India was the third country on my trip that was having an election while I was there, so once again, I'll hope that the change in government brings a positive change for its most needy.


When flying out of India, I thought about what a great time I had here: all the great food I ate and learned how to cook, the beautiful buildings I saw, and the people who welcomed me. Three weeks was hardly enough time; there are still so many places to go, things to see, and people to meet. I can't wait to come back one day!