So what's that one? That one is tetanus diphtheria polio. Yeah. This one is hepatitis A and typhoid.
OK. OK. After ten years celebrating the homes of Britain, I'm now going to India's largest slum.
Dharavi looks like a hellhole. Disease is rife, water's contaminated and sanitation is rudimentary. But it's also claimed that Islam has got a strong sense of community, high employment and little crime.
Architects, planners and even Prince Charles are convinced that Daravi has got what we lack. I strongly believe that the West has... to learn from societies and places which, while sometimes poorer in material terms, are in many senses infinitely richer in the ways in which they live and organise themselves as communities.
We don't see him selling Highgrove. and buying a slum in Mumbai. I mean, it smacks slightly, doesn't it, of hypocrisy. As billions crowd into the world's cities, they say we should all be looking to Dharavi as a model for sustainable living.
These are the cities of the future. When I think of a slum, the thing I think about is misery, in a way. Everybody's saying that these people are not miserable, that they are intensely happy.
I don't buy that. I'm going to see for myself. if this place can in any way be the answer to anyone's problems.
So I'm planning to spend two weeks in Dharavi, eating, sleeping and, well, you know. It's the last place on earth I'd think to search for answers. You expect to see, don't you, above that bridge a sign as the entrance to Hades in Dante's Inferno. It said, abandon hope all ye who enter.
This is my first time in India, ever. It's also my last night in luxury comfort before I enter the slum. Good evening. Hi.
For the next two weeks, I'm planning on living in Dharavi. Mumbai is one of the world's mega cities, racing into the future and building up into the sky. Property here is among the most expensive in the world.
This 27-storey skyscraper will be the private home for just one family, and it's costing $2 billion to build. And yet, sitting right in the middle of this modern metropolis is the patchwork of shanties that is Dharavi, India's largest slum. So this is it, thank you.
Here, nearly a million people are crammed into just one square mile. I'm hoping to uncover the secrets of this place and see if it really can reveal ways that we should all be living. Oh my goodness. Someone living there. A guy having a slash on the bridge, but then, you know, who wouldn't when caught in need?
At the very edge of Derovi is where the latest arrivals come to make their home, under the bridge where the water pipes from the city meet the slum. There's a swamp down there, look. And those...
The houses here are so camouflaged, you don't even see them at first, you think it's more piles of rubbish, but look, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, maybe eight dwellings down there. Look at it. The smell is awful. And this is people living in a cesspit, isn't it?
Rajesh, Kevin, how are you? Fine. Pleased to meet you.
Wow, I'm just getting a little bit shocked, a little bit, you know, kind of overwhelmed by what I'm seeing here. You know, it's very powerful, isn't it? Yeah. Very powerful. My guide, Rajesh, has agreed to help me get into the heart of Dharavi.
It's a no-go zone for foreigners like me. As a lifelong slum dweller, Rajesh has been Rajesh is connected. He can open doors.
Just watch you don't slip. I'll watch, yeah, I'll be very careful on this, yeah. It's really hard to believe, Rajesh, that people live here.
Yeah. Even in the rainy season, you will find them here. Really? But in the rainy season, it really rains, doesn't it?
I mean, it's non-stop for weeks. Non-stop. And they just live under, they're just there. Yeah. What's this goo here running?
All the wastage water coming from all parts. More sewage, really. So the children, they're not afraid.
They're standing there. No, no, I noticed that. They're just happy to play. And occasionally their kite sort of drops in it and they just fish it out again. Yeah.
Wow. This guy, this is a boy over there just having a crap on the sidewalk. He's taking his time over it.
He's having a really good long one. Do you accept this as normal as part of your life? Yeah, absolutely.
Because you've grown up with this. But do you accept it as right? Yeah. Right? Yeah, it's right.
Because you don't have other type of living. It's quite alarming that these children are playing on this bridge. Below them is this kind of toxic leeching waste, God knows what in this. Yeah, everything is there.
It's very dangerous, but they are not afraid of all this. No, they're just so happily just leaping up there like a climbing crane. It's not good, is it? You see, that route doesn't look particularly healthy to me. Nor would it be living on that.
Heading further into the slum, the water pipe disappears under a mountain of rubbish. With no permissions, no plan and no permanent rights, the people of Dharavi have built themselves an entire city on top of a rubbish tip. Oh, Christ. What's this?
This is a kind of toxic slug. Chemicals, water, drainage, sanitation, all is inside this thing. What's that pipe?
That pipe goes to the house. Is that a water pipe? Yeah, water pipe. That's a water pipe sitting in a pond of toxic slug. How deep is that?
Maybe not half a meter. Oh, good God. Not more than that.
Excuse us. There's a lot of human shit around, isn't there? There's a lot of crap. Um... Do you know what I find more disturbing than that, though, is the chemical stuff here as well.
It's the fact, you know... I mean, human shit is human shit, and frankly, in a city in India a thousand years ago or in medieval England, you'd find that in the streets. What you wouldn't find is toxic compounds, you know, of heavy metals.
Jaravi is not one place. There are dozens of distinct neighborhoods negotiated by a mind-boggling maze of lanes. With no maps, road signs, no guidebooks to help me, Rajesh is the key to getting me into this vast labyrinth.
Just watch your head others. Yeah for the cancelling was yet Just as the edges of Dara via marked by temporary shacks poles and tarpaulins So it's more established heart is more permanent through organized rows of solid solid building. Oh, the stench. After two hours walking, I've no idea where I am. But we've arrived in an area called the Transit Camp.
Here, Rajesh offers me a bed for my Hello. She's my mother. Pleased to meet you.
How are you? Good. Have a seat. Thank you. The worrying thing really now is that if I were to get up now and walk out onto the street and try and find my way anywhere, I...
I don't know what, I don't have a map, I don't know what this place looks like, I've never been here, I couldn't get out, but here I feel very welcomed. Welcome into something extremely strange, but welcome nonetheless. I'm in India on a journey into the heart of Dharavi, perhaps the world's most extraordinary slum. It's not a place where outsiders are normally allowed to stay.
My passport in is Rajesh, and for my first night in the slum, I'm staying with him. He shares his 12 by 12 foot home with his extended family, his mum, his sister, her husband and their two kids. Hello.
Hello. Hi. Oh, fantastic!
Many of the world's leading architects and planners claim this slum as having solved some of the problems facing our cities. I can taste it all. It's a series of hits here.
It punches you four or five times, one after the other. So I've come here for two weeks to try to make sense of it. Where London, where England and where you are now, Kevin?
I'm in bed, that's where I am. That's all I find in Carabao. I shared the upstairs room last night, sleeping on the floor. How did you sleep? I slept really well.
Really quiet. That was really surprising. Day here starts early.
There isn't enough water for Mumbai's 60 million residents. So, in the slums, water is rationed. Standpipes come on at 5.30 for just two hours. Amazing. So...
sea of hosepipes. Rajesh shares his tap with 12 neighbouring homes. Everyone has to get enough water now to last till the next morning.
The men are standing around chatting, like me, you know. The ladies are carrying the water. water. Rajesh is trying to get me access to one of the oldest communities in Dharavi, where the slum started over 70 years ago. It's incredibly difficult to get in, but he says it's the best place for me to see how the slum really works.
On route we cross the transit camp again. It's apparent that this is a place that is largely ignored. Rubbish is everywhere and most areas lack proper sanitation. Mind the dead rats.
Just there. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Mine also, the pile of shit as well there. Ooh.
This is hard to stomach after breakfast. Although there are public latrines, over 500 people share each toilet. That's where corporations come in, isn't it? Corporations and city councils to provide sanitation and rubbish clearance, all the kind of amenities that we human beings need when we live in large communities. Most of the sewers here are open, and running through them, improvised fresh water pipes.
When they crack, they draw in raw sewage. Kids inevitably play in contaminated water, and the result is high levels of diphtheria, TB and typhoid. Doctors here... are dealing with an estimated 4,000 cases a day of sickness caused by poor sanitation.
I'm excited by the idea that this place is so unplanned and homemade, but despite its reputation, so far I haven't seen much to celebrate. Oh my god, look, look, look, this is the wash house. We've reached the dobi ghatt or laundrette, where clothes are first washed and then laid out to dry next door. Yes!
You go to French villages and see these central washing areas, in Italy too, you know, and you think, oh, how quaint. People would come and wash, and the water's beautiful, it's coming from the mountains, it's crystal clear. This is the sort of the flip side of that, isn't it?
This is the hellish version of it. This open sewer here is draining into this area here, and they're washing their clothes in there. This is the sort of the flip side of that, isn't it?
This is the hellish version of it. This open sewer here is draining into this area here, and they're washing their clothes One thing about Dharavi that architects and planners get excited about is its neighbourhood meeting places. But the reality, though social, is also squalid and toxic. I'm sorry, but I'd assume everybody had a washing machine at home.
Already I'm finding this place to be a paradox. Disgust is followed by delight. Around the corner from the toxic wash house is a fantastic, fully functioning high street of small shops. A sight that would be treasured back home.
You can get everything you need within about 100 yards of where you live. There's the equivalent of boots to chemists just here. Look at that. What else?
Tubes, pipes, food, clothes, saris. Absolutely fantastic. This is amazing.
The street turns into a mosque and everybody's quiet. And now it's turning back into a street. Look, watch. I'm beginning to see that this place has got something to teach us. About the way people use space.
Every inch is prized. 30 seconds. With a million people packed into a square mile, the make-do mosque illustrates how space here is flexible, how it changes with people's needs. Rajesh has guided me to the edge of Kumbh Wada, the neighbourhood he wants me to see.
But even he can't get me in. 15-inch TVs? Yeah, 15 inches there.
But for a community association, there are going to be several people watching. The price of entry? A brand-new colour television for the community elders. Oh, God, that's huge!
How are we going to carry that? Good. Off we go. Rajesh, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you so much. The plan is, in exchange for the television, the elders will let me into their community and allow me to stay with a family. Kumbh Wada, the pottery area, may be a fiercely independent place with a distinct distrust of strangers, but it's thriving. Apparently, its people have found ingenious ways to live and work in a very crowded space. I'm looking for the community centre.
No photos, no shooting. Huh? No shooting, no photos. No... No shooting.
Not today. No filming today. It appears the guardians have changed their minds. Maybe I should have brought them a flat screen. This is really disappointing because in order to even get access into this community we've had to wait weeks and talk to them and win them over and persuade them to let us film here and only then with the bribe of a television, which is why I bought the television.
Except now that apparently they won't let me in and they're not even sure they want a television can I go in here with the... That was a yes but no. As in wait. People just ignore you or look at you blankly.
Which of itself is very threatening. And I'd assumed that it was being western and pale skin that produced that result. But I suspect it's to any outsider from anywhere, including the rest of Mumbai. So apparently we can go in now. The discussions go straight over my head, but two hours later negotiations are over and they finally let me in.
I'm excited to be here and what a different fascinating place it is. the small group of potters from gujarat who came here over 70 years ago has now grown to 10 000 people amazing square this if you go to gujarat apparently the villages look just like this with the exception perhaps of a little less tin a little less metal Despite being so densely packed, this place feels like an open village. And the arrangement of tiny, narrow homes around dozens of small squares results in a surprising sense of communal space. How are you? I'm Kevin. Ah, she's Tasha.
How are you? Kevin. Good.
Nice to meet you. And how many people live in your house? Around 21. 21 people! Including my... And she's your mother?
Yeah, she's my mother. Would you thank her for putting me up and for having me to stay? It's very generous of you.
I've been told that Monica, one of the daughters, is the best English speaker in the family, but she isn't home from school yet. There's a lot of noise coming from next door. They're sorting out a length of fabric. So in the meantime, I just stick my nose into the family's business.
Who's this for? Is it for you? No.
Who's it for? It's for her. Is it the first time?
First time. First time she wants a salary? She has no idea how to wear it.
I keep thinking who are all these people, then I remember there are 21 people who live in this house, so that's... So we've put a small portion of the family. They're all wandering off now. upstairs I have no idea my Gujarat she's very small zero hello are you Monica yes hello Kevin how are you with all these people living in this narrow house each room has to serve as sleeping quarters for for at least five people.
This one, his house. As your house, come on. This is their kitchen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very nice. With a wooden board behind the gas fire, ready to catch fire at any moment.
But no windows here, no windows? No window, no. Only windows. Only one small window.
OK, what? Oh. Yeah. Yeah.
One. It's more than small. It's not huge.
Can you imagine if this place went up in flames? Well, nobody would get out. Imagine if this caught fire, this place.
I mean, this is entirely wooden structure set within these brick walls. You know? There's another floor. Yeah. I know that's the electric light gone.
This is, um. It's asbestos. Asbestos, really. and you know how dangerous that is isn't it if you break it yeah yeah this is my house okay preparing food on the floor in my country is considered very unsanitary it's not what we do no no but then i suppose you're on your bare feet and socks there's no shoes in it no no shoes are not allowed over here yeah exactly oh yeah our floor is fully Yeah, other than my director's shoes, which she seems to be wearing. And the cameraman.
Your feet, my supper. Your feet, my supper. Stay there. How many people sleep in here? Five members.
Five. My father sleeps in this place here. Here.
And my brother sleeps here, neighboring to my father, nearby, yes. And here my mother. Yes, she has the bed.
And I. Yes. And my sister. Wow.
And the budgie has more room than anybody. Where am I sleeping? It's your...it depends on you. No, it doesn't depend on me. There's no space left.
I sleep with the button. I'm here, I'm asking. Downstairs, on the floor?
Is it on the floor or here? It's on the floor. My mother is telling you can sleep in this bed.
I would not ever dream of sleeping in your mother's bed. No problem, but... Charmik Monica, how am I supposed to sit? You have to bend your two knees and you have to sit in this position. Yeah, it's not...
oh my goodness. Push your pant a little up so it will be comfortable. make any difference my pants it's got nothing to do with my trousers it's got everything to do with my hips and the thing is I'm trying really hard but it hurts it's not comfortable it seems that the key to making a space The base for yourself here is flexibility.
Every room here is a workroom, a living room, dining room and a bedroom. You should ask about sex. I mean, you know, how do people reproduce in these conditions? Maybe there are agreed moments, you know, when the house is sort of evacuated.
I could ask the mama. No, I can't because that involves using her daughter to translate. No, that won't work. Jitesh, tell me something. It's a sort of delicate subject, really.
But if you meet a girl and you marry her, yeah? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah? And you want to make babies. When and where do you do this?
Because there is no privacy, there's no room, there's no... There's nowhere to go. What do you do if you... I get together with a girl right now we are doing is like we are just dividing this rooms in a compartment like for the privacy yeah yeah but you still hear everything yeah what happens when you meet a girl and you want some privacy with her where'd you go I can go in a large or in hotel I tell yeah says that what you do you book a hotel for an afternoon or an evening and okay I feel a little bit guilty that I'm not doing anything because all around me people are involved.
There's a boy over there flying a kite, people working. And I feel as a guest here, I ought to sort of be offering to help. I don't know. That lady looks as if she could do with her hand.
Doesn't she? Can you ask this lady if she needs any help? No, she doesn't want any help. She's laughing.
Both of them are laughing. Because I'm useless. I'm a useless piece of Western tele-fluff. Up to a million people live in just one square mile in Dharavi.
At its heart, the most densely populated slum on earth. And I'm beginning to think it's one of the most inspiring places I've ever seen. Dharavi, sir. It's all down to sharing space.
Here, people play, work and even wash their clothes and dishes outside their front doors. So that much of the daily drudgery is a social affair, done with neighbours. what we call community.
It's what people have been doing for tens of thousands of years. And that's why it works. And it's only in the last 50 years in Britain that we've managed to screw that up completely and move people out and put them in little boxes and destroy communities. I mean, look, I'm not bigging it up because there are negative points about it as well, obviously.
It's, uh... It's got some really good things going for this place. There's a woman vomiting out of the window.
Really? Yeah. That's our house.
She's vomiting out of our window. My stomach's holding itself together. I didn't drink the water, though.
You're the man that likes everything to have been designed by architects. You're the man that likes everything to have been designed by architects. Here you've got architecture without... No, I'm not into everything being designed by architects at all. I'm into a kind of quality and this isn't the best kind of environmental air quality here.
But what I'm into is... is the fact that human beings love complexity. We love stuff to be interesting and varied and textured and delightful. And that's what we respond to.
We do not respond to everything being in straight lines and painted white. That's double because we get bored. We get bored of it very quickly.
We get bored of housing estates. We get bored of industrial estates. We get bored of shopping centers because they just don't offer that depth and that layering. And it's all here. My God, is it all here.
You can see that as an international aid organization coming here, you just look at the squalor and the piles of rubbish and the broken paving and you think, no, no, this has all got to change, you know, this is awful and these houses are black with soot and it's unhygienic and there is... cholera and there is of course these things are all true the health here is bad and the air is bad but at the same time there is also this beauty and that is the really hard thing to get your head around is that we measure beauty in our environment we look at our environment say Have I got the latest range of furniture? Have I got posh lighting in my house?
Does my garden look pretty? Have I got a nice-looking contemporary car? Here, it's all about the human being.
Look at these individuals. They look, they are the best-dressed people on the planet. They all look beautiful, every one of them.
And that's how they measure. That's how they measure beauty. They don't look at the heap of shit down the alley. Back at the homestead, it's 7 o'clock, and life seems remarkably familiar as I settle down to an evening with the family in front of the TV. Hello.
Hello. Hello. Of course, here there are three generations watching. Apparently Mr Bean is completely huge in India, isn't he?
Everybody watches, everybody knows Mr Bean. Even Grandma knows Mr Bean. Mr Bean. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's only one word to describe this place and that is intense, isn't it?
This very idea of sleeping in this tinderbox of a building with 21 people. It's intense. Everything is so communal. We're just not used to that.
Everything. No privacy. At all.
When are you going to bed? Are you going to bed soon? Because obviously I'm not going to bed until you do.
12 o'clock. I think so. No, In which case, I will just go to bed here now.
Right. Yeah, it's very long. It is a quarter past midnight before the family finally disappear off to bed. And all falls quiet. Until...
Oh, bloody hell, I just saw him disappear up. How a rat gets into a bag suspended off a hook on a wall, I don't know. I haven't slept very much tonight either.
I was just here, just investigating my trousers. And look, it's now a quarter past five, right? I thought this lot all got up at five o'clock. They were all talking as well.
They were talking till about one. Having gone to bed at gone twelve. Quarter past twelve. Chit chat, chit chat.
They're silent now, aren't they? They sleep through the rats. There's five of them next door. Dickie. I just kept waking up thinking about rat urine and Viles disease and plague.
I just don't fancy catching bubonic plague. I really don't. Oh, I can't. No.
I can't do this anymore. Just put the parrot out. Good morning. How are you? Good, good, good.
Wish I could say the same. Do you have the same positive feelings about this place this morning as you did yesterday? I'm just missing a bit of civilisation, that's all.
Flushing toilets, hot water, sanitary conditions, rooms that don't have rats in them, on the whole are things to be desired, aren't they? It's sort of beyond my comfort threshold. By day it's lovely.
By night it gets a bit more... It's intense. I can't believe how smartly dressed you are.
It's wonderful. Thank you. Lovely, isn't she?
You just wouldn't know, would you, that any of these people kind of......on the street, they look so immaculate......and they will have slept the night......in a room with probably three or four other people......with an outside toilet, which is just a hole in the ground, you know. It's amazing. Just as the daily routine of the potteries begins, so the rest of Dharavi wakes up and goes to school or work.
A staggering 85% of people here have a job in the slum, a figure that puts us to shame. And astonishing as it sounds, some people here are actually very wealthy. It's the lamppost. I've been given the dubious address of Lamp Post 69, for Dharavi-born entrepreneur Mr Mabeen Shaikh. Lamp Post 69?
A self-made millionaire who still chooses to live and work in the slum. It's a staircase with no stairs on it. It's rotted through.
Hello, excuse me, are you looking for Mr Mabeen? No. You can't imagine that a millionaire businessman is based here, can you? I'm not going to tell you.
Mabine. Mr. Mabine? Because businesses here are outside the law, unregistered and therefore unregulated, it's a world that foreign eyes don't normally see. ...get to see.
Do you know Mr. Mabeen's factory? I get these completely blank expressions, which always look passive-aggressive, you know? Like they're sort of looking at me thinking, take one step nearer, we'll shoot you.
Mr. Mabeen is going to show me how... industry here works. But trying to find a secret millionaire isn't straightforward. Excuse me, I'm looking for Mr. Mobine.
Mobine? Mr. Mobine? No, okay, thank you. I just think that if your white stood here, that there's a tremendous reluctance to help, because they suspect that I'm from some organisation or the police or some government agency or something. Does anybody know Mr Mubeen?
Mubeen? Yeah. That way.
Okay, thank you. Mind the big hole in the ground full of crap. I mean, when I say crap, I mean human excrement.
In here. Do you know Mr Mubeen? Yeah.
Upstairs, here. It's here. His office, the office of the multimillionaire, is accessed by a shower. I can't believe this.
Hello. Hello, pleased to meet you. You have to believe in Dharavi. Yeah, but to find your office by a shower is almost perverse. It's like being in a James Bond movie.
It's a kind of space management in Dharavi. But everybody I've spoken to, and it must be 150 people, they say the same thing, that I... I... Nobody knows you, nobody's heard of you. I just get this blank expression.
It's a fantastic defence system. Nobody can find you. Yes, they don't find me the real name.
They'll find me the other name, pet name, or maybe through friends. So what's your pet name? My pet name is Mr Matwale.
What's it mean? My name is a jolly kind of person. Oh, that's good.
That's a good nickname to have. So this is what you make here? This is the trolley.
This is the trolley. This is a thing that goes inside a suitcase, so you win it along. Yeah, yeah. So how many do you make a year, or a day, or a week?
700 to 800 pieces per day. That's a huge number. Yeah. How much money do you make on a suitcase?
Four to five rupees per piece. Four to five rupees. That's about three pence. Yeah.
It's not very much money, but then you multiply. But with the volume, with the volume, and with the standard Indian rupees, it is enough for us. Thanks to Mr. Mabeen, or whatever his business name is, I'm going to get access to an astonishing world of 15,000 one-room factories.
A thriving hub of industry with a turnover of $1 billion a year. But it's a hidden world with a darker side. Wow.
Oh, where are we now? Lots of flies here. Oh, skin.
Buffalo skin. There is blood down there. Yeah, mine just...
Just mind with your camera. I'm being shown around the hidden industrial heart of Dharavi by the self-made slum millionaire Mubeen Sheikh. Shall we move to the bakery?
That's not a bakery. That looks like a... That looks like a camp. Looks like a junkyard.
Yeah, well, it looks like people... Yeah, it does. It looks like a squatter's yard. Come, come, come this side. This is not a bakery.
God, look. Industry here is largely illegal, untaxed and thriving. Dharavi is a city being formed before your eyes, and capitalism here is in rude, primitive health.
If you put on the packet, made in Dharavi... Yes, made in Dharavi... Would they sell?
Maybe some people will be cautious about the hell. They will be nervous by the label. So they put the label with some other address.
So other companies will rebrand the brand. the blank packaging that leaves here? Yeah. How many bakeries in Dharavi altogether? I think around 300 bakeries.
That's ridiculous. That must be feeding the whole of Mumbai. The confectionaries of coconut.
Oh my goodness. Very delicious. It makes me begin to question why we have all this health and safety in my country and white working environments and people with white gowns and looking like surgeons and actually what they produce is rubbish, plastic bread that tastes foul. And this is utterly delicious. There are over 15,000 factories here, churning out products that get shipped around the globe.
No regulations or taxes, maximum use of space and cheap labour keep the production costs very low. So this is the cafeteria? Self-service?
Between the workshops and canteens, washrooms and barber shops, you never need leave this place. Which by the looks of things, people don't. So what is this obsession about dental health? Because everyone I see is cleaning their teeth all the time.
Some of the workers who don't have a home in this city, a few of them, maybe 25% of them, they sleep in the factory only. So when they get up, they brush their teeth. We think, don't we, that you've got to work in an area and live in another.
And the idea of living and working in the same place is anathema to many people, and particularly if it involves heavy industry or actually chopping up bits of animal to make skins, you know. The idea of living above that, you see, look, she's living there, and they're doing that just there. And no doubt there's somebody living up top as well.
It's this extraordinary way in which everything here is compressed and condensed. And as a result, this area produces one billion dollars worth of stuff a year. It would cost billions and billions of pounds to set that kind of economy up.
And yet it's all happening here in this tiny area. And people are living here at the same time. But despite the energy of this place, I'm appalled at the working conditions.
These sweatshops are like the 19th century dark satanic mills of Britain. It's hard to believe that people here do not feel exploited. What's happening here? They are making shoes.
Around 13 people working in this small area. 13? Making the wooden heels for shoes?
They are already amazing. You call it amazing, I'm quite shocked by it. I mean it's a shit heap isn't it really?
People are working in really horrible conditions producing amazing things and at the same time they seem to be happy I mean try and tie all that together you know? When you weren't filming I asked Nabeen what's the youngest age that you can employ children? He said there isn't one He says if somebody comes here and if they can offer a skill and we can offer them a job then they'll work for us So some of the kids working there seem to me to be what? 12, 14 perhaps?
I've got a 12 year old son. I mean, I don't think I'd enjoy finding him working in that place. Making trolleys so that we can travel the world, go on holiday.
The thing I'm coming to realise is that Dharavi, without planning or design, is doing in 20 years what our society did in 200. Most people here work. And while some children also work, the vast majority also get the chance to go to school. Hey, how are you?
How are you? I'm fine, yes. Good.
How many years have you got more now in school? One year, actually. One year?
Yes. And then what? Then college, yes.
And then? And then job, job. What job?
I told you about air hostess. Air hostess. Yes.
Travel the world. What about your friends? I want to be a lawyer.
Wow. That's a lot of years in college. So this is your way home every day?
Yes, yes. It amuses me, you know, in England, girls particularly, you know, in some places they're not allowed to walk home by themselves. Their mothers go and pick them up in the car. Here you can walk safely.
Yes, yes. What about one o'clock in the morning or middle of the night? Is it still so late? Yes, yes, yeah, it's amazing.
So you're embarrassed I picked you up at school? No, no, no. No?
No. And that's yet another surprising thing about this slum. It has virtually no crime.
Wow, wow, wow, look at this. Like a village fete. Monika's neighbourhood is getting together for a religious festival and of course it's held communally.
Amazing outfits. Saris with glittery gold bits. What is this?
My food has been manhandled by 8 people now. Thank you. Thank you very much.
You know these people, they live hand in hand. and a gift of food is a really big thing, but it presents me with a really big quandary, because obviously a glass of water, you can just quietly tip into a plant pot, as it were, but food, it's really hard to make it disappear. I mean, honestly, there were five or six blokes up there, each of them kind of just shifting my food around on my plate with their fingers.
I'm sure it's fine. Pray God, you know, Jashnikrishna. Ha!
I hope. People are prepared to share everything here. They also share a sense of belonging to this place.
But they do genuinely seem very happy. These are the sort of community values that planners in Britain would love to see. Down there, there are three generations of women sitting, talking. And three generations of men sitting over there.
And we've lost that. We can hardly find that in Britain now. Neighbourhoods where you find all the generations together, where old people are respected and incorporated into street life and have a healthy relationship with the kids and vice versa.
And the buildings may not be great, and the wiring is absolutely atrocious, and the drainage isn't brilliant either. These people are so happy and they produce students like Monica who is brilliant and sparky. This place has got a sense of community and you will not find, I suspect, anybody here who is lonely. You will not find a story in the paper, I'm sure here, of a body being found in a flat decomposing three months after somebody's died.
But that happens in England and in Britain, that happens in our country. It happens all the time. You have to ask which is the more civilised place, don't you? Oh, bloody rat, go on. He's chanting his luck, wasn't he?
He's coming straight towards me. He knows how I hate them now. I'm going to go to a hotel tonight. Rats and bubonic plague apart. I've begun to see what works here and why this slum is being celebrated Lovely food everywhere next I'm gonna go to work childhood dreams right up front, you know in a dump truck with the Darabee was the rubbish heap of Mumbai.
They're queuing up like hungry beggars cheese Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Now I reckon it's the recycling capital of the world. I don't want it. I bloody well don't want it.
But with property prices in the city rising, illegal houses here are up for sale. This is worth £40,000, £50,000. 50,000 pounds.
Yeah, it's like money for old rope, isn't it? And now Mumbai is one of the most expensive places to live in the world. It wants to raise Daravi to the ground So are you telling me literally that one day a digger will appear at the end of this road? Yeah, and it will start demolishing the building. Yes threatening to destroy everything We could learn from this place the good things this slum has and the lives of those who live here thousands of people Yeah relying on an industry which they've done here for decades is scared to just be