Slum Tours in Mumbai

Palexurdy, if I may ask, why so skeptical? They explicitly say their net loss, the reasons for it, and an independent audit verifying it. If you have proof, then please share.

Proof of what? All I’m saying is based on that website. Good on the owners for sharing the facts, which are only things that any thoughtful customer would want to know. I don’t doubt the owners’ sincerity, but their business just seems a pointless opportunity for them & a few rich tourists get a nice feeling, while the intended beneficiaries get nothing & won’t, it seems, for the foreseeable future. An unrealistic, if well-intentioned, scheme.

"rich tourists to get a nice feeling?"

given that their tours only cost 600-300 rupees and you are advised to wear closed toe shoes for health reasons, i don't exactly think that "rich" tourists --- ie, people who are staying in 5 star hotels and driving around in private cars --- are going to be their prime customers. (in the sense that all tourists are rich, well ---- that's just the way it is.)

i don't think the idea behind the tours is to look at poor people --- you don't have to go on a tour in india to look at poor people! ---- but rather to try to understand and demystify to some extent "poor" people. as the tour group mentions in the website, the slums of bombay are more then just "slums". a wide variety of people live there --- from the very poor to the almost middle class --- and a major portion of bombay's economy emanates from there. though the NGOs might not get any money yet, i hope that a benefit of the tour would be to validate the lives of the people living in the slums to the outside world. and i hope the people living in the slums would get satisfaction from having outsiders see the jobs they do and the communities that they live in.

i think it's interesting that as soon as the poor are urban, they are somehow more poor. if the people living in the slums of bombay were living in a village with a backdrop of gorgeous mountains rather than in a village surrounded by a major urban area, no one would find it surprising that a tourist might be interested in how and where they live. that's a main reason to travel, right? --- to try to gain understanding of other human beings. but while the rural poor (all over the world) are usually more poor than the urban poor, they are also just much more atmospheric.

By all means go there, like I said, & if you want to give to charity, do so. I still think visiting the slums (with a knowledgable guide) independently would be favourable, in most regards, to going through an agent. Why only Dharavi, anyway? There are shacks strung out along Mumbai's roads, any other large town or city will have slums. Every documentary (& I'm talking about the travellogue-style) that I've seen on India recently though have taken in the slums. Are these journalists & tourists really trying to understand their fellow man, or are they just following the latest fad?

it might be a bit faddish --- there are always these documentary fads going on.... sudan's "lost boys" is one of the past couple of years --- but i hope that even within a "fad", people's intentions aren't exploitative. in terms of visiting independently --- well, that's great if you know a knowledgable guide. but how many visitors to any city know a knowledgable guide? most don't, so they hire one... and that usually involves some sort of tourist-oriented organization.

did you actually look at the website for reality tours? didn't strike me as much of a money-making scheme.

i think your perspective ---- that people who live in someplace like dhavari are necessarily embarassed at where they live --- is patronizing. ever think that the people who live in dhavari might like the chance to show outsiders that they are respectable, industrious, community-minded folks? the whole point of touring a neighborhood like dharvari is to show people that there's more to a "slum" than complete and hopeless abject poverty. you can gawk at plenty of that by just looking down at the sidewalks of bombay. or out of a train window.

as for "poking around their less fortunate lives from a guided tour" --- well, just about every tourist in a developing country pokes around the lives of people less fortunate. like i said above, it's just easier to justify or ignore the poverty when it is connected more directly to a beautiful mountain or a historic monument. however, i have generally found that these "less fortunate" people are often eager to meet and interact with people from abroad, especially since being "less fortunate" they don't have the same opportunities to meet foreigners.

when in the little rann of kutch years ago, i went on a tour organized by a local environmental activist and photographer. he took a small group of us into the rann, where we saw how the salt-workers there make a torturous living. our guide had come from a family of salt-workers, and was trusted by the workers. it was painful to see the conditions in which they lived, and at first it felt a bit voyeuristic, but the salt worker was glad to show us how he did his work, and i think he appreciated us recognizing what hard (but also incredible) work it is.

his wife made us tea and our presence certainly broke up the monotony of her life. we gave shared our biscuits with the family. the guide gave the youngest child some money --- a tip funneled in such a way that it seemed like a gift. perhaps i'm being rosy about this and the family didn't want us
there. but since our guide was a sensitive man, linked into the community, i don't think he would have done anything that would have caused resentment or offense.

hopefully, the dhavari tours work along those lines. i know the trip to the rann is one of the most memorable experiences i have had in india. i still think of that family often. i can't say what practical impact it has had on my life --- i haven't become an activist for salt workers! --- but it had an emotional and sociological impact that has stayed with me for years.

It's a sick nasty idea drummed up by a sick nasty person, the slums aren't zoo's for the inquisitive traveller/tourist, if you really want to help the less fortunate there are many ways in which you can, guided tours are not the answer. Try doing it in the slum areas of the US or Britain and see what the reaction would be, it may be a nice way to spend an afternoon, share a few biscuits and talk about the memory for years to come, but get real! they need more than a brief encounter and the odd tip. I doubt anyone in the right mind would think that because they live in slums they're not hardworking community minded folk, but if it's just to share biscuits and tea and break the monotony of everyday life, why stop at the slums? you'll find lots of families sleeping six to a room in a crumbling corporation blocks. It's real help and support that they need, not an excursion on a travellers itinerary.

actually, i have organized tours in "challenged communities" (ie, slums) in the city where i live, as part of my job at a citywide public art program. though --- naturally --- poor people need money --- it also can be a very powerful thing to let "rich people" actually see those communities. in at least some of the minds of the people on the tours i organized, the "badlands" (yes, the neighborhood is nicknamed the badlands) now is not just a place to get mugged, get shot, or buy drugs, but also a place where people live in neat and clean houses, plant gardens in their communities, participate in public art projects, and fight to make where they live a better place.

these people did not take these tours thinking they were doing it to help the less fortunate. if they wanted to help the less fortunate, they would volunteer or write a check. (and probably many of them already volunteer or write checks because the people who take these sort of tours are already pretty civic minded.) they took these tours because they wanted to see the murals in these neighbourhoods and because they were curious about these neighborhoods. but hopefully, having been to the source, they now have a different relationship to those neighbourhoods. my parents took one of the tours, and for them it definately put some faces on a place that is usually only a headline on the local news because of yet another shooting.

i hope the "slum" tours in bombay do the same.

in anycase if its dharavi that the company is focusing on right now, the business will last for 3-4 yrs of 5 tops.

Dharavi is on its way to be converted into residential complexes under the Slum Rehabilitation scheme and we should see the so called largest slum of asia disappear within the next few years.

But Dharavi is not even a real slum in the true sense anymore. The residents of dharavi have definitely moved up a couple of notches and you'd be surprised the amount of industries that are functioning there.

yeah, IR - i think that's the focus of the tour company. they don't take people to residential areas --- it is focused on all the small industries.

i like the phrase "Slum Rehabilitation scheme". i actually went and googled it to see if it was an actual name of a project or just the way you were phrasing it. i don't know too much about it, but i'd assume that "scheme" really is the proper way to describe it... along the lines of chicago's "cabrini green housing project rehabilitation scheme": tear down housing on extremely valuable land, move the inhabitants to outlying areas, and build million dollar condos and shopping complexes (with a bit of subsidized housing thrown in for good karma).

ahh, here's a FAQs.

okay, the main page of the slum rehabilitation authority has blinking text so that you can't actually read what it says. the website --- once you get past the blinking text --- is impressive, but i'd like to know what the figures are on how many people are not going to qualify for "pukka" housing and be displaced.