The Reality of Slumdog Millionaire

Today is a day I won't soon forget, because it was the first day I went to visit the slums here in Pune. Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital runs a community health project that visits the slums in Pune and educates them about basic health care (hygeine, family planning, immunizations, etc.), and Donna and I had the opportunity to tag along with Asha, another American student working at the hospital (pictured to the left). Needless to say, there really isn't any way you could experience what we did today back home in the United States. Our country is virtually absent of what could really be called a slum, so today's visit was truly a foreign experience.

India may be undergoing tremendous economic growth, but that hasn't stopped the expansion of some of the world's largest slums. Mumbai's Dharavi slum is perhaps one of the largest and best-known slums in the world, and its lifestyle is also typical of many Indian slums. To give you a picture of what Dharavi looks like, it boasts upwards of a million inhabitants in about 0.67 square miles. For reference, that's about the size of Hermann Park and the Houston Zoo right across the street from Rice. There are no hospitals, disease is rampant, and there is an average of one toilet for every 15,000 people. Dharavi isn't the only slum in Mumbai, either. Estimates put the slum-dwelling population at around 7 million (the total population of the city is just under 14 million).

Mumbai may have the largest slum population in India, but the rest of the country hasn't been immune. About 1.4 million people live their daily lives right here in the slums of Pune, just a couple miles from the gleaming new industrial complexes that have money pouring into the Indian economy. Clearly that wealth only goes so far. People here in Pune literally live right besides the animals, waste water is poured out into the narrow alleyways, and the air is thick with the smell of smoke and refuse.

Our trip began with a trip by rickshaw from the hospital. After a wild ride through the streets of Pune, we arrived in a part of the city that looked as if temporary housing had been erected on top of decades of refuse, crumbled housing, and hopelessness. A walk down the street and up several side streets took us to darkened alleyways with children peering at us three Americans and our cameras. That proved to be quite the attraction, as I repeatedly snapped pictures of the kids and proceeded to show them the result on the screen of my digital camera. I emerged with a small horde of 5 year-olds bursting with curiosity about the light-skinned foreigner with a camera.

We visited several sites that the community health workers were leading while were there in various health-related topics (pictured left). Many of the people here have very little knowledge of how to raise a healthy child, so diseases like hepatitis B, tuberculosis, tetanus, and other communicable diseases are rampant and claim the lives of many children here every year. These health projects have gone on for about four years in about 13 different slum pockets here in Pune (out of a total of close to 600 pockets in the entire city). In that time, the workers have seen significant improvement in both the knowledge and practice of people living here, which is certainly encouraging for the future of these people.

There were two major things that still struck me as I was there. Walking around in the slums was certainly nothing short of an experience, yet as slums go, the ones we visited are known to be some of the better ones in India (there is running water and electricity available in some areas, for example). It's hard to imagine what other slums might be like if these are deemed "good!" I also found it interesting how we treat our trip to the slums. I took medication to try and avoid any ill effects of the small bit of food I had while I was there. We both liberally doused ourselves in hand sanitizer. The first thing we did (after eating) upon arriving back at our flat was to shower and wash away the grime and dirt that we had collected in a day's trip there. Even in walking through the slums for a day, we are fortunate to never have to live in it. While we had a shower, a nice meal and air conditioning waiting for us after a few hours in the slums, these people live their entire lives in these conditions. And I complain about the water not being warm enough in my shower. Such injustice is absolutely mind-numbing.

The newly-elected government of India has made an ambitious (and at this point, probably unachievable) goal of having a slum-free India in 5 years. While it sounds good, it probably isn't something that can be fixed by government mandates or state-sponsored housing. The problems are rooted much deeper along cultural and ideological lines. The aforementioned Dharavi is famous not only for its poverty, but also, ironically, its riches. By effectively "recycling" items thrown away by the rest of Mumbai (among other industries), it manufactures items sold around the world to the tune of over $650 million. That's quite the lucrative business for one of the poorest neighborhoods on earth! The idea of foraging in dumps is hardly new in India. For years, the lowest caste in India, the dalits, have served as trash foragers and other unsightly jobs in Indian society. Indeed, I suspect it may be hard to uproot the slum-dwellers, as badly as it needs to be done, just because it goes against the grain of societal norms.

In addition, as is hard with any type of government assistance, some suspect that to the average slum-dweller, the illegal housing provided in slums like Dharavi is preferable to the legal, government-sponsored housing (which, of course, is taxable). How the government plans to move over 150 million Indians out of the slums is beyond me. Moreover, recent estimates project the number of slum-dwellers worldwide to double to 2 billion by 2030 as a result of both increased urbanization and lack of adequate infrastructure (especially in the developing world--like India) to accomodate that trend.

Slumdog Millionaire is a feel-good story of how a pair of former slum-dwellers fight against all odds to reach success. The sad reality, however, is that billions of impoverished people will never hope to have a chance at life the way it is portrayed in the movie. There is simply is no upward mobility among the people who live in these places. For me, visiting the slums here in Pune put faces to the urban problems facing our world. This is not just an Indian problem; alternately, it is a problem that America cannot ignore. In concluding this rather long post, I'm reminded of a verse from the Christian New Testament that I find personally inspiring when thinking about what to do for the people living in these slums:

And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Matthew 25:40