Financial commentator Joel Bowman looks at the Dharavi slum in Mumbai from a different angle:

“In an editorial pre-incarnation, your wayfaring author once found himself roaming the hot, sweaty crucible of economic chaos on the Indian Subcontinent in search of story and adventure. Mumbai squirms and pulses under the weight of three times the population density of New York City. It is both the commercial and entertainment centre of India, generating 5% of the country’s GDP and accounting for 25% of industrial output, 40% of maritime trade, and 70% of the nation’s capital transactions. Mumbai, sometimes still referred to as “Bombay,” is also a land of arresting dichotomy. For one, it is home to the world’s largest movie production industry…but just a short, bumpy ride from the glitz of Bollywood lays Dharavi, the largest slum in all of Asia. The latter area is a heaving mass of one million souls crammed into less than one square mile of unimaginable filth and grinding poverty. Needless to say, our visit to Mumbai’s underbelly was one of the most inspiring days of the whole trip.

The slum actually boasts an annual GDP of $660 million,” we wrote, awestruck after our short visit there, in The Rude Awakening. “The area, nestled between two railroad tracks, is bisected by an open-air sewage drain; commercial district on one side; residential on the other.

“On the commercial side, factories buzz around the clock, recycling the mass of waste spewed forth from around greater Mumbai. By day, ‘rag-pickers’ from the slum troll the city, collecting plastics, metals, bottles and all manner of other reusable matter. These materials are then melted down or repurposed in Dharavi before being sold back to metropolises all over India and, in some cases, across the region. Incredibly, all the machines are made on site. The men and women work 12 hours per day and each shift cooks a welcome meal for the incoming workers.

“Bound by the common oppression of multi-generational poverty, the people of Dharavi live and toil side by side, breaking their backs in the slum’s commercial district. Muslim people carve household Hindu temples, which then sell in the city’s markets, while the religious rift between the two groups rages on in the ‘outside world.’ Christian women watch over Muslim children, youngsters from different castes play together in the yards and Indian boys and girls learn in the slum’s schools alongside their classmates from all over Asia.”