In order to meet its hopes for the future, the most crowded city in India must tear down its filthy – but productive – slums. Photographs by Adam Ferguson for TIME
Extreme Makeover – Megacity Edition
Mumbai is plagued by an extraordinary lack of available surface to build on. Valuable land around the city's international airport, the busiest hub in India, is taken up by squatters and tiny workshops. Before air service can be expanded, 350,000 people must be relocated.
Output
Reconditioned metal drums lie in a recycling shed.
Recycling
Among the other businesses in Dharavi are firms which shred plastic, mend clothes, strip computers, sort and bundle paper, fix machinery, flatten cardboard and clean and crush glass.
Superhero
Advocates for the slum-dwellers do not oppose the plans outright. "Every living person in Dharavi wants development," says one, "but it should be people-centered, not money-centered."
Concrete Solution
Part of the future involves the erection of a giant superhighway which will take traffic out of the streets and channel it over the city's bays and islands.
Global Vision
City planners hope that they can convert Mumbai, India's business center, into a world-class financial center by 2015.
Haves and Have–Nots
Real estate developers have their eye on the Dharavi slum, where 600,000 people are squeezed onto 500 acres in the heart of the city.
Businessman
Much of the businesses in Dharavi specialize in recycling. Abdul Salaam owns a small workshop where workers harvest plastic pen refills that are shredded into plastic granules which he then sells for five cents a pound.
Hard Work
"There is profit in old stuff," says Salaam, "if you know where to find it."
Sole Man
A Dharavi worker salvages rubber from used shoes.
Domestic Interior
Many Dharavi residents oppose plans to relocate their homes. Though they would receive new, more modern apartments, those structures would be located, they fear, on the edge of the city, far from where they work and where their kids go to school.
Squeezed In
Many of the homes in Dharavi are as small as 100 square feet, and may house as many as a dozen people.
Location, Location, Location
The slum occupies land which developers say is amongst the most valuable in the world.
Knife Grinder
Development plans are complicated by the fact that businesses in Dharavi produce millions of dollars in exports.
