MUMBAI: Residents of Asia's most famous slum fear a multi-billion-dollar plan to transform the area into a Singapore-like enclave featuring luxury skyscrapers and shopping malls will destroy its vast informal economy.
But the area defies most Western notions of a slum; Dharavi is a hive of economic activity and boasts an estimated annual turnover of more than a billion dollars.Industries include pottery, leather and textiles - about 5,000 businesses operate from around 15,000 one-room workshops, according to estimates. Masses of rubbish are also separated there for recycling.
The ambitious scheme, projected to cost around $4 billion, will include demolishing tens of thousands of dilapidated slum houses and replacing them with several hundred towers up to 30 storeys high. Fifteen-year-old Muskan Sheikh is excited by the prospect. She lives in a bathroom-less one-room house with five relatives sleeping head-to-toe.
Today, dozens of tourists armed with cameras meander through the area's narrow alleys every day, dodging goats and handcarts as they peer into tin-roofed shanties and ramshackle workshops.
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