Creations on a pushcart

There is a new addition to the landscape of one of India’s largest shantytowns, Dharavi in Mumbai, made famous by Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire”.

It’s a big shiny pushcart with pottery chai cups – 50 types including one which has ears for a two-hand grip – brooms that sweep both ways, earthen water pots or matkas with air holes to keep the contents cool and other handicrafts.

The contents are not for sale. The pushcart and its exhibits are part of the Design Museum Dharavi, a project by an Amsterdam-based duo – visual artist Jorge Rubio and art historian Amanda Pinatih –along with a Dharavi-based urban research initiative URBZ.

The aim of the museum is to showcase the creative energy of Dharavi, give artisans opportunities to innovate, promote social change and throw up a positive impression of the sprawling settlement, say the museum project team members.

“We began the project in 2011 soon after we encountered Dharavi for the first time and saw how much manufacturing was going on,” Pinatih said.

Matchbox buildings crowd the maze-like narrow alleys of the sprawling 2.2-square-kilometre informal settlement, a cheaper residential option for thousands of migrants who are drawn to India’s financial hub.

The estimated 1.2-million population of Dharavi all live cheek by jowl with one another. Most of their homes have electricity and a television, but no running water. The drainage system is largely open sewers.

The settlement dates back to British colonial days.

There are enclaves of potters from the western state of Gujarat, leather tanners from southern Tamil Nadu, embroidery and metal workers from Uttar Pradesh in the north and Bihar in the east.

Dharavi residents run a range of cottage industries in their homes, in workshops and out in the open.

There is also a thriving recycling industry. Plastic bottles, newspapers, old furniture, timber, spare parts of various things – Dharavi’s industrious and creative residents make something and money out of everything.

The cottage and recycling industries are estimated to earn more than US$500 million (Bt17.8 billion) a year. They jostle for space in the narrow alleys.

“Despite the tough conditions they live in, the residents of Dharavi create, design, manufacture and commercialise all kinds of goods and products,” Rubio says.

The aim of the museum is to give these objects, sometimes with a new twist, a platform so that locals could be proud of what they make and people of Mumbai and abroad could connect with the makers.

“When people talk about Dharavi, it’s always about the problems, the slumlike conditions. We want to change how Dharavi is perceived through its manufacturing, design and craft,” Rubio says.

After two weeks of collaboration with local artisans, the museum opened in mid-February to roll around Dharavi on the handcart for a month.

“We first thought, let’s have the museum in a caravan, or an auto-rickshaw,” Pinatih adds. “Then we saw people selling things – fruits, vegetables on pushcarts – so our museum is on a specially made pushcart.”

The museum is an 2-by-1 metre metal structure with wooden frames which when opened become 7 metres long. “The museum is small, flexible and on wheels, and symbolic of how spaces are in Dharavi,” Rubio says

“We are discussing with Shyam Kanle who is a Dharavi resident and works with URBZ on how to continue it, make it a more permanent thing,” he continues.

Rubio and Pinatih plan to hold an international conference in Amsterdam in May to discuss the museum project and how it can be implemented in other places.

“But first we are waiting to see the response,” Rubio says.

More than 41 per cent of Mumbai’s households live in slums, according to a 2011 census. The Dharavi Redevelopment Authority has for years been working on a plan for resettlement of the slum’s residents in high-rises with better amenities which would also free up land in a prime Mumbai area.