Next Stop, Squalor

Next Stop, Squalor Next Stop, Squalor 1 31 g have been escorting foreign visitors through Rio de janeiro’s infa- f; mous favelas, with their drug gangs and ocean views, and the vast J O H N L A N C A S T E R «' ‘ townships outside Cape Town and Johannesburg, where tourists , ,1“; rl "L . n o v a o o I l. r ' are 1nv1ted to mix With South Africans at one of the illic1t beer halls A y ' ‘ known as shebeens. A nonprofit group in New Delhi charges tour- Next Stop squalor . ~ 1 ' ‘ ists for guided walks through the railway station, to raise money for i ~ ' ‘ the street children who haunt its platforms. i I FROM Smithsonian V But the Dharavi tours have been especially controversial. In a i lengthy report last September, the Indian English-language Times i Now television channel attacked them as an exercise in voyeurism {if 4 ' . J, . ‘ . ‘ ‘ a y - u i 9}. and a sleazy bid to ‘cash in on the poor-India image. That report i: was followed by a panel discussion in which the moderator all but u . . “ . . . ': vyil THE DHARAVI S UATTER S t , . _ 7;. accused POOJaI‘l of crimes against humanity. If you were livmg in l. I Q - ET'I‘LEMISNT 1n Mumbai is oftende- 73;; .- l t Dharavi, in that slum, would you like a foreign tourist coming and scribed as the biggest slum in Asia. It Sits between two rail lines i 1’ ' n u ' - - - - ‘ ’7‘ the northern art f th . . . 'n ‘ '2 é"; s walking all over you? he sputtered. This kind of slum tourism, it is Mill ing fishery Tlfe “Eek £123: on a creefk mat once SPSEIHCfi a thrlv' I a clear invasion of somebody’s privacy . . . You are treating humans Eli and the ai above Dharavi is gimp O sewage and Indusmal WaSte’ like animals.” A tourism offiCial on the panel called the tour opera- v ' ‘ ;-.;- “ . . . . ,, ‘31: B one esfi t th 1 . g tors paraSites [who] need to be investigated and put behind bars, “if! fiesyalmost aglafi’h e m ls home to ten thousand small faCtO‘ and a state lawmaker has threatened to shut them down. Ell“ V-d ’ 0 em 1 Cgal and “9r?gula‘ed~ The factones Pro‘ The critics, it seemed, had claimed the moral high ground. But 1 e sustenance of a sort to the million or so people who are could they holditp V tl‘fl‘olgghtéo live in Dharavi, which at 432 acres is barely half the size 5“ i ' i o ew ork Ci ’s Central P ‘ ' ~ ' 553 ‘ ‘- I‘ picku and onltyone t ,1 fark' There ls no dlscernlble g'a'rbage y One sunny morning this past December, I met Christopher Way at vgui urbanpf’lell y 01 6t or‘every I ’440 people' It ls a “sum of 1‘}; . Leopold's Café, a popular backpackers’ hangout in Mumbai’s bus- A z, . . . . . . H; It is also one . , , , . . tling Colaba district. At thirty-one, he is boyish and bespectacled, «z :5; oflast year a 0:1: Irgcliiztiisshnewgst tourist attractions. Since January .3. with a thatch of tousled brown hair and a thoughtful, unassuming i y g en epreneur’ Chrlstopher way’ and hls C .57 manner. Over glasses of freshly S ueezed mango ’uice he told me iii Indian busmess partner Krishna Poo'ari h b 11' ' ' x: q J ’ . sill

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