It is an ambitious plan for Mumbai, where failed examples of redevelopment dot the landscape: buildings abandoned halfway through construction, others in disrepair because of mismanagement and corruption.
The U.S.-educated Mehta says his plan offers "quantum leaps" of improvement for Dharavi, a place he once referred to as a "black hole."
Many residents bristle when they hear such terms. They dislike the word "slum," which they feel conjures up an image of misery and torpor.
Squalor and wretchedness definitely exist. Rats scuttle along the gutters. Women wring out the day's wash in open drains while their children play cricket between heaps of rotting garbage. In some parts of Dharavi, several families share a single tap, and even more families share a single toilet -- or simply do their business in open areas. Stray dogs add to the stench.
But there are no idle hands here. Dharavi is a hive of activity, a marvel of entrepreneurial spirit and hard work that, in its own way, is as much a reflection of the new India and its go-go economy as the glass offices of the business park across the way.
Estimates of the number of informal businesses and cottage industries operating in Dharavi range anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000, with revenue totaling tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars a year.
The air resounds with the whine of machines and shouts of workers. Trucks laden with goods rumble by on the larger paved roads, past grocery stalls, eateries, bank branches, temples and mosques.
Once a fishermen's colony on the northern edge of Bombay, as Mumbai was then known, Dharavi is now almost a city within a city -- a self-contained, chaotic but somehow functional world, and a magnet for migrants. Nearly all of India's many languages can be heard here, in close-knit enclaves often defined by the residents' origin or occupation.
Khan, the cardboard-box recycler, languished as a farmer in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, before landing here eight years ago looking for something better. He is constantly hustling, a go-getter attitude that enabled him to buy his own workshop in 2006. The property has nearly doubled in value since, he said.
Khan, 40, oversees seven employees, all recruits from his home village. As his own boss, he is able to go home for lunch with his wife and five children every day.
In a good month on the farm, Khan earned 6,000 rupees (about $140). Here, monthly revenue can be 50 times that.
