"Why would I go back?" he asked rhetorically as he relaxed for a few minutes on a stack of collapsed boxes.
The redevelopment plan, many residents of Dharavi say, will force them from their homes and businesses and into tiny apartments. Though some slum dwellers now live in even more cramped quarters, many have grafted second and third stories onto their shanties, which they rent out or use to run small businesses.
"The poor and the working class won't be able to stay in Mumbai," said 40-year-old Usman Ghani. "Many years ago, corrupt leaders sold this country to the East India Co. Now they're selling it to multinationals."
Ghani, who was born and raised in Dharavi, is a third-generation potter in the slum's famous potters colony, which boasts craftsmen whose wares are known throughout Mumbai and beyond. At his wheel, Ghani throws about 40 water pots a day, which he fires overnight in a large brick kiln a few steps outside his open-air studio.
"I've never been inside a tall building. I prefer a place like this where I can work and live," Ghani said, his hands and face flecked with wet clay.
Last summer, Ghani joined thousands of others from Dharavi in a protest that turned one stretch of road into a half-mile-long sea of multicolored flags and banners.
Slum-dweller activists contend that if the plan goes through, much, if not most, of the informal economic activity in Dharavi will be curtailed from lack of space and that cohesive communities will be broken up. Architect Mehta acknowledges that "nobody will get 100% of what they have" now, but he insists that many industries will still have room to operate.
Rai, the electrician whose home abuts the big water pipe, said it probably would be harder for him to make a living if he and his neighbors were resettled in anonymous high-rises.
"I've never locked my door, because I know everyone around here," said Rai, a burly, cheerful man in his 50s. "The people out here respect me. I don't allow anyone to rob or steal. If someone does something wrong, I haul him over to the creek and give him a thrashing."
From atop the water pipe, Rai can look out over the mangrove swamp and count the tall, shiny office buildings on the other side, the kind the government would like to plant on the spot where he and his family now live.
But Rai does not appear overly worried about the prospect.
In 3 1/2 decades of living in Dharavi, he has heard politicians and officials talk big before about reclaiming and rehabilitating this place.
Those politicians and officials are gone now. Dharavi -- with all its failings and problems, its chaos and unruliness -- remains.
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henry.chu@latimes.com
