The Ethics of Slum Tours

well, in some sense I think it is still voyeurism unless you add another element to it. it should also in some way benefit the people who live in Dharavi. Maybe you can have some people in Dharavi talk to to the people who come on the tours there, they can be the ones to lead certain parts of the tour, and then they can also make money from it. Have a Q&A session or a panel or something, anything, so that the "tourists" can connect with the people they see on a personal level. then it is not about voyeurism anymore, it becomes more about learning and growing, and it will financially benefit the people in that slum.

just an idea...

Just as people talk about the BRONX GHETTOS they will talk about the DHARAVI SLUMS. We have to realise human beings live out there and their conditions must be improved, and if by some chance they get a mention in the papers, it is eventually for their betterment, someone in the government will surely notice and try to help.Do some Indians settled abroad feel ashamed of Dharavi? Or of people stting out early morning in the villages? What have they done to uplift the villagers lives anyway? Have they seen the Sulabh Shauchalayas? India is changing slowly, it is encumbered with many problems of the past, it will take time.Rome was not built in a day and New India was not either.We have to be patient with India.

sirius... um, the bronx ghettos have NOTHING on the dharavi slums.... it's like apples and oranges. not that the US doesn't have poverty, but it is so NOT on the scale of India. I just do not understand the comparison, or your comments actually. I do not think Deepa is ashamed at all. Her question is about whether bringing tourists to stare at the poor is voyeurism even if it helps them to reach a new understanding of poverty and about how a lot of people live, not just in India, but world-wide.

Squirrel, one of the guides for the tour is a Dharavi local, and he gets paid for every tour. I offer a Worli fishing village tour, and our local guide for that tour is a fisherwoman. In Dharavi, we visit my guide's uncle's tailoring shop, and the man is extremely proud and happy when he gets visitors, they admire his stuff, they ask about his business, and he also got a business enquiry for T-shirts from one of the visitors. 30% of profits from my tours go to Akanksha Foundation, which works with slum and poor children. Some visitors who see the kind of work that Akanksha does also contribute money. I'm starting a new program with Akanksha this year. The idea is to employ Akanksha students (16-20 years old) as guides on a new type of tour I'm launching called 'Mumbai Local' - it's a tour where you see Mumbai using local transport (train, black-and-yellow taxi, red bus), accompanied by a local teenager. So yes, our tours give back into the community.

But the question about voyeurism remains. When I spoke to the reporter, we agreed that if there is consent from the party being viewed, and respect in the way you treat the person being viewed, then it is not voyeurism. All tourism is voyeurism of some sort or the other, we all travel to see strange things and strange people and places...it only becomes perverse when you do not view those people and places with any respect.

Deepa, yes, Mumbai is amazingly inspiring; and going into Dharavi is a humbling experience. But how does one do a tour without making it into a circus is the issue, I guess. Because try as one would, wouldn't it still become fair-skinned, or well-dressed people looking around curiously at how poorer others live their lives? Perhaps the way to do would be not to have a tour, but to have those who would like to, go in as volunteers for development projects...and really work and be there for two weeks/ a month...

The thing is, I don't see how this is different from fair-skinned and well-dressed people photographing Rajasthani women in the forest trails of Ranthambore. Or indeed, me going to Malaysia and photographing tribals in Borneo log huts. At its basest level, all tourism is like that, it feeds off authenticity and provides things to gawk at. At its highest, travel opens your eyes and allows you to see the world differently. And to see that we are all very much alike.

At Dharavi, at Worli village, in the deeply traditional marketplace of Bhuleshwar, my guests don't go and merely gawk insultingly. We don't let them. As an interpreter, as a brand ambassador, even, it's my job to make sure they take a deeper understanding away.

- Deepa

swwpa... well then it sounds as if the tours are conducted responsibly. if they give back to the community and involve interaction, then it is a learning experience that occurs with the consent of the people involved. it is not some gawking expedition...

deepa... well then it sounds as if the tours are conducted responsibly. if they give back to the community and involve interaction, then it is a learning experience that occurs with the consent of the people involved. it is not some gawking expedition...

sorry deepa... fingers on the wrong keys, trying to watch the baby as I type... LOL

annamma - I help place people with NGOs for short term voluntary work, so if you know anyone who wants to volunteer, let me know.

Some "alternative" philosophical view points:

Who creats poor?

Who creates weak?

A social activist has a "desire" to change the society. A leader has a desire to free the "oppressed".

All these desires have no chance of "fullfillment" unless some divine force in nature creates the poor, the weak and places them in the path of the very people, who "desire" to change the world.

If I have a deep sense for being a leader, then I am actually praying for more victims in the society. If a doctor has a deep desire to be successful, then the only way it can happen, when there are more and more sick people all around.

A western tourist craves to see the real India and waits for 5 years to get a chance to travel to India. Now, there are 2 possibilities. He (or she) gets a chance to see the "real India" or returns disappointed as he could not see the real India. So, his disapointment is because there are no poor Indians as he expected. In fact, in his 5 year wait, he has unknowing prayed for birth of children who will remain hungry when he visits.

Reality gets created the way you visualise it in your mind. The more people keep visualising poor deprieved sections of society, the more they perpetuate the situation (indirectly).

Often, western tourists find it difficult to accept the very genuine and real human conditions in poorer sections of country and cities. The non-acceptance is the one which gives them the kick of their life.

Finally, I can not be a saint unless a thousand sinners are created. I can not be a social activist unless thousands of people are oppressed. In fact, my very existence will be threatened the moment I find there are no "oppressed".

So, it blurs the cause and effects. The saints create sinners and sinners create a chance for recognition of saints. Both play their role and are deeply connected.

The "desires" and "wants" are the root of all misery for oneself or for others.

"Reality is Circular, but we see straightlines."

I don't think its voyeurism at all. If this is voyeurism, then so is visiting any of India's megacities. You can't miss people living in slums when you visit these cities even if you don't go looking for it. It's probably more informative and pricks the typical upper class cliche (as the author has so persuasively shown) to actually pay attention to what is around you.

It would be interesting to see how visitors view Mumbai after having toured a slum and comparing that with how they view it before having done so.

If you think its voyeurism, you're denying the reality of Mumbai in my view.

Deepa: I will try to make my response short :) I sincerely think that exposing Bombay's underbelly to an unprepared outlook is like using a slideshow to dispel the myths about poverty.

I find that poverty is ill-defined. I know this will sound philosophical but I think lack of money is not always poverty. To me a person who lacks perspective, dreams and the ability to smile boldly in the face of adversity is poorer than all those happy faces that twinkle like misplaced stars in the slum areas. When I see and speak with the people in the slums I somehow know that when they finally conquer the dearth of materialistic provisions, they will be a hell of a lot richer in perspective than any of the ones who've had always luxuries by default.

A few years ago I was in one of Bombay's red-light areas working on a project, meeting with one of the sex-workers. The sounds, the faces there seemed to shake something inside me for a while and then someone screamed "Saath baj gaye" and from nooks and crannies these children appeared (children of the sex-workers) and they all gathered in front of a solitary television set perched up in the middle of a hallway.

People may say that we are the voyeurs, but that day I was the one feeling exposed. I felt lonely. I felt like I wanted to be part of that lively group gathered in front of the TV for their favorite evening show.

I felt poor somehow. It just humbled me deeply and irreversibly to see a child's bubbling happiness where I had least expected to find it.

Aditi - Thank you for sharing that. This is *precisely* what I'm saying. The poor in Mumbai have dreams, they have the ability to "smile boldly in the face of adversity". They are not "poor".

Material poverty is NOT always equal to begging, to misery, to no self-respect...when we go to Cuffe Parade Koliwada, the women are fierce. I tell my tourists, respect these women! They'll wave their fish-cleavers at you if you invade their privacy. Go walk the market, but keep that camera away. These are the women who rule this village, treat them like that!

This Saturday, I took a group of 20 Swiss architects into Bhendi Bazaar, which is primarily Muslim. It was Ramzan, the area was buzzzzzing with activity in the evening. There was no space to stand. At the end of it, one of my tourists came up to me and said, in a surprised sort of way, "You know, I felt safe here, I didn't expect that. It's safe." I had broken a myth about hostile Islam.

It's not a slide-show. This is real. There is no other way to break stereotypes.

Deepa and Aditi, I have a similar experience to yours. The woman who cooks for us lives in a nearby chawl. I often take friends from abroad (and also from Bombay) to visit her for tea. She loves it and the members of her family like talking to the friends I bring along.

It kind of intrigued them that one of my friends was on to her third husband and everybody cackled loud and long. I too think we need to re-define the term "poverty". Not that we should ignore those who are materially poor and at starvation level, but as you say, we need to ask ourselves what makes us really "rich" (if we think of ourselves as such).

I think much depends on the attitude with which an outsider visits a chawl or a slum. If you go in order to generally learn and to make contact with the people, it's great. If not, it turns into voyeurism. It is difficult to know where to draw the line.

It's called "Poorism" -- tourism that turns the poor into objects for sightseeing. Yum, yum.

NGOs in particular are the authors of this. They have gone in for making a living out of the misery of others.

Please. Don't give it smart labels, American style. Labels are terrible, they obfuscate everything. The atom bomb was called Little Boy.

- Deepa

Deepa

You are a good human being and easily the most practical person on DC. Not an easy task at all :-). Wish there were more people like you in our country.


rgds

1) I'm surprised that voyeurism is an issue here. Nobody in India gives a damn about voyeurism -- it's obviously an artifact in the eye of the observer, not the observed. Just go to any bazaar in India and watch the people there -- they stare openly, unashamedly, unabashedly.
2) I think if you talk to the poor there is no one who will accept that poverty doesn't just mean lack of money. As long as you don't have the money to do some basic things, that is the only thing you focus on. The only people who can afford to talk about poverty not being lack of money is the people who have enough of it already -- like most of us on this blog I imagine.
3) Tourism would stop being voyeurism at the point at which someone from Dharavi was trained to run the tours on their own, and make the money for themselves and keep it. Phasing yourself out of business would be the correct charitable strategy, I think.

The guide is a Dharavi local. I've trained him. He gets money for each tour. Between 30-50% of all profits go to Akanksha's development programs for slum children. This month I am hoping to launch a new program with Akanksha where children who have successfully completed their program are employed as guides. Shut my business down in order to be "charitable"? What a silly thought! In my scheme of things, the entire system sustains itself. I make money, the tourists get professional tours, and the people from the slums benefit. There ought to be MORE people doing what I am doing!

- Deepa

Why do we always need to see things in black and white?

Personally I am all for Deepa's mission. If its business so be it. Come on, at end of the day even she has to run her house. Does everyone here believes that people working for social causes get paychecks from HIM?

As far as branding or labelling efforts goes, well I am not surprised. I am sure these are the same people who tagg Mother Teresa's efforts as SELLING INDIA TO WEST TO MAKE MONEY.

Deepa its a very good concept.

Once I was dining with bunch of firang friends, we were talking abt IT boom and how the IT service industry is growing in India and blah blah, the routine economic development bash. I was feeling all proud and then the bubble busted with one small question. One of the guest asked me "Agreed that India is showing great economic growth and its one of fastest growing economy, but is India really developing??" I asked him to explain. He said: isn't it possible that economic development is only happening in Metros and not reaching in the interiors of India. When we hear about India, we just hear about Bangalore, Bombay, Hyderabad and Delhi, but there is more to India than these cities. R the smaller cities and towns getting the same opportunities? People like him are intrigued by India, they probably have heard and read about Indian spirit and want to experience it. This experience is not possible watching Taj by moonlight or visiting Red fort or ellora caves.

Today, we may be proud about economic growth..but r we really developing? We may talk to our heart content how poor's have dreams and have smile on their faces.....but whatz the worth when the dreams are not achieved, doesn't the smile fades away??

So even its "POORISM", Vouyerism or whatever u name it,I dont care as long as it can create atleast one opportunity for someone in that slum to achieve his or her dreams. Its worth it.

Another form of slum tours happens in the backwaters of Kerala (allepy) ha ha ha