[music] DHARAVI THE LARGEST SLUM IN ASIA My name is Giuseppe and I have a mission: to travel the world, to meet the most extraordinary people on the planet and to ask them a simple question: "What does happiness mean to you? " Welcome to Progetto Happiness. Namaste!
I'm inside Mumbai's "ant hill". That's what they call Dharavi, Asia's largest slum. More than 2 million people work tirelessly here.
Everywhere I turn, I see people working and working. This is where the so-called "worker ants" produce a turnover of more than $1 billion a year. It seems unbelievable that inside the slum lies the heart of Mumbai's economy, but it's true.
Today we'll see it together. Dharavi is widely considered to be an area with the highest density of entrepreneurs in the world. All crammed in this small space are over 20,000 family businesses.
Working is a necessity here. No one begs for money, in fact it is frowned upon. They create niches, everyone does something different.
It seems like no one is working now, but they've stopped to check out the camera. But I promise this area is always buzzing. How much do you make a day?
18,000 rupees per month. ($218) We collect plastic. We sort it and grind it in those machines.
Hello. What are you doing? Can I see?
So these were previously bottles, discarded plastic. The people of the slum collect the plastic and they make other plastic products with it. This is a bag for clothing.
. . See?
Hello. Hi. They invited me to come and take a look at their factory and it's unbelievable.
There's so many young guys, all smiling. Working their stations and they are making these bags. I think that man is the boss.
. . Hello!
There is only one woman, there. I won't film her, because it's usually frowned upon. But the rest are all very young men.
I'm curious as to what the average age is. My guess is that they're about 15-20, really young. Imagine for a moment how much value a disposable water bottle can have.
Here it becomes a different product and it also becomes another job. They work with recycled products, discarded plastic. These guys are machines, they work so fast!
Always making the same movements. It's otherworldly. Always the same movements.
With this kind of product, I'd be certain that it was produced by an industrial machine. But in Dharavi the cogs are the people. As in every slum, there is a specified area for disposing of trash, a place that becomes an open-air dump.
You can see there's all kinds of trash here. Textile scraps from all the clothing factories. Scraps from construction.
. . A ton of plastic, an unbelievable stench.
And there are two huge oil pipelines in which people live. Hello. As there are no private bathrooms in the slum, people come down here to find some privacy to do their business.
[music] This in theory should be the river which serves as a border between city and slum, but it's actually become a dumping site. Here drains the sewers from the slum and the factories. You can only imagine the stench one can smell from here.
I lost his ball! He's going to get it. Great!
Mumbai is home to 22 million people, a huge megalopolis. The most incredible fact is that 50% of them live in slums exactly like this one. But it is not always because the people here have a humble social background, but mostly because rent in the city costs too much.
Employees of large multinational corporations also live here. Another main industry here is recycling cardboard. They take all the discarded cardboard, cut it up, form it into a different shape, making new cardboard to package different products.
It's amazing how nothing is thrown away here. It's extraordinary that in every inch of this slum there are companies, businesses, people working. We just saw this cardboard business and over here is another store that makes sari fabric.
It's amazing how these people work and produce all the time. It's amazing that here in Dharavi people go nuts for gemstones. We just walked into one of the most typical shops in the area.
Namaste. Arrivederci. He said "arrivederci".
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Now, back to India. This is one of the many narrow streets of Dharavi. The slums are so close to each other that not even sunlight gets in.
And the further we go, the tighter they will be. How is it so narrow here? Look at this house.
An Imam is giving the call to prayer. This is a purely Muslim area. It sounds unbelievable, but all these doors lead to houses where people actually live.
[call to prayer] We were invited to go inside a typical Dharavi house. Hello! -This is the house?
-Yes. Wow! That's it?
The whole house? - That's the bathroom. - Yeah.
This is the kitchen. Where do you sleep? Here.
This is super small, how many people live here? About three. -Three people?
-Yeah. This must be less than 100 square feet. There is nothing.
. . No bathroom.
. . Just this one tap where you can take a shower but there is no toilet.
This could be a kind of kitchen. But nothing to cook on. In fact there is only water.
You could put food here, but. . .
You can cut things, but you can't cook. Where do the people sleep? On the floor?
Yes. What do you think about this kind of house? All over the slum the houses are like this.
- The same as this? - Yes. How much does a house like this cost?
15 to 20 lakhs. (From $18,000 to $23,000) - To buy? - Yes.
And to rent? 10,000-15,000 rupees a month. ($110 to $180) Mumbai's big entrepreneurs are looking to take over the entire slum area because of its economic value.
But they have to move all the people first. They're building these dilapidated houses To dump them all there and build large skyscrapers in the slum area. One thing that's curious about Dharavi is their official sport of pigeon racing.
This boy is showing me how they race pigeons. Basically, they paint the pigeon's wings so they can tell them apart and see out who is winning. They released them, but they're all perched there.
I don't think they want to go back inside. They told me they'll come back. .
. but in their own time. The first one to touch the ground loses.
The one who stays up the longest wins the race. It's us against the outsiders. Now we'll see the oldest profession in Dharavi.
The men are tanning skins from goats and buffalo. Not cow skins, because they're sacred. And it is perhaps the first industry introduced in the slum because in the 1900s Dharavi was just a fishing village.
Then with the industrial boom, all the most polluting industries came to Dharavi, including the leather industry. It remains one of the most lucrative industries in the slum. How long have you lived in Dharavi?
I've lived in Dharavi for 50 years. When I was young, I didn't have a penny to my name. Life was so hard that we struggled to feed ourselves.
We often went to sleep on an empty stomach. I grew up in hard times, but things are better now, thank God. It's not much, but I can keep about $15 in my pocket, I can eat whatever I want and I'm thriving.
What has working taught you? I realized that working hard is important, but you don't have to work for a living like I did. The key is to do enough to support your family and to keep the next generation out of poverty.
We should all live like that. What is happiness to him? It's very simple.
My hands and legs are still strong and I'm healthy. It's not much, but I've learned we have to live happily with what we have. It's how I've always lived.
In Dharavi, most people work for a living. But there are also those who, after generations of hard work, managed to become millionaires without ever leaving the slum. How does it feel to be rich in a slum?
Actually, I don't feel like I'm rich or poor. Because Mumbai is already the place of rich people. We already have many rich people in Mumbai.
Compared to them, I am nothing. Actually, Dharavi is a hopeful place for migrant people and start-ups, because Mumbai is very expensive. We represent Dharavi proudly with our brand name.
At this stage we don't want to sell our brand everywhere. We are doing something exclusive at the moment. This is our concept, we want more people to visit Dharavi.
It is not about the money. My business goal is different. I would like my brand to be like Gucci, Armani, and other big brands.
What is happiness for you in Dharavi? As you have seen, in Dharavi there are many poor people. But they're happy with what they have.
That's the important thing. If I have more, but I'm not happy, what's the point? Rich people are busy, and they forget many things that are important in our lives.
Money is necessary, but it is not everything in life. It is not a competition between rich and poor. The important thing is to give a human a chance to be himself.
It's not a race where you're ahead and I fall behind. What is important is to be a good human being. In India more than anywhere else I've sensed this visceral need of gaining space in the world.
A world that is overcrowded, relentless, and without laws or rights, where those who don't work lose everything, including a chance of being able to survive. It doesn't matter if you're young or old, what matters here is that you're able to be part of the assembly line, to produce. Yet, even under these conditions, happiness exists.
Precisely in the sacrifice and endless hours devoted to work these people place not only the meaning of their existence, but above all, the hope of helping future generations so they may afford a way out of this reality.
