If such "culture" can be maintained, the arterial lifelines of any hellhole can produce exports worth more than US$1 billion per annum, as they do in Dharavi.
Actually, they do more. This dumping ground of humanity even ploughs back its cesspool of wastes. Many thriving industries exist here to recycle discarded plastics, car batteries and electronic components back to the commercial process. They are hazardous undertakings but they do more for resource management –- and the environment -- than what 10,000 talking heads can achieve at the Bali Conference for Climate Change.
This is what defines "culture." Up north, in another slum in Delhi, an army of rag pickers routinely strip, mold and stitch up scavenged material into colorful bags that fetch up to 70 euros at fancy European boutiques.
This initiative of Shalabh and Anita Ahuja is matched only by the industrial efficiency of Mumbai's dabbawallas, whose daily transportation of lunch boxes could not accommodate a curious peek from Prince Charles during a visit in 2003 (it was the other way around).
Some skills will remain evergreen in a world of financial meltdowns and resources crunches.
If affluent markets shut down, Indians will buy slum-manufactured products for much less than 70 euros. (Most already do, unknowingly). Skilled hands may work in deplorable conditions, but they are needed for all worlds, for all times. For an extreme analogy, think of Nazi or Communist death camps. The ones spared were usually smiths, tailors and shoemakers!
This history lesson is often lost. During the Great Depression, a burgeoning consumer culture regressed into a "mender culture." Fewer things were sold for profit as industry tilted to fixing and patching items already possessed.
If such trying times repeated itself today, would our metropolises cope with the new demand-dictated realities?
Mumbai, or in any other Indian city, can achieve that. In Navi Mumbai, it cost me just $1 to re-patch my cargo shorts and replace the zipper for a Calvin Klein bag. In Kuala Lumpur, I would get the odd stare for a similar enquiry, while I would probably get brand new replicas stitched up for $2 in Dharavi, if the materials are supplied.
Anywhere else, you just dumped items that could otherwise be prolonged -- through good stitching -- by a few years.
In the "new fuel order," cities that had supplanted their patch-and-mend industries with spanking new malls will be bereft of an umbilical, economic lifeline. Or else, they can re-pack these emptying malls with the menders of consumer items, which, is not as easy as it sounds.
High rentals and manpower shortage preclude such a possibility. This is where underground sweatshops might proliferate to meet the value-for-money demand and supply, in turn, organized crime.
The contention that skyrocketing fuel costs might realign the global trading structure in favor of regional and local economies discount one rudimentary factor: some basic skills are on the endangered list in affluent societies.
I know one tailor in the United Kingdom whose order books have been increasing of late. Specializing in curtains and cushions, her embroidery work is now on the native endangered list, and she can proudly boast of a rare – and certified -- qualification.
Just what do they teach in schools these days? Have our Ivory Tower dreams displaced skills deemed plebeian? Just how do advanced societies plug such gaping holes in its skills bank? The choice one day might boil down to either skilled immigration or organized crime.
That is why Dharavi did not look so hopeless that day. Whatever the future holds, the people here will continue to manufacture kitchen utensils and furniture, stitch garments, repair shoes, mould pottery, and meet basic household needs. They might even assemble computers from recycled components in an inflationary world.
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