Savouring the local flavour

What say you on the issue below?

Since the release of Slumdog Millionaire, reality tourism is seeing a boom in India.

Slum tours are the latest way for international tourists to experience the “real” India.

For India-bound tourists not quite enamoured of pretty Mughal tombs or the much-vaunted Third World exotica, there’s a mint-fresh attraction on offer — guided tours of the extreme living conditions of the country’s poor!

In Mumbai, India’s financial capital, for instance, tour companies will take you through the innards of the fetid Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, while in New Delhi, street children-turned-tour guides — who inhabit the city’s hovels and railway stations — will help you experience the metro’s underbelly.

Bus tours of the shanty towns of Soweto, guided walks through the favelas of Rio and Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum — these have attracted curious tourists for years. Based on a similar template, slum tourism — or what’s euphemistically called “reality tourism’’ — is fast gaining popularity in India, too, amongst westerners. In fact, so popular have these trips — organised by local NGOs and tour operators — become that they are even being listed by reputed travel guides.

Jared Khan conducting a Salaam Balak Trust city tour in New Delhi.

The idea behind the tours is ostensibly to give tourists a glimpse of the ‘‘real India’’ and create awareness about the plight of its less privileged citizens. They are popular because of their high ‘‘novelty’’ quotient for tourists from affluent countries. Plus, they also expose visitors to an urban reality away from the confines of their exquisite hotel suites or touristy hotspots.

The money which accrues from such ventures, claim its organisers, is funnelled back to better the lives of slum and street dwellers. Sounds noble enough. But the critics of such trips argue that they undermine the dignity of the poor by turning them into anthropological ‘‘exhibits’’.

But do they? Take the Salam Balak Trust, whose name translates as “salute the child”, for instance.

Since 1988, the NGO has been lifting children off Indian streets to rehabilitate them. The kids have also been involved in meaningful ventures like conducting walking tours of New Delhi since 2003 for which they are paid Rs200 (RM14) per trip by the tourists.

The walk includes the living and built heritage of the city and hidden streets to allow the visitors to see hidden cultural practices. The tourists also get a close-up view of how the organisation provides opportunities for destitute kids and the amazing things they are able to accomplish when presented with an opportunity.

“The city walk aims to sensitise people to the lives of street children. It’s a unique way of engaging people in the lives of children in distress,” explains Mohammed Javed, 22, one of the Trust’s “guides” who, like the other tour leaders, has experienced the life of a street kid firsthand. He ran away from home when he was barely into his teens and lived at the New Delhi railway station in pitiful conditions before Salaam Balak rescued him.

The one-hour walk serves a double whammy — it satiates the touristy curiosity and helps the boys augment their people skills. The proceeds, says the Trust, help create more opportunities for street children, so the walk is 100% non-profit making.

It’s a similar story with “reality tourism” in Mumbai. With Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire having scooped up a raft of international honors and creating an international buzz, interest in slum tours around Dharavi, which was a part of the film’s cinematic landscape, has ratcheted up. Bookings by both domestic and international tourists, tour operators say, have spiralled up by about 20%, economic downturn and the Mumbai blasts notwithstanding.

A ragpicker walks past a billboard of the award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

Not that the tours have ever been short of takers. Ever since Englishman Chris Way, 34 (an erstwhile slum volunteer and teacher) and his Indian partner, Krishna Poojary, 29, launched Reality Tours in 2006, gaggles of tourists have been taking in the sights at this chaotic human settlement which hosts over a million people on 175sq km of swampy land.

Real estate in India’s financial capital of Mumbai is among the world’s most prohibitive, third only to Tokyo and New York. As a result, more than half of Mumbai’s populace live in slums like Dharavi which lie between Mumbai’s two main suburban railway lines, the Western and Central Railway, that transport people from one extreme of the city to the other.

Reality Tours’ short trip — of three-hours’ duration — costs Rs400 (RM29) per head with a guide. The longer one lasts five hours and is tagged at US$50 (RM175) for a group of four in an air-conditioned car. The trip starts from a designated pick-up point but since cars cannot pass through Dharavi, guide-accompanied tourists have to amble through shanties — a strain on your olfactory sense, no doubt, but you’re warned not to cover your nose or show disgust!

The more adventurous and thrifty tourists are, however, advised to travel by the local train to save on cost and savour Mumbai’s local flavour.

“Our slum tours have been a great success,” states Krishna.

And that they have been. Dharavi is one of the world’s best known slums catapulted into popular imagination by reputed filmmakers including Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay).

The Dharavi residents are no doubt scrunched for space — that ultimate luxury in Mumbai often compared to the blingy Shanghai where, developers say, all future real estate development will only transpire skywards. Ergo, even though the slum has almost zilch sanitation, a shack here can cost a whopping US$40,000 (RM140,203).

The sheer density of humanity, in other words, can be gut-wrenching. No matter. The slum is a productive crucible for handmade goods like clay pots, craft items, leather produce and garments, and provides a livelihood to millions notching up an impressive annual turnover of US$665mil (RM2.3bil)!

It’s no surprise then that many industrious families in Dharavi run their own businesses and even pay taxes. Some are even wealthy enough to buy condominiums in the few residential high-rises that have mushroomed within the slum!

Slum dwellers apparently offered little resistance to Krishna’s tours from the beginning.

Says the entrepreneur, “They object only to having their pictures taken. So as a policy, we don’t allow photography.”

To remove any residual resistance, Reality Tours operates a community centre in the slum, teaching English and computer lessons to the slum dwellers at discounted rates.

Designed as an “awareness-raising venture”, organisers insist such trips aren’t “poorism’’ — or voyeuristic tourism where rich foreigners come to ogle at the lives of impoverished inhabitants of developing countries.

“I think this a wonderful opportunity to see a world many of us don’t know about,” says Barbara Francis, who was here from France last autumn. “How can we bridge the gap between poverty and wealth if the latter have no clue how it is to live on the other side of the fence?”

Brij Raj, a slum dweller, says that the tours present an aspect of slum life which few are aware of — the sense of industry, community, and purpose.

“The tours help enormously to change western mindsets,” admits Brij. “Most tourists come here expecting to see us begging but are surprised to see us busy and doing quite well here. Most houses possess televisions, refrigerators, mobile phones, even washing machines!”

Shanta Bai, another slum dweller, who helps her husband make leather products, says that the biggest achievement of such tours has been the exposure for the inmates.

“The press writes about us and we get good publicity out of it. However, I don’t like it when some visitors squirm their noses around here or make faces. They need to be more sensitive.”

As Reality Tour’s sales pitch promises, the degree of industriousness evident in Dharavi does indeed challenge the common notion of a slum. No doubt it offers surprises! Specially poignant is the sense of camaraderie that permeates this unique settlement everywhere one goes – with Tamils, Muslims, south Indians, Maharashtrians, Konkanis, potters, leather workers, plastic recyclers, goldsmiths, garment workers, craftsmen working with the common goal to disgorge themselves from this Dickensian wretchedness.