Mumbai Part II - how the other half lives

The Mumbai trip wasn’t all fun and games.  After all, I was there to research Mumbai’s second hand mobile phone culture and its e-waste (electronic waste) recycling shops (both official and unofficial ones).  In India, waste isn’t collected by municipal garbage collectors or trucked off to the landfill in Michigan like it is in Canada.  Traditionally, garbage here is collected and sorted at the neighbourhood level by rag-pickers and then sold up to various scrap dealers who aggregate and sell even further up the food chain.  I read that waste isn’t seen as waste here but as a ‘fringe commodity’ with commodity value to somebody.  And, therefore, very little actually ever goes to landfill.  Just about everything gets re-used for something: broken down things get repaired and re-sold, materials get sold and recycled, food scraps get fed to the goats/dogs/cows on the streets.  And most of what is left gets burned.  So in this unofficial and unorganized waste-handling context, it was only natural that when electronic waste came on stream in recent decades, it would be handled in the same way as all the rest of the waste.  The problem is, unofficial sector as well.  Part of what I am studying has to do with the ballooning volume of computer waste in India, especially mobile phone waste.  The other part of what I’m studying is the second hand phone market; who uses old second hand phones, who repairs them, who re-sells them, who makes knock-offs, who shares them, what they are good for, why the life-span of a mobile phone is so much longer here than in the west.  In other words, mobile phone culture is a lot more complex here than in the west, and that’s what I’m researching.

In Mumbai, this meant visiting Manesh Market, Mumbai’s second hand phone market, and some unofficial electronic scrap shops and interviewing people – people who almost certainly don’t speak English – and definitely getting off the tourist track.  In fact I didn’t even have complete addresses for some of the places I wanted to go.  Time to hire a guide/translator.  As it happens, the (good ol’) Taj lined up this fellow, Ram, who turned out to be a great fit for my interests.  He was interested in the environmental and organic food movements.  He even lined up a last minute meeting with one of Mumbai’s few official e-waste recycling companies because he’d visited them before.  What are the odds of that. 

Ram, my leader

So off we went, by Mumbai commuter train to the Andheri area to the north.  

It's a man's world on the trains

Ram made a call and got a meeting at Eco-Reco (the e-recycling company).  Then, armed with only a partial description of location, he found Teen no. Khadi (Hill no. 3) in the Saki Naka slum area and we interviewed people in one computer scrap shop.  Next, we headed down to see all the recycling (cars, plastic, furniture, cans, bottles, you name it) in Dharavi slum.  Way back in one of my first blogs I mentioned the film Salaam Bombay, with respect to a street-kids shelter that I visited called the Salaam Baalak Trust.  Well Dharavi is where Salaam Bombay was shot.  In Both Dharavi and Saki Naka, it seemed like the entire neighbourhood was involved in scrap of one kind or another.  I know it’s not as simple as that, but the scale of the garbage recycling activities is staggering.  Seemed like the streets were full of hand carts, bullock carts, lorries and bicycle rickshaws all hauling stuff this way and that; and inside every little eight foot wide shop people were stripping copper wiring, smashing computer monitors to get the aluminum gaskets, separating plastic film from its foil backing, stacking cans, taking apart motors or cars, that sort of thing). 

Smashing up motors or something to get the copper

Stripping insulation off copper wire

As it turns out, Manesh Market, the second hand mobile phone market, had been gutted by fire last year and was out of commission.  Across the road, there was another market under tarps and we couldn’t tell if it was permanent or temporary.  In any event, we headed into the sauna inside and found a couple of shops selling China-made knock off phones like this 'SUMSMUG' smart phone that would cost Rs. 2,800 ($50) – at least that was the special white lady price.  Who knows how much less one could actually buy it for.

Ram was such a great guide and companion.  He could even put describe the cycles of recycling in terms of Hindu gods Krishna, Shiva and Vishnu, but don’t ask me to repeat his theory.  He also managed to fit in a quick visit to my old school, Cathedral School, so that I could get my photo taken in front.  In truth, I think this is the senior school and I went to the junior and middle schools, but it was too late and we were all too bagged to go find the other buildings.  I guess that will have to wait for some future visit. 

Then it was back to the Taj, through the security scanners and straight to the pool for a swim and to reflect on the day’s events and life in general after a day so full of contrasts.  Life is rich.  How shallow does that sound, sitting poolside on such a day?   

Next morning, taxi ride to the airport.  Another little cry on the way.  And a couple of hours later I was at my desk again at DEF in Delhi.

Oh yeah, did I mention how much I enjoyed Mumbai?

HAPPY CANADA DAY !!!!!