Judaline Torcato

They get photos; we lose a piece of our dignity 1 : Gazing the

Other in the Cityscape

Abstract
This paper tries to understand slum tourism as a
phenomenon and its significance. The tourists
gaze feeds in to the idea that urban poverty is
more real than the modern built structures of
the city. This has led to charges of voyeurism
and social bungee-jumping. By analyzing how
such tourism represent a disturbance to the
urban landscape, I will bring forward some of
the limitation of viewing slum tourism as an
aestheticization of poverty.

When the much celebrated movie Slumdog Millionaire, released in 2008, Salman Rushdie
in his review of the movie criticized it as a feel good movie about Bombays slumsa
romantic Bollywoodised look at the harsh, unromantic underbelly of India2 . Writing For
The New York Times, Rahul Shrivastava and Matias Echanove noted, that understanding
Dharavi under the rubric of slum, robs it of its complexity and dynamism, by
perpetuating a stereotypical notion of the underbelly of the city to the audiences in the
Western world.3 A virtual poverty tour4, the film in the eyes of its critics, was depicting
notions of squalor and poverty in a city, which a couple of years ago was hailed as the
wealthiest in India5.
The movie provides for what is known as the dark side of the city---the slums; the
aspirations of the people and the struggle for livelihood against all odds. What critics of
the movie found most baffling was making an entertainment of other peoples misery. It
stood as stark and embarrassing, against the world city status, that Mumbai aspires to.
The slum then becomes a space, where reactions range from a sympathetic chuckle, to a
renewed sense of reality, for those who visit it.

History Of Slumming
1

According to the UN Habitat, the word slum is hard to define, given the dynamism and
heterogeneity that slums display worldwide.6 However for our purpose a general though
inadequate definition of slum as constituting a space marked by informal housing,
poverty, and lack of basic amenities, should suffice. This paper would also look at slums
as spaces for the marginalized, the other of the cities, marked by squalor and neglect.
The word slum, was initially used as a slang for individual lodgings, which later
extended to backyards and urban quarters.7 It was Cardinal Wiseman, who turned the
word slum, in to a term of standard language around the 1820s.8 As Wiseman was much
quoted in the British newspapers, the word, then got extended to connote destitute
urban housing conditions.9
During the mid nineteenth century, rapid industrialization in London led to an increasing
gap between the rich and the poor. For the middle and upper classes the East End slums
were what Steinbrink refers to as places of the unknown Other.10 These spaces of
poverty, represented the decline of civilization and the loss of public control. The East
End slums were then dubbed as the urban terra incognita.11
Steinbrink links the interest in voyages to the unknown land, with the fantasies that gave
an impetus to the dark unknown of the slums. As early as 1850, the upper class visits to
the slums acquired the name slumming.12 By the close association that the term started
to achieve with dirt and moral decay; the slums then marked what is known as the
moral topography of the city.13 In the U.S.A slumming emerged in New York during the
1880s, which was linked with the development of urban tourism.14 Slum tourism works
on the spatial differentiation between here and there; the comparative gaze
between what one considered ones own city and the destination which led to the
slum being designated as an urban tourist spot.15 Since tourism is based on the idea of
difference and novelty, this construction of the unknown helped to exploit internal spatial
differences towards a touristification of the slums.16 Commenting on such slumming
that was increasingly being resorted to, in the U.S.A Steinbrink states, that the image of
the cosmopolitan metropolis as representing heterogeneity and internal differences
helped to create a symbolic image of the City. The urban sphere, was where contrasts
could be found; where spaces were juxtaposed against each other.17 In the U.S.A such
slums were also marked by racist and ethnic identities, where slumming assumed not
only an economic but also a cultural othering.18 One could visit the slum, as a way to
escape, the burden that the city proper imposed. It was a way of returning to a world of
pre-modern affiliations, of warmth and togetherness, in a city that stressed on
anonymity and privacy.

Slumming In Mumbais Dharavi

Termed as one of Asiaa largest slums, spread over 223 hectares Dharavi has been
termed as a conundrun where happiness and prosperity, resides easily with the
insanitary and degrading human conditions that its denizens have to live with (Patel;
2010) . During the early phases of industrial growth, slums cropped up mostly around
2

mills and work places.(Panwalkar; 1995) . In the present scenario slums crop up
wherever there are open spaces and some recent studies suggest that most slum
residents work within the slums themselves.19 The fear, of some slum removal
protagonists at the high growth rate of slums led them to coin the term Slumbay,20
which shows how the Other is juxtaposed to Bombay, which feeds in to a certain
imagination of the City, of which the slum is an ugly side.
I will be briefly citing two separate field studies conducted in Mumbais Dharavi slums by
Julia Meschkank and Peter Dyson in 2009 . Both studies are based on interviews
obtained from tour participants who visited the Dharavi slums, both before and after the
tour.
In the field study conducted by Julia Meschkank in early February 2009, she came to the
conclusion of how tourists had certain pre-conceived notion of slums marked as spaces
of poverty in the urban landscape. Most tourists associated such slums to be marked by
dirt, squalor, disease, low level of education and crime. Poverty argues Julia, was marked
with negative connotations and linked to the place-specific semantics.21 The tour
organizers on the other hand marketed themselves as reality tours. Their professed
aim, as is evident on their websites, is to show the tourists the authentic Mumbai City.
Marginal Settlements, stark economic polarity and the struggle for survival is portrayed
as the real eye opener22. One of the reasons argues Julia, for the increasing number of
tourists flocking to such slums is their quest for the real ; the unmediated vision, which
may not be unmediated after all . The tour agency Reality Tours and Travels, ( which at
that point in time was the only travel agency offering such service) also works to
counter negative images associated with urban poverty in the slums. The constant
reference to the Dharavi people as hardworking and industrious who make an annual
turnover of 665million USD, is an effort to counter the negative images that are
propagated of such slums, as passive and inert, who make no contribution to the citys
economy.23
Many of the tourists stressed on the strong community ties among the slum residents in
Dharavi, despite the grueling effect of poverty. The tour guides never failed to mention
how about 15% of those who graduate from school education go on to pursue their
higher studies.24 Such positive characteristics in effect, serve to build the image of
slums as a place where hardworking people aspire to make something of themselves
despite the harsh and precarious conditions they live in.25 These places of poverty then
become places of productivity. It is by correcting pre-conceived, media propagated
images of the city and its slums, that such slum tours publicise themselves as showing
the real unlike the staged. The slum then, unlike the rest of the city is where you get to
experience life, unlike the glorious facades that conventional tourism boasts of 26. It is
this stark inequality and squalid living conditions which is then referred to as the heart
of Mumbai.27
In the same year Peter Dyson from the University Of Cambridge, conducted a similar
field research with tour- goers and raised some important questions pertaining to the
construction of reality in such tours. Unlike Julia, Dyson focuses on the social background
3

of the tour-goes. No perception of reality is unmediated, and much of how perception is

interpreted will depend on the particular background of the individual tour-goers. Similar
to Julias findings, Dysons field-work also confirms , much of the attraction for touring
these slums to be based on experiencing the real contra the staged/fictive. 28 Since
both interviewed Reality Tours and Travel, their findings are similar with respect to the
agencys effort to counter negative images of urban poverty by marking them as spaces
of productivity in Mumbai. Dyson argues, that the diverse ethnic compositions and the
spirit of enterprise of these slum dwellers are used to construct an image of the real
India.29 These slum spaces then are marked by symbolic value, whereby any
understanding of Mumbai City is incomplete without understanding the people of these
slums. 30 The world class city status that Mumbai aspires for, and to which slums are an
embarrassment, cannot be understood completely without these very slums. A city
within a city, Dharavi, argues Dyson becomes the backstage of the cityscape, while
Mumbai is the frontstage.31
Is slum tourism the only way to understand this backstage of the cityscape?. Does the
visibility of the informal settlements make it more porous, than life in the gated
communities? How do we understand the public/private distinction in the slums? As
Dyson argues, urban life becomes a play of dichotomies, rich/poor, formal/informal in to
a dialectic co-location.32 However the life in the slums is counter-intuitively as
impenetrable as those in formal settlements. , which is why the need for personally
touring them is felt. 33

Gazing the Other

The growth of slum tourism has made some commentators refer to it as the
commoditization of poverty a form of voyeurism likened to social and economic
bungee- jumping.34 One cannot overlook the importance of cinema in generating certain
images of the slums, as the movie Slumdog Millionaire would serve as a reference.
Much of the rise in touring these slums were generated after the release of the movie,
which portrayed a certain reality of Mumbai City
As both the above mentioned field studies highlight, the slum has been viewed as more
real, than the other parts of the city. It is considered by some to be of transformational
value, which can impact character. However an important question than reckons an
answer is Why? Even if most tourists are guided by media representations, of life in a
slum, what makes its visibility more authentic? What makes hardships and struggles
more real than the comfortable dwellings of urban upper middle-class culture. Does
poverty have an aesthetic of its own? Can we understand such aesthetic, devoid of
ethical concerns?
The slum as visible spaces of poverty, stands as a signifier of modernitys limits; an
almost anti-thesis of modern aspirations for a built-environment. Increasing slumming,
4

on the other hand can stand as a judgment against a culturally unfulfilling,

materialistic lifestyle.35 Dovey & King call it the shock value of slums which has an
aesthetic dimension to it. The slum forms a disturbance in the visuality of the cityscape,
with dilapidated buildings and chaos. This characterizes an excess, of the spatial field
which in visual perception, then becomes the spectacle of the urban landscape.36
While tours transform perceptions of the people, it does not transform the perceptions of
the built environment of the slum.37 Despite living in squalid quarters, nothing was
considered a waste. Every scrap was creatively utilized, as effort was made to offset the
lack of infrastructure. One could view this as what Ranciere would call, a distribution of
the sensible, with its concomitant politics of inequality and exclusion. The tourists gaze
negotiates with this distribution of the sensible in its construction of the other. By
other I mean, that which resists comprehension; whose transparency is only
superficially obvious. The slums are both transparent yet invisible to the observer, since
the tourist perceives his perception, but is not always conscious of the predeterminations that structure such perceptions.38
Uni Linke views slum tourism to be an exercise of artistic appreciation, where the
resourcefulness as well as creativity in eking out a living is one way in which western
tourists can share a common understanding of the universalizing code of art, and also
transcend difference, without giving up their elite subject positions.39 The slum is
thereby an architectural eccentricity in an otherwise natural landscape. What is
interesting argues Linke is how poverty becomes an artefact, as that which appears
strange also fascinates.
If we consider third world poverty as a romanticized commodity for the global market,
then this brings to play serious ethical concerns.The slum represents urban spaces of
deprivation; it is both exclusive, for it peopled by those who do not have access to
certain facilities and infrastructure that modern city dwellers avail of, and at the same
time a slum like Dharavi can also be termed inclusive, in the way its resources are tied to
the citys economy. While these tours profess to transform the stereotypes relating to
the urban poor, there are those who suggest unethical implications to such an exercise.
One of the common diatribe has been the commodification of poverty and deprivation,
for a consumerist global gaze. This has led to an objectification of slum dwellers, who
are viewed as creatures living at the margins of modernity, and the gaze satisfies a
nostalgic return to the pre-modern. I do not completely agree with these views, as I feel
they overlook some important facts. Firstly as has been argued, the slums represent a
dent to the spatial visibility of the modern urban landscape. To reduce such a visibility to
the aesthetic gaze is to gloss over the relationship that the aesthetic shares with the
political. Perhaps the most insightful understanding to this has been provided by
Ranciere, who stresses the political dimensions of aesthetics to argue that both politics
and aesthetics were guided by certain notions of the acceptable and the unacceptable.
This broadens Rancieres understanding of aesthetics to social and political systems,
which are guided by their own distribution of the sensible.40
Drawing from Bourdieu Dovey& Kinng argue, that aesthetic judgements operate in a
field of power where aesthetic distinctions between things serve to draw social
5

distinctions between people.41 Urban informal settlements thereby represent a negative

symbolic capital. One can view the slums as cutting across the brand image of a worldclass city. This explains the apathy of the middle and upper classes towards the slum
demolition drives. A paradox emerges when such slums serve to contest the modern
planning agenda and yet add to the cities global flow, by attracting tourists. The slums
both resist and become the brand image. While one may question the image of poverty
and squalor in the slums, one cannot ignore its potency.42 The challenge however is to
maintain this play of difference, without being co-opted in the larger global consumer
capital.

End Notes

This is taken from a heading in The New York Times Op-ED section in Slumdog Millionaire by
Kennedy Odede The New York Times August 9 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10odede.html?_r=0. Accessed 22nd May 2016

2 Rushdie. S A Fine Pickle in The Guardian . Accessed

http://www.outlookindia.com/blog/story/salman-rushdie-a-fine-pickle/1587

3 Echanove. M & Shrivastava. R Taking the slum out of slumdog in The New York Times February
21 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21srivastava.html. Accesed 22nd May 2016

4 Magnier. M Indians dont feel good about Slumdog Millionaire in Los Angeles Times 24 th January
2009 . http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/24/world/fg-india-slumdog24. Accessed on 22nd May
2016

5 Taken from India Needs Cities network for easy rural-urban shift in Livemint E-paper 3 August
2009. http://www.livemint.com/Politics/MZVXMC045fNfaw6XM9zHQP/India-needs-cities-networkfor-easy-ruralurban-shift.html. Accessed 22nd May 2016

6 Development Context and The Millennium Agenda (Chapter One) in The Challenge Of Slums:
Global Report On Human Settlement (2003) Revised & Updated 2010

7 Taken from Steinbrink. M We did the slum: Urban Poverty Tourism in Historical Perspective in
Tourism Geographies . Vol 14 No 2 May 2012 pp213-234

8 (Ibid)

9 (Ibid)

10 (Ibid)

11 (Ibid)

12 (Ibid)

13 (Ibid)

14 (Ibid)

15 (Ibid)

16 (Ibid)

17 (Ibid)

18 (Ibid)

19 See Panwalkar. P. Upgradation of slums: A world Bank Project in Patel & Thorner (eds)
Bombay: Metaphor For Modern India (Oxford University Press; 1995)

20 (Ibid)

21 Meschkank. J Investigations in to slum tourism in Mumbai: poverty, tourism and the tension
between different constructions of reality in GeoJournal Vol 76 No 1 (2011) pp 47-62

22 This was taken from one of the testimonials of the tourists posted on the website. See
http://realitytoursandtravel.com/dharavi-tour.php

23 The economic figures were taken from Reality Tour Travels website
www.realitytoursandtravel.com. See Meschkank.J Investigations in to slum tourism in Mumbai:
poverty, tourism and the tension between different constructions of reality in GeoJournal Vol 76
No 1 (2011) pp 47-62

24 See Meschkank

25 (Ibid)

26 (Ibid)

27 Dyson. P Slum Tourism: Representing and Interpreting reality in Dharavi, Mumbai in

Tourism Geographies Vol 14 No 2 (May; 2012)pp 254-274

28 (Ibid)

29 (Ibid)

30 (Ibid)

31 (Ibid)

32 (Ibid)

33 (Ibid)

34 Taken from Durr& Jaffe Theorizing slum tourism: Performing, Negotiating and Transforming
Inequality in European Review Of Latin American and Caribbean Studies No 93 (Oct 2012) pp113123

35 See Dyson

36 Dovey& King Informal Urbanism and the Taste for slums in Tourism Geographies Vol 14 No 2
(May 2012) pp275-293

37 See Dyson

38 See Meschkank

39 Linke.U Mobile Imaginaries, Portable Signs: Global consumptions and representations of slum
life in Tourism Geographies Vol 14 No 2 (May; 2012) pp294-319

40 See Dovey& King

41 (Ibid)

42 (Ibid)

Bibliography
Steinbrink. M We did the slum: Urban Poverty Tourism in Historical Perspective
in Tourism Geographies . Vol 14 No 2 May 2012 pp213-234
Meschkank. J Investigations in to slum tourism in Mumbai: poverty, tourism and
the tension between different constructions of reality in GeoJournal Vol 76 No 1
(2011) pp 47-62
Dyson. P Slum Tourism: Representing and Interpreting reality in Dharavi,
Mumbai in Tourism Geographies Vol 14 No 2 (May; 2012)pp 254-274
Linke.U Mobile Imaginaries, Portable Signs: Global consumptions and
representations of slum life in Tourism Geographies Vol 14 No 2 (May; 2012)
pp294-319
Dovey& King Informal Urbanism and the Taste for slums in Tourism Geographies
Vol 14 No 2 (May 2012) pp275-293
ssDurr& Jaffe Theorizing slum tourism: Performing, Negotiating and Transforming
Inequality in European Review Of Latin American and Caribbean Studies No 93
(Oct 2012) pp113-123