The Economic institution of the dabbawalas is indicative of the tensions between tradition and the pressures of 21st century neoliberal capitalism. Again highlighting the conflict between fetishizing poverty and applauding creative economic efforts on the part of slum residents, the dabbawalas represent a highly sophisticated response to the alienation of urban life. At the same time, they exist in the framework of traditional family values (domestic work being entirely carried out by women) and are a potential hindrance to further social advancements. While home-cooked food delivered daily on an urban level is a fascinating response to the ravages of the fast food industry, the processes behind that production of food remain basically unaltered. That is not to say that the work of the dabbawalas is to blame for the social relations in Mumbai but is indicative of the fact that it is dangerous to celebrate creative solutions originating from the slums without calling into question their forced existence in the first place.
Mehrotra’s piece also recognizes the ingenuity of informal urbanism that is situated in static built/social systems. The Kinetic City is conceived of as an informal urbanism that exists within the static or “real” city of Mumbai and is comprised of informal markets, the flow of people and temporary urban installations surrounding new religious festivals (Burdett and Sudjic 110). The sheer scale of residents living and working in an informal sense constitutes a living architecture. The density of residents competes for dominance with static vestiges of colonial architecture. The real revolutionary quality of the Kinetic City is that the scale and transformability of the population can work to erase a cultural legacy of imperialism through its very existence. Returning to the example of the dabbawala, a thoroughly urban profession also regenerates more autonomous cultural feelings. Dabbawalas are typically from the same rural region of India and continue to identify as such, marking Mumbai urbanism with a reignited sense of Indian rural culture (Percot 9).
Conversely, improvised solutions to “problems” have negative consequences. In Dharavi, one of Mumbai’s main informal settlements, ethnic/religious conflicts in the early 90s were “solved” by literal barriers between communities, eliminating the impression that informal settlements were benign melting pots (Sharma 33). Informal settlements do not exist outside of larger societal constructions and while there is a certain freedom of movement and a subsequent freedom of identity, informal settlements will not be the site of spontaneous revolutionary change. One of the important qualities to draw from in the conception of the Kinetic City is the setup’s dynamism and potential for bringing about radical change. If informal communities can generate new markets and new architecture, they can also potentially alter the political landscape. Although on a cultural level rural tradition is entering the urban structures of Mumbai, the process of transformation is dialectical and the inhabitants of informal settlements are also exposed to a previously unheard of amount of people, ideas and lifestyles. Change is never automatic but it is always possible.
Bibliography
Burdett, Richard, and Deyan Sudjic. “The Static and the Kinetic.” Living in the Endless City: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. London: Phaidon, 2011.
Percot, Marie. “Dabbawalas, Tiffin Carriers of Mumbai: Answering a Need for Specific Catering.”
Sharma, Kalpana. Rediscovering Dharavi.