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Dharavi is a heart-shaped settlement in central Mumbai, India. Sandwiched between Mahim in the west and Sion in the east, is Dharavi — Asia's largest slum. Spread over an area of 1.75 km² along the Mahim river and home to over a million people, it is a bustling collection of contiguous settlements, each with its own identity.

Dharavi is located between Mumbai's two main suburban railway lines, the Western and Central Railways. These are the lifelines of Mumbai's transport system. To its west are Mahim and Bandra, and to the north lies the Mithi River, which empties into the Arabian Sea through the Mahim Creek. To its south and east are Sion and Matunga, Mahim.

Arterial Roads

• Mahim Sion Link Road
• 60 Ft Road
• Dharavi Main Road

Dharavi was not always a slum, and it is as old as Bombay. In the Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island (1909), Dharavi is mentioned as one of the six "great Koliwadas of Bombay" – one of the city's vast fishing communities. The original inhabitants of Dharavi were kolis, the fisherfolk, who lived at the edge of the creek that came in from the Arabian Sea. A dam at Sion, which was adjacent to Dharavi, also hastened the process of joining separate islands into one long, tapered mass. Thus began the transformation of the island city of Bombay. In the process, the creek dried up, and Dharavi's fishing town was deprived of its traditional sustenance, but the newly drained marshes provided space for new communities to move in. The migrants could be roughly divided into two broad categories. The first were people from Maharashtra, and in particular from the Konkan coast, as well from Gujarat. Potters from Saurashtra were allocated land in Dharavi to establish what is still today called Kumbharwada. The other settlers were direct migrants to the city, many of them trained in a trade or a craft. Muslim tanners from Tamil Nadu migrated to Dharavi and set up the leather tanning industry. Other artisans, like the embroidery workers from Uttar Pradhesh, started the ready-made garments trade. From Tamil Nadu, workers joined the flourishing business of making savouries and sweets like chakli, chiki and mysore pak.

On 19 Feburary 2007, Indian Bank, a public sector institution opened a branch and automated teller machine (ATM) in Dharavi, which after all lies right in the heart of India's financial capital.

1. Sharma, Kalpana; "Rediscovering Dharavi: Story From Asia's Largest Slum" (2000) —Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-100023-6
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/dharavi_slum/html/dharavi_slum_intro.stm
3. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=17&ll=19.041176,72.855856&spn=0.003955,0.010804&t=k