How Dharavi coped with coronavirus

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2020

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Has one the biggest slums in India escaped the worst of Covid-19? Dharavi is one of the biggest slums in India, if not the whole of Asia. Ed Butler hears from Dharavi residents about life in the slums back in April, and now. Radhika Kapoor, a Delhi economist who's been focussed on the Government response to the crisis, says efforts to protect ordinary workers have been very limited. But the Government rejects that argument. Sanjeev Sanyal, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's chief economic advisor, says the Government has done all that it can to stem the tide of the disease.

Producer: Frey Lindsay

(A BMC health care worker collect swab sample of a resident at Dharavi. Photo by Satish Bate via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.
0:05.6	Today, India's biggest slum struggling with the legacy of the world's toughest lockdown.
0:11.6	The Arabis economy, which was known for its robust factories, has been bought to its knees.
0:18.4	Unless the government steps in and helps out, this is going to create
0:22.0	desperation in the slums, creating law and order situations. But the Prime Minister's chief economist
0:28.4	tells us that India's future still looks bright. We provided food in large quantities and did
0:35.1	inject some amount of cash there. We have gone well past now the worst of both the health and the economic crisis.
0:43.3	What are India's prospects? A view from the slums here on Business Daily from the BBC.
1:03.0	The sound of hundreds of people gathered in baking heat at a Mumbai bus station back in May.
1:14.6	These migrant workers are from Dharavi, not just India's but Asia's largest slum, some of the millions that it's thought who were this year forced out of the cities where they worked following the
1:19.1	lockdown. For this program, we've been hearing from D'Uravi residents about life in the slums
1:24.8	at that time and since.
1:29.4	There was no source of money.
1:31.5	We were surviving on our savings.
1:34.4	No one knew how long the problem would persist.
1:36.7	There was no chance of earning any money.
1:38.9	So we spent each and every penny with caution.
1:45.0	The only problem we faced was the rationing,
1:49.5	and vegetables and other things weren't available,
1:52.0	and they were very expensive.
1:53.8	These things were costing two to three times more,
1:57.1	and we didn't get any help from the government.
	...

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