Objectives:
The city of Mumbai is a rising financial metropolis, which would like to compete with other large financial cities of the world. A thorn in the flesh thereby is the slum Dharavi in the proximity of the financial district. With the project "Vision Mumbai" this slum should be transformed until 2013 into a "substantial" housing area. But many of the slum inhabitants would lose their base of life. And the opponents of the project criticize that the problems are only painted over, but not solved.
Didactical comment:
- In this worksheet the project "Vision Mumbai" is analysed by the students. In the first task, "filtering" of important information from a text is practiced. The students should find the relevant information. In the second task, the information should be visually arranged on a board drawing, in order to give an impression, how drastically the picture could change.
- Through the panel discussion, the students should be involved more deeply into the situation, by taking part in different roles. The students should change their perspective, speak for the given roles and state their arguments in the discussion. Ideally, an exchange of the different meanings and a possible solution develops. At the same time arguing can be practiced within the panel discussion.
Solution of Worksheet 'Mumbai'
1. Read the short introduction and discuss what "Vision Mumbai" means.
Vision Mumbai is a project to improve the image of the city of Mumbai and to redevelop the slum Dharavi.
2. Create together in class a (black)board drawing, showing the status-quo and the planned transformation from Dharavi.
Graphically there are no borders. The drawing should contain: the Slum huts; Multistoried buildings; Dumping grounds; Shopping centres etc.
3. In the panel discussion the different positions of the involved persons should be presented.
Here the individual positions of the slum inhabitants, the rich population of Mumbai, the government and the project opponents should be distributed in class and discussed critically.
