‘I don’t want to remember those years’

The reappearance of smog and congestion signal thriving business and normal life in Mumbai’s massive slum Dharavi

Prashant Nakwe

MUMBAI, Maharashtra: Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, is also the epicentre of Mumbai’s unorganised economy, driven by India’s migrant labour workforce. For decades, workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra have built lives here while building the city’s economy through the more than 5,000 informal units located here. In the process, they have impacted industries like leather, textiles, pottery, food and recycling, to name a few, becoming the city’s invisible support system.

But when COVID-19 brought the city to a halt in 2020, it was their world that collapsed first. What followed was a humanitarian crisis. In this photo essay, The Migration Story revisits the same spots five years later, capturing the trauma and the recovery, both of which form the two ends of the spectrum of the resilience that defines Dharavi.

APRIL 13, 2020:

Hundreds of workers—most of them migrants and rendered jobless due to the pandemic lockdown—queued up in the scorching heat for free food on MG Road, opposite Madina Masjid, off 90-ft Road, Dharavi, on April 12, 2020.

Dharavi is home to one of India's largest migrant workforces. People from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra’s own rural districts come here chasing dreams—or at least, daily wages. Most live hand-to-mouth, working in the countless leather units, pottery kilns, tailoring shops and recycling hubs that operate from tiny rooms packed like matchboxes.

The 2020 lockdown hit them hardest. With no savings, no work, and no way home, they stood in long queues under the sun, waiting for packets of rice and dal, crying as they accepted the food packets.

APRIL 7, 2025:

MG Road, known for wholesale ready-made cloth material—mainly denim fabrics—is always bustling with activity. The month of Ramzan had just ended when this image was shot at the same location, five years after the pandemic. The garments manufactured in the units located nearby are dispatched not just to Mumbai, but across India.

Nissar Shaikh was in his fifties when the pandemic hit his business hard. Busy dispatching an order, he was reluctant to be photographed or recorded.

“Bhai, raham karo. Ab woh COVID wali yaad nahi chahiye. Uparwale ki dua se abhi business thoda theek hai.” ("Brother, have mercy. I don’t want to remember those pandemic years. With God's grace, business is somewhat okay now.")

Shaikh had to shut down one of his two manufacturing units during the pandemic.

APRIL 12, 2020:

Civic health officials, wearing face shields as protection against COVID-19, arrived near Sai Hospital on 90-ft Road, opposite Kumbharwada, for a health check-up on April 28, 2020. The hospital was one of the only hopes for COVID-19-positive residents of Dharavi.

Civic authorities had just begun setting up COVID centres across Mumbai to contain the spread of the virus. Being one of the world’s most congested informal settlements, social distancing was not a luxury people could afford, and density was a friend of the coronavirus.

Migrant workers who once laboured in sweatshops or tanneries now stood in queues, not for wages, but for oxygen or hospital beds.

APRIL 7, 2025:

Things have changed drastically now, as the Dharavi Redevelopment Project is underway. The hospital, once the only hope for COVID-19 patients, has now resumed daily operations. The residents of Dharavi Islampura CHS, who once opposed the functioning of a hospital within the society premises, now have nothing to say

APRIL 22, 2020:

One of the most bustling streets in Mumbai that passes through the busy slum of Dharavi, this road is simply called the Dharavi Main Road, right outside the Mahim Railway Station. The usually choc-a-bloc road wore a deserted look during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown, with the police barricading the street to stop vehicular traffic and keeping a strict watch night and day.

This may also be the only instance in recent times when the three high-rises behind the skywalk were clearly visible, as a complete halt on construction work led to next to no smog in the air. Picture taken on April 30, 2020.

APRIL 7, 2025:

The Dharavi Main Road bustles with activity, with children coming home from school, heavy vehicular traffic, hawkers and pedestrians contributing to the chaos in the slum, which spreads across a 3 sq km area, housing around 7 lakh people. 

The three high-rises are hidden behind a film of smog again. Life is back to normal.

MAY 18, 2020: 

Residents of the Poonamwali chawl on the Dharavi Main Road had blocked the lane leading into their chawl on April 8, 2020. They were at the time waiting for civic health officials to visit the chawl for a door-to-door health check-up. The health check-up campaign had been stepped up by then Additional Municipal Commissioner Kiran Dighavkar, G North ward, which has the densely populated Dharavi in its jurisdiction.

For the hundreds of migrant families here, the lockdown meant a total freeze on income. With no rent waivers or formal work contracts, many feared eviction or hunger more than infection. Some community leaders took matters into their own hands to ensure access to health services.

APRIL 7, 2025:  

Hawkers and locals overflow as the lane is back to business as Asia’s largest slum, which still relies on community toilets, with an average of one toilet shared by 144 residents, according to 2006 civic data, is poised on the cusp of another monumental event—the Dharavi Redevelopment Project by billionaire Gautam Adani. Residents, however, are unwilling to say anything about the 429-acre project.

MAY 18, 2020:

With containment measures getting increasingly challenging to enforce, residents had put up a roadblock across a bylane of the Dharavi T Junction that leads into a chawl near the Muthu Thevar Society.Dharavi’s maze-like lanes, with multiple migrant families living in 10x10 rooms, made it nearly impossible to isolate the sick or vulnerable. But the community responded with resilience, thanks to local leadership, makeshift quarantine zones and relentless civic engagement to fight back.

Data released by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in May 2020 showed that Dharavi’s COVID death rate stood at 4.1%, which was higher than Mumbai (3.51%), Maharashtra (3.56%) and the national average (3.13%)

APRIL 7, 2025:

Residents of the same chawl now move freely. Anna Nadar, a resident of the predominantly South Indian locality, refuses to talk about the pandemic. His reasoning: “Aap ko abhi Covid ke baare mein jaanke kya milega? Humko woh din yaad nahi karneka, please go.” (“Why do you want to know about the pandemic now? We don’t want to recall those days, please leave.”)

MAY 7, 2020: 

An "I LOVE DHARAVI" sign was seen on Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Road, near Matunga Labour Camp, which is one of the main arteries of Dharavi. Usually choked with heavy traffic, it wore a deserted look during the COVID-19 lockdown on April 22, 2020.

The Labour Camp was under close watch by civic health officials at the time, after some of the residents tested positive during the door-to-door health check-up initiative.

Matunga Labour Camp has a long legacy of labour migration. It was originally built to house workers in railways, textile mills and dockyards—many of them from districts like Nashik, Nagar and Satara. These were not transient workers, but the first generation of Mumbai’s working class who laid the foundation of its informal economy.

APRIL 7, 2025:

Even today, the settlement houses government servants, including BMC employees. Five years later, daily activity and traffic on Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Road have returned to normal. No visible scars of the COVID-19 pandemic remain. The only new addition in this stretch is an encroachment by a local sweet mart.  Life is, truly, back to normal.

Prashant Nakwe is a Mumbai-based independent photo journalist. You can find him on Instagram.