Carlin Carr's blog

There has likely been no greater generational divider than the advent of technology. Across the world, youth populations have access to technology — smarter, sharper, and more affordable — that was not available to previous generations. Youth in places like India, for example, can access a vast new world with mobile technology — and a vast new world can access them. The result is that more poverty-alleviation initiatives have focused on catering to youth with innovative uses of technology, particularly focused around education and training initiatives. Learn more.

Public space in Mumbai is a rarity. In fact, a recent report by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Environment Improvement Society found that just six percent of the city's land is reserved for open spaces. Within that meager amount, some 60 percent is neither developed nor accessible. The few green parks that do exist are unknown to most residents or have been encroached upon or abandoned by the city. As Neera Punj of CitiSpace said in a New York Times article on the lack of open space in Mumbai, "The biggest challenges to open spaces in the city are misuse, abuse, and neglect." Learn more.

In a distant northeastern corner of the city, Mumbai discards its waste — refuse, animals, and unwanted people. M-Ward is home to the city's dump yard, slaughterhouse, and some of the worst squalor in a city of dire extremes. There is one toilet for every 87 people, children attend school at the lowest levels in Mumbai, medical care is nearly non-existent, and 85 percent of its 800,000 residents live in slums. In short, "M-Ward is an extreme example of skewed development in the city." Learn more.

India's urban poor newborns have some of the lowest survival rates in the world. There are more than 52,000 babies born to urban poor families every week in India, and that number is expected to double by the end of this decade. Each year, nearly 1.2 million newborns in India die within their first four weeks. The shockingly high number amounts to a quarter of all neonatal deaths worldwide. These newborns face grave risks to survival given the complex circumstances into which they are born. Poor nutrition, inadequate housing, and unsafe water are among the myriad issues that reduce life expectancy and make healthcare solutions more than just medical interventions. Learn more.

Climate change is no longer lurking in some remote or hypothetical future. Cities across the developing world now face the realities of extreme weather caused by global warming, as flooding, heat waves, and severe storms wreak havoc on ill-prepared urban centers. Coastal cities like Mumbai are at such risk, scientists warn, that parts of the city could become completely uninhabitable due to flooding and rising seas. Mumbai was brought to a standstill in 2005, when in just 24 hours nearly three feet of rain fell on the city, leaving more than 1,000 dead — mostly in slum settlements — and 14,000 homes destroyed. Rising temperatures could make such nightmare scenes a more regular — and even more disastrous — occurrence. Learn more.

Stories of community life in Dharavi are often told through the shocking statistics — from life expectancy to labor hazards — that form the backbone of arguments to tear down Mumbai's "eyesore" and replace it with shining towers of pride. Redevelopment plans rarely try to fathom the social fabric woven among the house-of-cards shanties stacked tightly in this tiny space. Recently, though, more creative platforms have emerged to tell the stories of Mumbai's best-known slum. There, art provides a powerful means to educate the local community and a creative way to bring the private struggles of the poor to a very visible place. Read and discuss.

Mumbai is a city filled with complexity — economically, socially, religiously, and politically. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Dharavi, the city's largest informal settlement and one of the world's most famous. The one-kilometer-squared area houses 600,000 residents who come from all over the country, speaking dozens of different languages and practicing a variety of traditional customs from their home regions. While the diversity of the area is evident, most of the half-million residents have been united on one particular issue: the tenuous future of their community. Read and discuss.

Fourteen tangled lanes in Mumbai's Kamathipura area house the city's oldest, and Asia's largest, prostitution district. An estimated 100,000 female sex workers live in deplorable conditions, with little hope of escape. The back-room brothels expose many of the social ills of Mumbai's underbelly: human trafficking, prostitution, poverty, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Though each woman has her own story, nearly all share backgrounds of extreme poverty, coming from some of the most deprived areas of India and neighboring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal. Read and discuss.

High maternal and infant mortality rates continue to burden the developing world. Despite calls by international organizations for an increased focus on maternal health, more than 500,000 women in developing nations die during pregnancy or childbirth each year. But a new three-year initiative, Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), is showing mobile phones' potential to improve the state of women in India — giving expectant and new mothers access to vital, often life-saving information. Read and discuss.

In Mumbai, the ragpickers' daily collections most likely end up in the city's largest — though officially unrecognized — recycling center: Dharavi's 13th compound. In this small area of Mumbai's sprawling slum, 15,000 single-room factories recycle an estimated 80 percent of Mumbai's plastic waste. Could it be that these shanty room enterprises — whose supply chain is maintained by one of India's poorest and most marginalized groups — are actually leading the city's green movement? Read and discuss.