Dharavi Koliwada has been described in many ways - fishing hamlet, urban village, and indigenous settlement, while all these are true, they evoke a land-based conception of place. Dharavi Koliwada has been mapped over the centuries to define its terrestrial boundaries. The waters are part of the commons, a collectively shared habitat, that doesn’t lend itself easily to mapping or division between individual owners. Over the last decades, the Koli’s have had to cede most of these watery commons. They are left with colonial-era maps to help claim the land that is rightfully theirs. Ironically, it is these maps that legitimise land ownership by an indigenous community that knows no other home.
Ownership implies a responsibility and accountability for that which is owned. While the Koli’s continue to feel responsible for and access this aqueous terrain, the logic of land ownership and environmental governance does not fully encourage an amphibious way of being. Will it eventually become inaccessible to the Koli’s, only to be further neglected or reduced to a riverfront?
It is historically evident that as much as landscapes are natural, they are also culturally produced. Indigenous communities across the world have co-evolved with their natural environments - worshipping them, tending to them and sustaining because of them. How Dharavi Koliwada adapts will present an interesting opportunity to learn how we could reclaim responsibility for our habitats.
Dharavi Koliwada like any other neighbourhood is always at the threshold of continuity and transformation. What continues and what transforms? The answers are spelt out in household conversations, local gatherings and daily actions. Often, the impacts of environmental degradation are far removed from the tactility of human and more than human interactions. But it is in these local and deep interactions that we may find plausible solutions to global problems - if we only care to listen.