Mumbai:
The teeming slums of Dharavi, Asia's largest, have spawned a thousand dreams - stories abound of slumdogs who have become millionaires through hard labour and enterprise, providing employment to lakhs.
But the global meltdown has not spared this hub of small scale businesses. In a trickle down impact thousands of small and tiny businesses like recycling units, leather factories, garment manufacturers are closing down.
For instance, one finds stocks piling up at the small shirt making unit of Royal Campus.
Orders for cheap shirts meant for retail markets in Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh find no buyers.
Six months ago, Waqar Khan's small unit used to make thousand shirts a day. But now it is down to only two hundred.
He says business in the over 10,000 garment manufacturing units in Asia's largest slum colony is down by 60 per cent.
",I employed 60 to 65 people. Only 18 remain. The rest have gone home. I cannot afford to keep them,", Wagar Khan says.
Upstairs in the workshop, his remaining labourers are glad for one more day of work.
Most are migrants from Uttar Pradesh and South India who came here for a better life. But now just want to survive.
Like 23-year-old garment labourer Mohamad Ali who has been working here for 5 years.
",These are bad times. We work 3 days, then for 3 days the unit is shut. No orders,", he says.
Industry in Dharavi chugs along but the pace has considerably slowed down. Those who moved up from poverty to middle class status through sheer hard work are afraid that the global meltdown will slide them back into poverty.