The Slum App Kids of Dharavi

These young girls from Mumbai’s biggest slum have created cellphone apps for day-to-day use

When the App Inventor was launched by Google in 2010, it was meant to give people direct control of their own cellphones. This app, by way of online tutorials, helps programming rookies create apps for the Android platform. Today, using the same application, a group of nine girls—all between 11 and 13 years of age—from Mumbai’s Dharavi slum have produced apps that solve practical problems and enable a safer environment for women.

The girls study in state-run schools and most of their parents work as domestic helps. Their apps serve many purposes. One, for example, alerts users, via SMS, when they can access municipality- supplied water (always scarce), saving one hours waiting in a queue. Another provides details of one’s surroundings and offers a ‘distress’ button in case of danger. The third has personal health and hygiene tips. The apps are currently functional but still at a rudimentary stage. Due to participate in a global competition called Technovation Challenge, the girls will get a sum of $20,000 to develop their apps further if they win.

Nawneet Ranjan, a documentary filmmaker who helped source the money needed to develop the apps, says, “When I approached the girls with the idea of creating apps, all of them were eager to do so. After collecting money to rent a small room and purchase a few laptops and set up an internet connection, all the children would turn up every day, for three months, to go through the tutorial.” Ranjan would translate the tutorials into Hindi for the children.

Says 13-year-old Roshni Sheikh, “Initially, we thought it would be difficult. But with the translations, not only did we realise it was not impossible, it was actually a lot of fun. (Smart) phones have become very cheap and almost everyone in Dharavi owns one… If our [apps] are a hit, we can even charge a small fee of those using them.”

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