In the heart of the metropolitan city of Mumbai lies Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums. It is a sprawling cluster of shanties crisscrossed by narrow lanes, some accessible only by foot. Large families, mostly from elsewhere in India, are crammed into makeshift huts, all without basic amenities. They make a living in leather, weaving, masonry and pottery – all skills that have been handed down to them through generations. In June 2007 the Mumbai government announced a 90bn-rupee redevelopment project for Dharavi called the DRP. Kumbharwada Kanthilal is a potter who has lived and worked in the slum all his life. He explains why he is opposed to the project

In Dharavi, there is a community of about 1000 potters. Our ancestors, in the 1930s and 40s, migrated from Gujarat in western India to the city of Mumbai in search of better earnings. The potter community here is very traditional; our craft was inherited from our ancestors.

My wife lends me a hand with the work. So do my brother and sister; they polish the pottery once it's made. My parents, who are staying with me, are too old to work. Besides them, I have two school-age children. The whole family lives together in one house.

There is a real process to making pottery. First I take sand from the banks of the river, then immerse it in water pits for three days. Afterwards the ball of wet mud is placed on an electrically operated rotating wheel, where I roll it into the shape of a pot with my bare hands. Then I bake it until it turns hard in the heat.

When the pots are hardened, they are polished with terracotta or black colouring and left in the sun to dry. Once the end products are ready, the women carry them in large cane baskets, balancing them on their heads as they take them to sell at the market.

These days it's a hand-to-mouth existence for us, with our earnings dropping drastically. It's no longer a lucrative trade as the demand for pottery is diminishing. In the old days people used to store drinking water in clay pots because they kept the water cool, but today’s generation prefers to take its cold water from the refrigerator.

The Indian railways used to give us plenty of business, where our small clay cups were used to serve tea, but they have since been replaced by disposable plastic cups. Even the clay pots that people grow flowers in are being replaced by lighter plastic pots.

Demand for clay items has become seasonal; these days they are only used during festivals. Over Diwali, the festival of lights, people want to decorate their houses and the demand for clay lamps shoots up temporarily.

I earn about 10,000 rupees (US$250) per month, which goes up a little during festive seasons. I have a family of seven to support on these earnings, and I have to take care of my children’s school expenses.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to manage a large family on a potter’s income. An average potter family earns up to only $3000 a year. Over the past few years most of the youth from our community have opted for other trades; they are opening shops that sell provisions and novelty items. I have stuck with pottery because I don't know how to do any other work and don’t have the means to get into other trades.

However, I wouldn’t want my children to take up my trade. I don't believe there is a future in it. I’m sending them to school so that they can find jobs in offices. Anyway, with an education behind them they are likely to shun pottery as a livelihood.

Last year the government announced its plans to redevelop the Dharavi area. I am opposed to it. My residential space presently encompasses an area of 600 square feet, which houses my family and pottery business. Under the plan, the government would provide us with an area of only 225 sq ft. I don’t know how I would be able to keep my family and pottery trade in such a small space.

I have formed a group with some of my neighbours called Dharavi Bachao Samiti (save Dharavi); we are fighting for a better deal before we give our consent to the redevelopment.

The price of real estate in the area has skyrocketed and where we live in Dharavi has become a gold mine. I suspect that the politicians are in league with the builders and are hoping to pay us a pittance for our land and make a profit. But we refuse to accept the DRP in its present form and are sticking to our demands. We are ready to wait as long as it takes for the government to come out with a revised plan.

The people of my generation were all born and brought up here, and we have become accustomed to this life. My children are too small to complain at the moment, but I suppose that when they grow up and find their schoolmates living in nice apartments, they will feel inferior, and I don’t want them to feel that way. Hopefully the deadlock over the DRP will be over by then and my children will be living in a new environment.

Pottery is a dying art. Like I said before, young people are beginning to reject pottery in favour of better earnings in other trades. Most potters, like me, don’t want their children to follow in their footsteps; yet we don’t want to see the pottery trade come to an end. Ideally, we would like the government to work out some scheme of promoting pottery products so that the trade doesn’t die out.

Endless numbers of photographers and journalists have been coming to Dharavi to find out about us potters and listen to our problems. But despite the media attention, at the ground level nothing much has happened to improve our community.

Since the government announced its plans to redevelop the area, however, Dharavi has been increasingly in the news. I hope that something good comes out of it.

• Kumbharwada Kanthilal, whose name has been changed, was speaking to Rajen Nair.

                                                                                                                -  Rajen Nair

                                                                                                                                      (Published in Guardian Weekly)