Watch: In Mumbai, this man offers a makeshift raft so that people can cross a filthy canal
Sanjay Waghela charges Rs 2 per journey.
Thanks to an enterprising man named Sanjay Waghela, some residents of Mumbai have been able to cross a filthy canal by raft to get to work for just Rs 2 each – both cheaper and quicker than a roundabout journey in an autorickshaw. Until he began ferrying people across, the only other way to cross was to actually wade through the dirty water.
Waghela started his enterprise at the age of 14, according to the BBC, putting together the raft from polystyrene scrap gathered from the beach.
“Before I made my raft, people had no choice but to walk through the gutter,” he told the BBC. But he is afraid the government might shut his service down, taking away his only means of livelihood.