Girl coders in Indian slum fight back after fire destroyed their workshop

Team of teen coders. Photo credit: Nawneet Ranjan.

In January this year, a gas cylinder burst in a nondescript house in Mumbai’s Dharavi area – one of Asia’s largest slums – made famous by the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

The fire spread from one house to many more in the closely built tenements, gutting about fifty houses and destroying personal belongings.

The teenage girls have built apps aimed at solving a number of social problems.

Those familiar with the narrow bylanes of Dharavi will also know that fire hazards are not a new phenomena in India’s slums. The residents are known to show resilience that would match a footsoldier in a combat zone, and one-off instances of destruction rarely make big news in the media any more.

The January fire, however, affected some unusual victims. Among those that lost all their food, furniture, utensils, documents, and even clothes, were a bunch of teenage girls who had learnt how to code thanks to a local filmmaker.

“The girls are now working on ideas to build apps that can notify the local fire station or other authorities in case such a hazard breaks out again,” said Nawneet Ranjan, a filmmaker who got the girls together, taught them how to use a computer, and eventually, how to code using an app builder.

Ansuja shows off an app she and her friends have built. Photo credit: Nawneet Ranjan.

The teenage girls – there are about a hundred of them – have already built apps that are aimed at solving a number of social problems. Some of them are in talks with corporations for help with launching apps that are in beta, Nawneet said.

The young coders are using an open source app building tool created by the MIT App Inventor.

The teens also participated in the international Technovation challenge in 2014 to get phones and laptops.

One of them is Ansuja Madival, a fifteen-year-old who said she worked three months on the Women Fight Back app with a bunch of her friends to launch the app.

The inspiration? The many stories of witnessing harassment narrated by her mother, who works as a domestic help.

Fighting back