One Billion Eyes - Slums of Mumbai

One Billion Eyes (http://www.abillioneyes.in/festival06.htm), The Annual Indian Documentary Film Fest organized by Prakriti Foundation opened their festival in Chennai today (August 15). This year’s theme revolves around Cities and Lifestyle.

The curtains went up this year with the screening of Bombay: Our City directed by Anand Patwardhan. We have various reasons to proud of the city of Bombay, but this documentary show the not so proud moment of Mumbai. The story is on the slum dwellers of Mumbai, who get evicted by the local government as a part of the Mumbai beautification campaign. The slum dwellers of Mumbai make up half the city’s population today, but their bargaining power is nil. Construction workers, domestic helpers, cobblers, municipal workers and the entire ecosystem that supports the Ritchie rich of Mumbai live in these tenements without water, electricity, and proper sanitation. Though the documentary was shot in 1985 while the Slum dwellers in Bandra were evicted and it continues to be so relevant and an eyesore to Mumbai’s skyline after 22 years.

The seventy-five minute documentary sparked some serious debate on who is responsible for creating slums, managing and shutting them down? Should government allow such tenements in the first place though they are illegal encroachments? Should government provide alternative housing before eviction? One must not forget that these people were responsible for building Mumbai as construction workers, municipal cleaners and rag pickers tidying up the streets of Mumbai are now called the “Scum”. The parody is that these worms walk away with the title “slum dwellers”, “criminals”, “outcast”.

Most of the Chennaiites in the room realized that the problem was ubiquitous in all metros and not just Mumbai. Having realized the imminent problem, Chennaiites fell into the same trap caught in the blame game pointing fingers at the government, slum dwellers and the policy makers and were bitterly arguing who should take the moral responsibility of fixing the slums all over India.

I would like to share a few questions and thoughts that went through my mind in logically answering the question of responsibility.

Where do slum dwellers come from? Why are slums created?
Agriculture in India has taken a major set back with no support from the Government and with very less subsidies adding to the failing monsoon. The farmers are forced to move to the cities in search of jobs for survival and not for glitter or glamour. Every city when created needs labor and people. With little or no education they city doesn’t offer them blue color jobs nor a red carpet welcome. Many of them end up in the city cleaning gutters, washing cars, being a domestic help, construction workers, beggars, street hawkers, and cobblers etc.

We have all been doing that for ages be it across the country or overseas and there is nothing wrong in the movement for survival. For educated ones America throws a red carpet but for the illiterate ones slums are as good as it can get.

The capitalistic society attracts the drones but fail to provide proper housing facilities with electricity, water and sanitation. Politicians remember these vote banks when it comes to elections but soon they forget that landscape in the city. With no facilities in the dwelling units like water, toilets, electricity cities are invaded for shelter, water, electricity, and public places as toilets.

Who lives in the Slum?
Predominantly they are people who’ve moved from nearby villages to the cities in search of jobs for survival. Not the cream de la cream but rather housemaids, newspaper boy, cobbler, sewage cleaner, watchman who service the city gods and goddesses inhabit in the cess pool.

What is the living condition in the slums?
Basic human needs are totally absent in the slum ecosystem. Did someone say they are concentration camps? Unhygienic living conditions without good drinking water, no proper housing, no ventilation, no protection against sweltering heat and torrential downpours, lack of toilets. It is a perfect breeding ground for all kinds of viral and bacterial diseases. None of the inhabitants of this place live average life expectancy of a city dweller due to their living conditions.

With pittens that we pay them as remuneration and sucking their blood and life these people are left with tough choices in life.
Food or medicine?
Shelter or electricity?
Water or milk?
Toilets or parks?
Clothing or personal hygiene?

Who should take responsibility?
Unfortunately three decades have gone by just asking the simple question Who? and Is it me? Well it should be the collective responsibility of the local governments, policy makers, corporates and individuals to do the clean up act and to make sure we have proper infrastructure for such people in the future.

A few more questions for the educated individuals enjoying their cushy jobs in government and other private sector.
1. When was the last time you gave a day off for the domestic maid?
She works 7 days a week until she falls fatally ill. She is a machine who gets to clean your house, do your dishes and wash your clothes when you sit home and watch television all day long on national holidays and other personal holidays.
2. Has your maid asked you for pension, medical benefits and life insurance?
We flash your medical insurance card and get treated in the private hospital when you fall sick. You get covered by insurance incase of work place accident. These people end up in careless government hospitals where life is a worthless commodity and for all that they do for us we just gives our sympathies.
3. Have your ever visited your maids house? Do you know her living conditions?
We just don’t care and don’t want to know. We know her as long as she comes into our house and we conveniently forget as soon as she leaves my house.

We all live with the split personality disorder. We suitably don the role of a capitalist, socialist, communist, materialist, philanthropist, and sadist. We have proved to be social animals. Most of the city beautification programs are funded by NRI who ran away from the country scared of the dirt and the clean-up and today are coming back with the dollar power to wipe away not the slums but the life in the slums.

Prakriti Foundation, non- NRI NGO as a part of their social responsibility on August 15, 2006 has opened the eyes and mind of Chennaiites through filming this documentary. More such films must be played on National television, screened in schools and colleges so that the next generation realizes the problem facing the nation and will take complete ownership and are socially and morally obligated to eradicated slums like Dharavi and so on in India. It is left to us make such films to be of irrelevance in the future. I don’t want to watch this with my son and grandson. Let us make this planet a better place if not the best for everyone.