At the margins

The organizations and people we've met with over the past three days here in Mumbai have all been so different: sex workers who have formed an organization to deliver health messages and empower other women in their profession, slum dwellers who are the force behind Mumbai's informal recycling industry, and indigenous Warli living in the rural Thane district. The thread that connects them all, however, is that they all live their lives at the margins of society. Sex work, though pervasive, is largely hidden and rarely discussed. The humming, small-scale recycling industry in Dharavi generates over a billion dollars a year, but is unregulated, allowing companies to both dump their waste and buy recycled materials under the table. In rural society, where the caste system is still going strong, the Warli and other scheduled tribes exist even outside that system with lower health, education and incomes than the rest of India. Below are some of my thoughts from Aastha and Dharavi - will post about the Warli tomorrow!

Aastha Paarivar

On Tuesday, we met with Kranti Mahila Sanstha, a community-based organization working under Aastha Paarivar (AP). Aaastha Paarivar is an umbrella organization run for and by sex workers that works "to address their common issues and needs such as health, human rights, crisis intervention, legal literacy, literacy and support their children." Since our class is entirely public health students except for me, we were asked to provide a brief training on menstruation, menopause and breast cancer. This was really new territory for me, since I'm usually providing training to a bunch of my colleagues on equally important topics like how to produce proposal documents or paint a wall beige. The conversation progressed and led to a demonstration on how to use a female condom. Here are some of the women in my group presenting with a fellow student, Angela, posing as a cervix as public health students do.

We had a brief discussion on each topic (I led a portion on breast cancer) and had some Q&A. We got some good questions like how can you tell you have something that's on the inside by checking your outside, or why it matters if their mother or sister has had breast cancer. Once we were done, our hosts wanted to present the training they provide to other women in the trade. Here are some pictures of one of the women making a presentation on how HIV/AIDS spreads. I was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of the materials, designed to explain the topic with pictures for women who aren't able to read. We could also sense the pride the women felt in being able to deliver such important information to others in their community.

I learned a lot that surprised me - like the fact that the women commute up to 90 minutes each way to work every day or that some had married their clients. Some said that they'd like to do something else, but that they wouldn't be able to support their families as they do now. One woman noted that her daughter had just finished her bachelor's degree and another was working at a bank. Many noted that their children were unaware of their profession.

After the presentations, we asked if they had any questions for us and naturally, they wanted to know why most of us weren't married. We assured them our mothers wanted to know why too.

Dharavi

In Dharavi, a sprawling city within a city, I kept on thinking about rural India. The poverty and lack of opportunity in rural communities drives migrants to Mumbai and other cities, sending urban populations skyrocketing. The result is slums like Govandi and Dharavi and the makeshift shelters that line the streets and alleyways.

Dharavi is an enormous slum - the 2nd largest in Asia and home to 1.5 million people- made famous by Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire. Accompanied by labor lawyer Vinod Shetty who runs the Dharavi Project, our group toured Dharavi's industrial section. Yes, you read that right. Industrial. The humming, small-scale recycling industry in Dharavi generates over a billion dollars a year. Passing through winding streets and alleys, I felt as though we were walking through an enormous open air factory. Each cramped room housed a different process - people sorting plastic, deconstructing shoes, and reassembling cardboard boxes:

The place is a living lesson in microeconomics. Many people start off in lower end jobs – perhaps resizing cardboard boxes or disassembling electronics. Some move up, eventually owning their own operations, employing others and perhaps even moving out of Dharavi. At first glance it seems like an ingenious, bottom-up model for income generation and business development. And in many ways it is. But the industry here, along with the housing, is unregulated. Without land tenure for residents, companies can dump their waste without fear of regulation or consequences. Many companies also buy recycled materials from Dharavi under the table. I was reminded of Hernando de Soto Polar's work on land tenure and the importance of titling. Without formal government recognition, it becomes easy to ignore or abuse people who are officially invisible.

This place and these people are the backbone of the city’s economy, creating value while ensuring that Mumbaikers aren’t totally overtaken by their own trash. Yet, its very existence is a menace to a Mumbai trying to position itself as a global modern city. The land Dharavi is built on is prime land and real estate developers are eager to put up more high rises. Government has begun to slowly chip away at Dharavi’s foundation. Citing the need to create a buffer between the slum and water pipes to Mumbai, around 500 residences built around the pipes were recently razed to the ground. Ironically, razing these hybrid factory-residences also caused massive spillage of a variety of chemicals – the fumes of which you can now smell from where the photo below was taken.

The government’s plan for relocating Dharavi residents has been met with resistance. One problem, noted by Mr. Shetty, was that the plan would place people in multi-rise apartment buildings (which struck me as really interesting since we’re moving away from the development of such “projects” in the US). Multi-story apartment buildings would disrupt and perhaps destroy the network of businesses people have created while interrupting operations. Thus far, the government’s plan has been unacceptable to the people it ostensibly seeks to help. At the same time, can the government continue to allow people to live in the conditions they do? As has become the norm on our travels here, there are no easy answers.