Go straight and make a left.
Keep going straight.
Straight.
"When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money." - Susan Heller, NYT
Our first stop was a CHI-supported residential school for girls, where we were greeted with smiles and curiosity.
Among CHI’s interventions, the appointment of school health monitors is particularly ingenious. Chosen by their peers, the monitors are tasked with identifying emergent health issues among fellow students. These school leaders sang us a song (occasion #935 on this trip that I wish I knew Hindi) and gave us roses to welcome us.
When the pomp and circumstance was done with, the girls got down to work and began their periodic check of the heights and weights of fellow students. They were take charge and methodical, taking their responsibility seriously but good naturedly. Seeing their determination made it all the more frustrating when we heard from our guide that college for these girls is an "impossible dream." As women who have been told all our lives that the sky is the limit, many of us were deeply disturbed by that thought. We had some interesting conversations around the idea of social change and asking "what's enough?" Is it enough to raise the baseline of a generation - get them healthy and a basic education - giving their children a better shot at attaining more? It seems more realistic but insufficient.
Next we were greeted by the clinic's nurse who was conducting a training for young mothers on exclusive breastfeeding. The girls formed a line and handed us flowers - so welcoming! After we entered the clinic, a nurse dressed in a gleaming white sari applied the kumkum in between our eyebrows. At first I felt a bit foolish about being received with such ceremony and kindness for just showing up - but reflecting on it a bit more, maybe (for now) it's enough to show up, ask questions and learn.
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.
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.