TEXTILE PRODUCTION IN DHARAVI, JULY 2012

One man’s store sews denim belt loops onto jeans.  Five men sit in a room with sewing machines, the pants primed, flattened and ready to receive a belt-loop crown.  The owner lives in the room, works in the room, sews in the room.  And when the pants are looped and ready the bicycle driver arrives to pedal them to their next destination: the store where they will receive buttons.

One man’s store dyes leather.  A cowhide smell hangs alongside the pelts that are dyed to look teal, mustard, and petunia in color.  Next the leather might be fashioned into bags, pocketbooks, and belts but the shop-owner Tamma will never see the final product of his labors.  That said, Tamma will eat, sleep, and breathe leather; his home is his workshop is his life.

This hands-on production line model dominates Dharavi manufacture and makes it one of the world’s most efficient and integrated production chains.  Labor is hyper-specialized and workers have become artisans of the miniscule, excelling in the tiny arts of adding buttons onto collared shirts or sequins onto sari fabric. Hundreds of agents, contractors, and transport men link these independent laborers, thus eliminating the need for factory space or corporate affiliation.  Workers remain independent and minimize their land-use by fusing their home and workshop into one.  Space efficient, labor efficient, resource efficient—a most streamlined and specialized system of production.

CLOSE QUARTERS IN BYCULLA, JULY 2012

Sameena Hanif Khan has lived on Jhulla Maidan Road in Byculla since childhood.   Her home is made of a mixture of cement, brick, and tin sheets, a single room 3.5 square meters in area with a smaller loft accessible only by an outside ladder.  Her home recently obtained access to a legal electricity connection, but her water still comes from an illegal pipe that runs beneath her floor.  Sameena knows every centimeter of her home.  Her family has been living here for 57 years; she’s been here for 50 of them.  But she cannot recall with certainty the number of people who currently reside in her abode.

This seems to be a common phenomenon among families living on the pavements in Byculla.  Jaitun, who lives just down the street from Sameena, also has a slew of family members who call her 3.5 square meter room and loft home.  Jaitun tentatively says that eight people live with her, then goes on to list at least ten people who stay in her single room and loft on a regular basis.  She explains how two people sleep on a wooden table outside the house, three on a wire bed that pulls out from underneath the table, and three in the loft.  The rest sleep on the floor of Jaitun’s main room, but she does not give details about how many people that might be.

Sameena has slightly more exact figures.  She is married and has six children, many of whom have their own children.  Her four daughters, two sons, and three grandchildren all call her roofed space on the pavement home.  Her sons are both married, so she’s not even including her two daughters-in-law in the tally even though they also stay at her place.  Sameena has a husband and the two of them sleep outside beside a small inlet in her front wall that doubles as the family general shop during the day.  One son sleeps in the loft with his family, while the other son sleeps on the floor of the main room with his wife and children.  She doesn’t say how she squeezes in the daughters.

A home of any size is a luxury.  When considering viable designs and living scenarios for the urban poor, flexibility lies at the core of everyone’s needs. As families grow larger and available property becomes ever-more limited, there’s no telling how many people each home will need to accommodate.

At left, Sameena and her family stand outside of their home and family shop. At right, Jaitun and some of her family members pose outside her home on Jhulla Maidan

ECHOES OF MUMBAI STREET CHILDREN, JULY 2012

 This poem was written using excerpts of transcriptions from interviews with street children who stay in SPARC’s Mumbai shelters.  6 boys between the ages of 9 and 18 were interviewed by SPARC affiliates in March of 2012, and quotes from their stories are woven together in this poem.

Echoes of Mumbai Street Children
Grandmother would shout at me.
Father is a truck driver and never stays at home.
I had bad habits.
Drinking. Eating Gutka.
No food, no proper clothes to wear.
My parents used to beat and shout at me
I don’t want to go back to my native
My parents use to beat and shout at me.
Stepmother and father would always drink and beat
Beat me and beat my younger brother and my sister.
I ran.
I ran away.
I ran away from the house and came to Mumbai.
I used to roam in trains everyday,
stayed at Mumbai Central Station
for one night
one day
I met with an accident.
I was admitted in the hospital.
I used to roam.
A policeman took me to SPARC shelter
I get to have bath every day,
even soap;
clothes to wash,
to wear.
I also get bed and bed sheet.
Sleep .
I have stopped taking all the drugs .
I work in caterers company.
I would like to have my own business.
I am very happy.
Here we all stay together
like brothers.
Gopal uncle takes care of us
like brothers
we all play together.

Photo of children in SPARC’s Dadar night shelter, some of whom are quoted in the above poem.

LATA GODKE ON PUNE RELOCATION, JULY 2012

Lata Godke and her family had always lived on flood-prone land in Pune. “Every monsoon we had a tough time,” Lata recalls. “If you were asleep at night you would never know if the house was flooding or not.  Sometimes everything would get wet and we would realize too late.  So we stopped sleeping at night.  And then at times we had to leave our house, run out of the house and stay at nearby schools.” 

For years the government had intervened by temporarily shifting Lata and others in her community to other housing sites during the worst rains each year, but then Lata and her neighbors would return to swampy land and ruined settlements.  Back at home, Lata would need to spend money and time replacing her spoiled abode with new plastics, sheets, and materials.  And then the rain would come again.  Something needed to change.

In 2003, a group of women from Mahila Milan stepped in to orchestrate a permanent relocation of the people living in the flood plane by encouraging them to take advantage of government subsidies that were being offered for permanent houses on different land.  Lata remembers seeing the Mahila Milan women arriving and organizing the community to arrange for the upcoming relocation and construction.  The Mahila Milan women helped families submit proof of their residences and started community savings programs to help families financially prepare to acquire permanent homes.

Lata explained that when she saw the Mahila Milan women organizing the community for the relocation, she wanted to join the organization so that she could understand exactly how the government resettlement scheme worked and how it would affect her family.  Even though she is illiterate, Lata realized that she could participate in Mahila Milan’s documentation activities and savings programs. 

After her family was successfully relocated to a permanent house in a safer site in 2004, Lata joined Mahila Milan.  Now she uses her connections in the community to run the savings programs that enable relocated families to pay back the loans for their homes in small installments. 618 families have moved into permanent homes in the new housing site. Of these families, 56 families have completed payments for their homes while the rest have each repaid over half of the home’s total cost.

Nearly ten years later Lata’s new, permanent neighborhood is flourishing and community members are so proud that they relocated on their own terms. Children scamper around the paved streets in their school uniforms, and women from the community now harvest and sell corn at a local market while their husbands are at work. Every new home is made of pucca (cement) and includes a kitchen, bedroom, hallway, toilet, and shower room. “We are no longer worried about the elements,” Lata giggles.

 Because Lata and her neighbors had a positive experience utilizing government subsidies for relocation, Lata now tries to encourage others in undependable housing to take advantage of government relocation schemes.  “I think other people should take what the government is giving them –they can get a good house,” Lata remarks.  “If you are very very poor you think that it is not possible to construct [good] houses.  But when the government is helping us the money is not a very big amount.  We can pay it and we can build such houses.”

 Lata describes the power that Mahila Milan can have in motivating communities to take advantage of opportunities that will improve their living conditions.  “When we go to the settlements we go as members of Mahila Milan.  We are people like them –we are not from the government,” Lata remarks.  “Since I have experienced things, I can give them good advice.”