The slum where I’m carrying out my research was destroyed by a fire a year and a half ago. The communal toilet went up in flames together with all the houses of the area. Since then, the houses have returned, but not the toilet. Now the whole community of approximately 450 families is dependent on a pay-per-use toilet block of seven toilet seats for men and two for women. Most males now defecate in the open. The women and those that prefer the inside toilet, have to queue at least twenty minutes and are rushed to finish off their activities within a couple of minutes. The toilet is supposed to be open from 5am to 12pm, but as there is often a shortage of water it closes earlier, around 7pm. The cost is of usage is not high, but it can sum up to a high amount if one suffers from diarrhoea. Those that prefer shitting outside are in clear sight of people going to work as the area is located near one of the main train stations in Mumbai. Mosquitoes and others insects plague them during their act of relief and if they go at night they risk of being robbed or molested.
The project I work with is led by four local NGOs and and an international funding partner; they are cooperating to improve the lives of children in the slum mentioned above and two other areas. The intervention areas cover topics such as health, education and ensuring the rights of those that live in the community. However, until now, it seems that not much progress has been achieved on the theme of sanitation. One day the the local representative of the (giant) international funding NGO paid a visit to project’s field office. We were discussing my study regarding water and sanitation in slum X and he told me the following: “If they would have wanted a toilet, they would have built one by now.” He explained that if the inhabitants had the money to rebuild a house, then they would have also had the money to rebuild a toilet if they wanted one. At the time, I just thought of his statement as another example of the middle-class mentality that views the slum population as a bunch of illegal immigrants that live on public land without permit and are constantly demanding hand-outs from the state without paying any taxes. However, recently I’ve come to see this man’s statement in a different light, although I’m sure he meant it in the way I explained above.
A housing activist and professor at one of Mumbai’s colleges of social work told me that three factors are of importance regarding slum areas and their access to basic services; age, physical setting and political awareness. The older the slum, the more services it usually has; slums built on sloping or marsh land are difficult to reach for service providers; and if the community is not organised than it will be unlikely that their demand for services is a strong one. It is exactly this last point that seems to be a big problem in the area I work in.
A couple of days ago I decide together with my boss and my co-researcher that we were to map the water and drainage network of the slum. Water is not an issue for the people as they are connected, albeit informally. My boss and co-researcher, both being activists, know that unless the connections are legal, the community have no rights to fight evictions and that the inhabitants are probably paying the middlemen too much for their water connections. Unfortunately when my co-researcher and me explained this plan map the area to our other colleagues we encountered fierce opposition.
The area is politically divided amongst two powerhouses, the water lines are three and at least two of them are controlled by the local ‘bosses’. The fear of my colleagues is that if we start gathering data on monthly water bills and connection costs we risk of upsetting the fragile political equilibrium in the area and also jeopardising the work carried out by all the other people active in the project. My colleagues on the field think it’s better just to work with the local politicians and try to convince them to provide services to the area.
Before I came to Mumbai, I had read about this. Politicians make promises before elections in exchange for votes and come election time they forget everything they had promised. Now, I’m a part of this process. We’ve had so far a visit from the local councillor and an almost visit from a national parliamentarian. Promises are made and we can only hope that they will be kept. All the contacts with the politicians have been organised by my colleagues and I together with ‘youth organisation’, composed of exclusively of young adult males. There is no overall community participation and no organised public outrage. In this process the community members become passive recipients of programs that may or may not materialise in the future.
This is nothing else than the ‘anti-politics machine’ (Ferguson, 1994) at work. The NGO refrains from touching upon politically sensitive issues, afraid that they might upset the status quo and thereby jeopardise their presence in the area. The inhabitants are afraid to publicly challenge their corrupt leaders for the sake of peace and at the same time they’re afraid of contesting the local politicians as they are probably their only defence against the ever present threat of eviction.
In the meanwhile people are still shitting outside due to a lack of toilets, their water taps are next to open drains and waterlogged areas, garbage is present everywhere and drainage water sometimes flows in people’s homes. Unfortunately this can only change if the people are willing to do something about it, not in the way that the man from the international NGO sees it, but by organising , mobilising and fighting for their basic human rights.
Reference:
Ferguson, J. (1994). The anti-politics machine: “Development,” depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
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