City: Mumbai

This Child Rights Week, Citizen Matters brings to you voices from three young community leaders. This is the second story of the series. I am Shimon Patole, living in the rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) colony of Lallubhai Compound. Many areas of our community are unsafe from the point of view of children. This was also evident in the community mapping of safe and unsafe spaces done by the children themselves in 2018. Hence our children’s collective, the Bal Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan, which works at the community level, has been working to make our area safe over the last 5 years…

This Child Rights Week, Citizen Matters brings to you voices from three young community leaders. This is the first of the series. My name is Pravin. I am 16 years old and I live in Sai Shraddha area of Ambujwadi slum. I am a child leader of the children’s collective Bal Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan.  I personally feel that our current system (the government and the officials) are not doing enough for the children. There is a limited budget and initiatives to support children and provide them with basic resources and rights. Children are ignored by everybody. It is important that…

When the pandemic broke, everyone feared Dharavi - with its dense population - could be tough to safeguard against the virus. However, consistent efforts by authorities and locals ensured that the area recovered drastically. The number of new cases emerging has been steadily vacillating for as low as  just 4-6 cases per day since the beginning of November.   Of the 3606 cases of COVID-19 registered in the area, about 3237 people have recovered and only 58 are undergoing treatment currently, according to information provided by the Assistant Municipal Commissioner (G-North ward) Kiran  Dighavkar.  While this may be good news on…

Not too far from 57-year-old Shivaji Sutar’s current rented room in Lower Parel is the Ganesh Nagar D slum, where one of Mumbai’s first slum self-development projects was initiated over 20 years ago.  Shivaji is among the 390 residents who pooled in money to upgrade his own hut and the basti into a residential complex with three seven-floor buildings. All was going well. The first building was ready, a section of residents had moved in to flats in 2005, and the construction of the second building was proceeding. But in 2009-10, an alleged fraud wrapped the project in a terse…

A few weeks ago, we explained how India’s most populous city, Mumbai, has the highest density of leopards in the country.   Unsurprisingly, wildlife experts have called for an increase in the number of leopard rescue centers in Maharashtra. With the increase in the leopard population in the state and human habitations closing in on the green forest spaces, the conflict between humans and leopards are increasing. Leopard rescue centers are a stop gap arrangement to deal with such conflicts.   Rescuing big cats  A leopard rescue center houses leopards that are injured, rescued or caught for attacking humans or they are…

We are slaves of habit. We find comfort in predictability because that gives us a sense of assurance. A schedule that goes like clockwork is actually very comforting. That’s the beauty and the bane of it. Before mid-March 2020, my husband and I kept to a schedule that we'd been following for the last 18 years. And then, Covid arrived in all our lives! With lockdown and 100% work-from-home, the schedule was suddenly gone. Our lives got filled with a long unending list of chores, to be done along with our office work. Things that our maid and cook efficiently…

What do COVID-19 figures in October and November tell us about the city's preparedness to fight the virus. Since June, the Maharashtra government has allowed a gradual unlocking of services in Mumbai. Non-essential shops, salons, and spas were permitted to open towards the end of June; and by August, malls had re-opened. On October 5, the government allowed restaurants and food courts to open and the Railways were instructed to increase the capacity on local trains. Many experts forewarned that these unlocking measures, while essential for the economy, would lead to another spike of cases in the city. But a…

In 2019, researchers at the Azim Premji University (APU) proposed the creation of a National Urban Employment Guarantee Programme that addresses the problem of unemployment, underemployment and low wages in the informal urban workforce. The proposal called for providing 100 days per year of guaranteed work at Rs 500 a day as well as apprenticeships for youth with graduate or post-graduate degrees. Since 2006, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has attempted to provide 100 days of employment to adults in rural areas. But no such social security and public works programme exists in Indian cities and…

With the festival of Dasara (or Navratri) just over last week, households like ours have been carefully packing away our statues and dolls till next year. While the Bengalis in Mumbai are immersed in Durga Puja and the Gujaratis in Garba and Dandiya, the South Indians get busy with Bommai Kolu, a festive dolls display that is the focal point of the 10-day long festival. Kolu (or Golu) is a tradition that is passed on, from one generation to the next. No matter which city in the world they move to, the Kolu moves with them. Most of those who…

Every year, some buildings give up the fight against Mumbai’s harsh monsoon rains. Why aren't the collapsing buildings repaired to save people who live in them? One answer seems to be lack of funds.  On 16 July, Bhanushali building in Fort collapsed, killing ten people. It was awaiting repairs since June 2019, when it was granted permission to be repaired from its own funds.  The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority shift the residents out of the buildings, pull them down and erect new structures in their place. Some residents are wary of such a strategy…