URBAN POOR

“If you walk two feet you will bump into a person here and we were all advised to maintain physical distance over the past year,” says Radha R of Perumbakkam, underlining the challenges and irony of the lives of those living here. But this, Chennai’s largest resettlement colony, with 21,000 homes and close to 18,000 families in residence, could yet be set for expansion. On January 2 2021, PM Modi laid the foundation for the Centre’s ambitious affordable housing scheme, the Light House Project, that is set to add a further 1152 houses to the already packed Perumbakkam resettlement colony. …

A quick mapping of urban reforms in India confirms that power largely still vests with the state and central governments. Despite the 74th Constitutional Amendment, no state has devolved all 18 functions mentioned in the twelfth schedule such as urban planning, forestry, or slum improvement to municipal corporations that run India’s large metropolises. Praja, a non profit, that advocates for policy changes in urban governance, released an Urban Governance Index which explores four themes to understand the extent of urban decentralisation in India. The themes are empowered city-elected representatives and legislative structure; empowered city administration; empowered citizens; and fiscal empowerment. The…

Nirmala Mary is the sole bread winner of her five-member family. Her husband is ill and her eldest son lost his job in the fallout of the COVID-19 economic crisis. A resident of S M Nagar slum near Chennai Central, she works at a government hospital and takes home Rs 11,000 per month. A majority of her income is spent on buying essential commodities and paying rent. In such a scenario, the skyrocketing prices of vegetables in the city has been the proverbial last straw. Not just Nirmala's, but low and middle income families across the city are struggling to balance…

“Don’t give us food packets, we can buy rice from the ration shop. Find a solution for the flood waters!” said the women gathered in a group in Semmanjeri. That area, 30 kilometres south of Chennai city, on the Old Mahabalipuram Road, in Kancheepuram district, was severely flooded on November 25, 2020. The submergence was neither new nor unusual for the residents of this low-lying locality. In 2015, when Chennai went under water in a historic and notoriously mismanaged flood, so did Semmanjeri. But in some neighbourhoods at least, the streets and storm water drains seemed to be somewhat better prepared…

Dr Syeda Ruksheda is the co-Chair of women’s mental health speciality section of Indian Psychiatric Society. An eminent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, she has specialised in young adults, women and families, in a career spanning 20 years. She also has two TEDx talks to her credit. In this video she talks to Malathi Rai, who wrote the concept, story, screen-play and lyrics of Smile Simi, a film on depression released on World Mental Health Day this year. Syeda and Malathi discuss the mental health pressures on women from marginalised sections of the society and how tough it is for such women…

“When my 12-year-old daughter queued up to collect food, I decided enough is enough,” says Khatoon Shabana. From March 2010 to 24 March 2020, Shabana cooked and served meals to Dharavi's cottage industry and mini-factory workers. But when the workers left for their villages during the lockdown, Shabana's bhishi or home mess service also shut down. On the day when Shabana’s daughter waited in line to receive food packets, Shabana resolved to find another way to earn money. “Someone suggested that I sell bananas,” Shabana recalls. The idea was appealing but her family was skeptical. “My husband said no one…

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…

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…

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” - Albert Einstein. Whenever I read this this quote, I always joke that our Indian education system, being evaluation based, makes sure that we forget most of what we learn! But the same quote takes on a new meaning in the present context when children have almost forgotten what they used to take for granted – to learn in a physical classroom with a teacher supervising and teaching them, in person. Schooling in times of COVID-19 It will soon be six months since schools shut and…

The woes faced by resettlement colonies in the grips of COVID-19 and the impact of the lockdown has been immense. Issues highlighted in the past -- such as shortfalls in adequate, livable housing for those evicted from their original settlements -- have only been heightened by COVID-19, as our earlier article illustrated. Yet another stark fact is that women, children and disabled individuals face added burdens as a result of the way such housing is designed.  The feminisation of poverty COVID-19 and the lockdown has placed an enormous burden on the women in resettlement colonies. Managing the household, ensuring cleanliness…