URBAN POOR

“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…

Five or more people cooped up for 24 hours in a room 10x10 sq ft. The children barely catch a sliver of the sky above their heads. The women deprived of any kind of interaction with their neighbours and friends, which had been the only respite from their usual grueling, monotonous domestic schedules. The men, caught in the confines of four walls 24x7, more dour and impatient than usual. As the spread of COVID-19 and the effort to curb it resulted in India enforcing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, this was the reality for thousands of families…

This is the first story in a multi-part series on the pandemic and its impact on people in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, YUVA, a non-profit organisation, attempts to understand the challenges they face in accessing relief and assesses the rights-based approach to benefits. Savitri Tai is a migrant worker living in the Vashi Naka rehabilitation and resettlement colony. “Our work has stopped, we have no food. The government should either provide us food or let us resume work,” she said. Her vulnerabilities are echoed by almost every informal sector worker, continuing to fight everyday battles not just with the coronavirus…

“No one likes to beg, people have started looking for other work; they will not continue to beg,” says a determined Tasvir, trying to mask the suffering and struggle of months and trying to find hope in the bleakest of situations. But does his community really have alternatives? Tasvir belongs to the ‘Pardhi’ tribe, members of which are scattered across Bhopal and its fringes. In an earlier article, we had described how the COVID-induced lockdown had brought them face to face with hunger and malnourishment, making them entirely dependent on the charity of civil society organisations. Deprived of their livelihoods and…