URBAN POOR

School is where children learn, play and have their first encounter with the actual world. An informed teacher who encourages curiosity in children can do wonders for students with the proper guidance. A suggestion by a school teacher to attend a curated walk titled ‘ComplexCity’ for a school project led us to a resettlement colony in Mankhurd, Mumbai.  We got to know about the ComplexCity walk by YUVA for the first time through our school teacher, Ms. Deepti, at the Bombay International School. This was possible as she is in touch with various NGOs such as YUVA. The walk's theme, conducted…

In 2000, as many as 96 families who had been homeless and residing on footpaths in and around Chintadripet were provided with a new lease of life under the Permanent Shelter Scheme of the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO). But two decades on, the families residing in the Ritchie Street Home for Homeless Cooperative Housing Society find themselves in varying degrees of debt and uninhabitable living conditions.  What were the promises made to the families on resettlement? Where did the project fail? Debt owed by families in Ritchie Street housing The 96 resettled families were provided with one-room flats…

On the night following the March 13th fire that gutted more than 1,000 houses in the Appapada informal settlement in Malad East, a mini tempo arrived with a few items of clothing for the families. Fights broke out whenever a person tried to take as many clothes as possible, only to have them snatched away by another person in need. Weeks later, the situation has not changed much. The residents are trying to rebuild their homes with the little aid that is coming to their rescue. Sheela Ruke, a contractual sanitation worker with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), has been…

Tharun*, a 10-year-old boy, was living on the streets of north Chennai with his family. They made a living by collecting recyclable waste from the nearby dump yard in Kodungaiyur. The three-member family of a father, a mother, and a son, would wait until the shops in the area shut down for the day so that they could make their beds on the pavement outside the shops. On many days, the shopkeepers would water the pavement to prevent the homeless in Chennai from sleeping in front of their shops. Hardships in such a life were aplenty for the family. One…

Sakthi Vel N was on his way home from Kodambakkam on a busy night. He was stopped by the police personnel who asked him where he was from, to which he responded that he was from Vyasarpadi. Without any second thought, the police seized his bike. They asked him to go to the police station to collect his bike. "I had all my documents right there but that was apparently not enough. The fact that I am hailing from Vyasarpadi was enough for the police personnel to judge that there would be criminal cases against my name," said Sakthi Vel.…

In a narrow gully in Thane’s Vartak Nagar, a small home-based unit of a contractor is also the assembly point for the area’s women to gather and take raw materials to make keychains. The contractor weighs and counts the keychain parts before wrapping them in a plastic bag. He notes the quantity in his diary and a small notebook that each woman carries with her. “Kal ka kitna bana (How many did you make yesterday),” the contractor asks each woman, who deposits the previous day’s keychains with him as he again records the quantity they have submitted. The women take…

"I have heard that Adani has taken over redevelopment of Dharavi but we know very little about it. But if we are moved from here, our livelihoods will take a hit," says Vasudev Poonchakarmi, a sanitation worker in Dharavi. The 50-year-old has been living in Shahu Nagar within Dharavi since childhood. His parents grew up in the area, so did his grandparents. Like him, his children are sanitation workers there. The news of Adani Group, owned by Gautam Adani, Asia's richest man, winning the bid to redevelop Asia's largest slum spread over 240 hectares, has seeped into the everyday conversations…

Going over the stories I had worked on over the past year has been a bittersweet experience. While I was happy to be able to write on important issues, the pain of the people I encountered over the course of writing these stories is one I will carry with me for a long time to come. The thing about large cities like Chennai is how many people's struggles are invisibilised, and their lives relegated to the margins. Some of the stories that I penned endeavoured to spotlight the people who have fallen through the cracks in the system. Here is…

Durga has been setting up an all-night tea stall for the last seven to eight years. It was going good until COVID-19 disrupted everything in 2020 and 2021. On any usual night, she stands close to a 24x7 medical shop, piggybacking on its bright florescent light, with a large tea dispenser kept on a plastic stool, and tries to pull in new customers who are either passing by on foot or on their two-wheelers. Her husband, Sachin, helps her handle customers during the peak hours—12 am to 2 am. "Sir, chai, cigarette," she repeats in the hope of attracting customers.…

A decade ago, when Shantha, a housemaid applied for her Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration card, she was mired in paperwork. However, the process has now been digitised and made simpler, at least on paper. One should be able to get a BPL card by producing one's Aadhaar card and an income statement issued by the Tehsildar’s office as most of the applicants aren’t part of a regular payroll system. Applications, with relevant documents attached, can be made online only. Although online mode of application, increase in private service providers, and the introduction of government initiatives like Grama One and…