By Vanya Mehta, TwoCircles.net,
Living in trash is not a condition kind to the human sensibility. In a slum in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, in Javar Nagar bordering the wealthy enclave of Kathju Colony, a community of 250 families suffers, but not in silence.
A variety of community activists who live in the slum took me around the parameters to give me a sense of the troubles faced. As I passed by, women in the homes stepped out to pitch in and join the conversation with a fierce will to have their voices heard.
Slum in front of the river that is polluted.
Most the women in the slum clean floors in people’s houses. The men do a variety of hard and soft labor jobs. The residents were clear about their support for the AAP over any other party. The candidate for Indore’s AAP ticket, Anil Trivedi, has made visits to the slum, while according to the residents, the BJP and Congress party workers have not.
“They do not come to meet us,” one resident said. “We are interested in the AAP because they are coming to our area and they are good people.”
In my visit at the slum, I ran into some AAP party workers who were visiting to distribute the AAP caps and booklets. “This bloody crony capitalism is eating the resources in the country,” Ritesh Jain, a young AAP party worker from Bangalore, said. Gesturing to the slum residents, Mr. Jain said that the residents of the village do not know what they want or how to better their situation.
He said that the AAP would be able to save the residents of the slum, which clearly mirrors the language of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, whose slogan is “desh ko bachao.”
“Had this Aam Aadmi movement not come up, these people would not survive for a long time. They will survive, but in a condition you cannot anticipate,” Mr. Jain said.
AAP campaigner with slum residents
The banks of the river that pass through the area were covered in trash. As is common among slum areas, there were no proper bathing or toilet facilities. The well from which the community receives water was slightly polluted and the residents complained that it only received water treatment once every five years.
While education, health, and a slew of other basic amenities are missing, the residents also mentioned that to get access to benefits for scheduled caste communities, they must present a Caste Identity Card as proof. However since they come from areas far outside Indore it is not easy to obtain proof for this card and sometimes this prevents access to proper benefits. Overall, their main gripes were the lack of assistance and development in their area, which is common among many slums across the country.
The AAP candidate, Mr. Trivedi, who filed his nomination on Thursday, is a native of Indore and filed several PILs to resist government programs that hurt the marginalized in Indore. According to Mr. Jain, Trivedi has worked for the slum residents of Catju colony before in his social activism in the area.
There we stood, as a group, on the line that divided the wealthy Kathju colony from the slum bordering it. A group of the residents of the slum stood together at the borderline, and I photographed them. Standing proud and tall, the residents do not feel pity for themselves. They only want to see that their space doesn’t get increasingly smaller, pushed out, to the point where they can no longer live there and will have to shift elsewhere.
Slum and the wealthy Kathju colony.
A group of women sitting in one area of the slum looked at me as I passed by. They said they don’t even have a proper place to use a restroom. “There is no privacy,” she said. This common problem in slums becomes even worse when women are in danger of sexual harassment and cannot bathe or use the restroom in private.
“Garibi Hatao!” they said to me. I don’t know if they were quoting Indira Gandhi, or just asking me to help them, but sadly, I am an outsider. The AAP’s promise to help these slum dwellers, their frequent visits to the area and conversations with the dwellers, provides a glimmer of hope in a city where the BJP has quite a stronghold.