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A few weeks ago, our Sunday was spent painting clay pots that we purchased from the nearby Dharavi neighbourhood of Khumbarwada, which is only a five minute walk from the Dharavi Shelter and the Transit Camp.

From some of our small donations that we have received up to this date, we managed to buy some pots, paints, brushes and wire. The children from the Shelter organised themselves into groups and painted the clay pots producing some incredible patterns and designs. A local resident then came in to help us hang the pots in the entrance patio of our Shelter and at the same time we began painting the bricks on the entrance wall in the patio.

This activity was one of a series of activities we are want to carry out to transform the Shelter and develop it into an incredible and beautiful space for art, creativity, exchange and learning.

The following images have some more of our plans to convert the remaining space we have surrounding the existing structure. We have included approximate costs for each of these activities.

Your contributions are most welcome!

Our new friend, James Subudhi, came to visit our Shelter a few weeks back and spent the Sunday volunteering with us.  He spent a memorable day with the children and learnt a lot about richness of Dharavi. What James mentioned the most about his visit was about the happiness of the children and the strong sense of community that he saw in this place. He has written an extract which I have posted below which he calls Of Magnets and Development.

All of us—kids, mothers, teenagers, strangers, and volunteers—huddled in a circle looking down into the sewer drain just outside the door to the shelter. “Paul is going to kill us,” Dipti said. The gravity of tiredness pulled on my face as I looked through the metal grate into the stagnant sewer.  I thought about what might be in there to give the liquid a greenish, purple and black grey thin goo consistency: shit, paint, spit, pan, dirt, the piss of everyman in Mumbai, motor oil, rusted scrap metal, water, diphtheria, typhoid, polio, cholera, and more piss.  A Dharavi sewer drain was as far away from the chilled bottled of water and masala dosa I wanted than Christmas is from July.  The wheels in my head quickly turned toward a destructive and money driven solution… breaking the lock and just buying a new one. Simple.

Out of the corner of my left eye I saw a kid running towards us.  He perched, knees bent, butt hovering above the ground, his arms out stretched over the drain. One of shelter participants pulled and held the gate open, the boy on the ground dropped a magnet on a string in, and another guided it around the drain by pulling the string in different directions.  A minute later my jaw dropped.

“Those keys need to be washed. They are very dirty” a little girl said.

The moral of the story? The kid’s local solution was more efficient than mine. We didn’t have to break the lock. We didn’t have to spend money on a new lock. We didn’t have to wait in line at shop to purchase a new lock.  We didn’t have to feel Paul’s wrath. And I probably got my lunch quicker this way than through my solution.

Contrast this event with how development occurs and how land-use decisions are made in Mumbai. The government and market solution to the locked door with a lost key down the drain would have been to demolish the building for a use that would squeeze the most profit from the property, like finding the right size hand to squeeze all the water out of a sponge.  In the process they definitely would not have listened to anyone in Dharavi, especially youth.

Yet this event is exactly how decisions about development, land-use, and community problems can be made in Dharavi, with youth and residents generating and implementing solutions to problems and a vision for the future they see with some guidance and resources from ngos, government, labor, and business. 

Whatever it is that Dharavi needs or wants, and how those needs/want can be met,  what it’s future can and should be,  what it is, what its problems are, and how they can be solved, should decided by and led by its residents, yet within at least one limit. That limit is of allowing no one, not the government, ngos, businesses, land owners, a resident, or community to have a monopoly on the truth, morality, and what is right and wrong, because we can all be right and wrong.

 On the one hand ngos believe the community and its residents have knowledge that is superior to their own and that of the government, to create an argument that the community deserves a seat at the table when decisions are made or least have those making decisions listen to their voices. While community residents often know things about their neighborhoods better than someone who doesn’t live there, they can be wrong. I’ll mention now that some of the kids from the shelter wanted fish the keys out of the sewer with their hands. Yet it is hard for ngos and activists to accept the fallibility of the community’s knowledge when the government and businesses are so much more powerful than they are, through their monopoly of the truth, law, and implementation of the law. Yet without recognizing their fallibility and that government, business, and other stakeholders besides community residents can be right, the community will be unable to form alliances with stakeholders besides ngos to get the resources and policies they need and want to create the changes they want and expect.

On the other hand, government and business are so corrupt that they believe they and they alone hold the truth and morality in their minds and hands that they refuse to engage community residents in the land-use and development decisions that impact them. This believe is based on using cost benefit and analysis and the logic that what makes the most profit and costs the least within their standards is right.

Government, business, labor, and ngos often go as far as to think that they are so right that they are objective because they use mathematics to support their arguments. While mathematics is an objective tool (a squared plus b squared equals c squared wherever you are on Earth), its use as a tool in deciding what to measure, how, when, and why is subjective because they are based on the desires, wants, and beliefs of the people making decisions. The government could believe that drinking water with ecoli in it is healthy, and contract out the distribution of water to a company with the requirement that ecoli be in it. This would save money because the company would not have to treat the water for ecoli. And it might even be profitable if people assume the water is safe to drink. But it’s not in the interest of health.

What I believe Dharavi needs to create a healthy and sustainable future are methods of participatory development and land-use decisions that involve a variety of stakeholders, a commitment from NGOS to secure resources to implement the ideas that come out of those processes, and residents who are trained to organize and advocate for resources and policies to implement their shared vision and solutions to problems.   

James is raising money for our Shelter by playing a show on February 19^th  in New York. Do drop by if you are around. I am sure it will be a great show!

Participants at Work

Art has been a favoured tool in the hands of sensitive pedagogues. Our small initiative in Dharavi takes art seriously – for its own sake. We are sure that our little moves will ferret out tremendous talent from the rich locality in which it is situated. Many children coming to the Shelter also go to regular schools but love its special focus – which allows them to channelize the rich experience of living life in the city into new creative expressions. We want all kinds of artists to walk this street, visit the Shelter and inspire them to relate to artistic practices in passionate ways.

At the same time one part of us wants to extend this space into other terrains as well. After all, there are those who also value the learning dimension inbuilt into artistic expression. We have special sessions where the acts of drawing and expression specifically help reflect on the streets, homes, lives and communities of all those who belong there, by using creative landmarks and creating new uses of space. We would like to blur the boundaries between art and craft, science and maths and let the imagination translate into learning new skills – whether it be plumbing, water management, construction and roofing. Skills that are best learned in this special part of the city, which can sprout a building with so little resources within a week. We would like to take the Shelter into a space where elders and children converse across community, class, gender and ethnic divides and learn about the intricacies that made the locality of Dharavi so rich, so that the aspirations of the newer generation get energized in fresher ways.

We would love more visitors – from around the world – to come and interact and learn and inspire. We are pretty sure that much learning will take place in the Shelter, a learning that combines expression, knowledge, creativity and science about living in cities.

Pay us a visit soon!

Many interesting aspects about the reality of water distribution and shortage have been revealed from conversations I had with residents of different neighborhoods of Dharavi and Mumbai .  I had prepared ten questions for these interviews; however each time this was just the kick-off for lively discussions about different issues of water management. Here are some of the most interesting points.

The Durge family, from the municipal chawl in Koliwada:
The family of six gets water for 2 hours a day (4:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.). For all residents of the municipal chawl, the water is metered jointly, and the cost is included in their monthly rent. However, water pressure has been low, so the family’s 1.000l tank can not always be filled up entirely. This means that when the water will be capped for a day per week, family members will not be able to wash themselves or their clothes that day.

According to the Durges, the low water pressure is due to the many illegal connections that tap into the main pipeline which runs closeby to their house. They estimate that only 20-30% of the water connections in Dharavi are legal! One of the reasons for this is the price for a legal water connection: between Rs. 10.000 and 12.000, plus about Rs. 1.800 in bribes. Mr. Durge argues that corruption is the biggest problem associated with Mumbai’s water system, which is also the reason why illegal connections run by the water mafia that sells the water at overpriced rates to people that have no choice than to buy it, are not stopped by the government.

The Durge family is very interested in installing grey water re-use facilities in their house as part of a larger effort by the government for water conservation. Poor families, however, they think will need help to finance the equipment and installation of such devices.

Prince and Rita Koli from Koliwada:
Though having the privilege of a private water tap in their house, Prince and Rita reported about water fights happening in their courtyard between members of six different families that share one tap. A lot of water gets wasted in this process because it is spilled on the ground. Shouting happens on a daily basis now from 4:30 a.m., because the water pressure is so low that not everyone is able to fill their buckets, drums, and other vessels during the water hours. However, there is also a lot of solidarity since everyone in the neighborhood has to rely on illegal water connections. Day-long water cuts have already occured here recently. In this case, families connected to different networks (there is no obvious delineation between the networks) would share with their neighbors, though this can require to carry the water quite far sometimes.

The family of eight has an 800l tank, but due to their home being located on the 2nd floor, it only fills up half or one-third on average. A motor pump gets the water in the tank above the bathroom. The Kolis would require 1.000l daily to get by comfortably. Their water supply is metered and billed monthly by illegal water providers who steal the water from the municipal pipes.

Also, one member of the extended family runs a plumbing firm, which in Koliwada is a good business – only few understand the intricate network of hundreds of small pipes running through the alleys.

Bhau Korde, of Rajgir Sadan building, near Sion station:
Mr. Korde and his family live in a building about 10 years old, which has a legal, metered water connection. There are storage tanks on the roof, in the basement, and in each individual unit above the bathrooms. The monthly bill is split among all residents of the building.  He argues that there is a lack of incentive to save water generally in Mumbai, because of lack of metering. People connected to illegal networks often pay a fixed monthly fee, or not at all. For those connections that are metered, hardly any are metered individually, so the water use does not reflect in the water bill.

His call is to invest first and foremost in meters, and to have a flexible pricing system that would charge double the amount per liter for those who exceed the per capita availability of water in the city of Mubmai (currently around 90l per day).

Jaya Vimalraj Nadar and women from her community, from Sangam Galli:
This community is hit by the water scarcity harder than most others. The very small homes have limited space for water storage, and the number of existing taps per capita is below average. There has already been cases of several day water cuts in this poor neighborhood, and the women reported that the government has recommended to them to go back to the villages during dry season, because there is not enough water for everyone.

Actually, this is what they will have to do if water cuts longer than two to three days happen.  Threats for this to happen have already been expressed to the community by government officials, they say. This would mean people will not be able to go to work during that time, and Jayas daughters won’t be able to attend school or college.

Most of the families here are from Tamil Nadu, and they feel this is also an issue of discrimination against non-Marathans.
The women feel strongly that the government owes them better infrastructure, especially since candidates have repeatedly promised this before elections, literally buying people’s votes.

Water usage here is already very efficient; additional greywater re-use facilities would have to be very small and well-fitted into the limited space.

I have experienced an exceptional sense of community amongst the families here. The limited resources are being shared, and the women have organised themselves to form a group of spokespeople, who also take on other community leadership roles.I also had the opportunity to speak to several people living in larger, multifamily highrise buildings. Though I have found most Mumbaikars are extremely well informed about the water issues Mumbai is facing, among the members of this group I spoke with, some are less aware than others. Most flats have a 24h water supply, because the building complex would manage the storage, and would purchase additional water from tankers if required; however nobody knows where these tankers get the water from!

Individual water tank capacities are usually around 200l per person.A local architect friend told me about water issues in local building practice. Many of the newly constructed houses in Mumbai do not envision rainwater harvesting from their roofs or greywater re-use systems (for toilet flushing), though installation of such devices would be easy and relatively low-cost.  He argues that there is a lack of awareness of water scarcity for the city as a whole among those who have enough money.  A recent news article, however, suggests that the city is considering to make rainwater harvesting mandatory for all new developments, as is already the case in many big cities in India.

Many thanks to Larson Vaiti and Prince Koli for translating the interviews that were conducted in Marathi or Hindi into English.