Abhishek Bharadwaj

Abhishek Bharadwaj

I would walk with all those who walk. I would not stand still to watch the procession passing by.

Abhishek Bharadwaj

Abhishek Bharadwaj

NGO lends homeless in city a helping hand

Publication:Times Of India Mumbai;
Date:Apr 14, 2005;
Section:Pg 03 - City;
Page Number:3

NGO lends homeless in city a helping hand

By Ashley D’Mello/TNN Mumbai:

A few years ago, there were around 38,000. Today, there are nearly one lakh homeless in the city. “The problem of the homeless is even greater than that of slum dwellers and pavement dwellers as people in both these groups have a place to live while for the homeless this is still a luxury,’’ said Abhishek Bharadwaj, a fellow of Action Aid, one of the NGOs which has taken up the cause of the homeless and is funding groups to work with the homeless in Mumbai and helping them live a life of dignity under a shelter with access to medial aid.

T we n t y - s eve n - year-old Ajay Kumar from Patna, who does odd jobs in the city and sleeps on the streets of Rathee Bunder at Mahim, is one of the people the NGO has helped. Earlier, he was often picked up by the police. On late Tuesday night, he was one of the people helping out with street plays that a troupe of activists led by Bharadwaj put up in different parts of the city to sensitise the public about homeless people. The plays are a part of a programme Mumbai For Change sponsored by Action Aid and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

“We are working at three levels,’’ said Bharadwaj. “One is to create a cohesive and active group of homeless people at locations where they live, two, create awareness among the public about the magnitude of the problem and three, try and get the state organisations to formulate policies in favour of the homeless.’’

“We hope to start a group here too, like the one we have at Mahim,’’ he said at a street play at the chowk outside Crawford Market, which is home to over 100 homeless people. “The homeless contribute to the city’s economy by taking up manual jobs like those of dishwashers and waiters in small restaurants, luggage carriers, roadside vendors, restaurant boys and odd job men.’’

However, most suffer from a feeling of worthlessness often driving them to depression. “Most of them suffer from problems of identity. They are often branded as criminals by the police and are treated harshly by society,’’ said Bhardwaj who has been working with the homeless for the past two years. “They also suffer from a number of health-related problems as they cannot access health care and safe drinking water,’’ he added. An activist with Action Aid talks to the homeless who have no choice but to sleep in the open at the carpark at Crawford Market in Mumbai

http://epaperarchive.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDA1LzA0LzE0I0FyMDAzMDI=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Visible at night and invisible during the day….

The writer hit the streets of the city to meet the people who either have flimsy tarpaulin sheets or only the sky for a roof over their heads
http://www.humanscape.org/Humanscape/2005/Oct/visible.php

Large-scale migration from rural areas to cities is not a new phenomenon in India. While many reasons can be attributed to this trend, cities symbolize the hope that one can obtain at least a morsel a day. In Mumbai today, one clearly witnesses two kinds of lateral movements: the movement of poor people from other geographical areas to the city in search of livelihood and the movement of people within the city from meagre income to penury. Without any support structure to fall back upon, these unskilled people begin living on open pavements, under over-bridges, road dividers, small unhygienic makeshift hutments and so on. The continued day-to-day struggle to meet basic needs gets aggravated day by day. For the rest of society, their courageous efforts are unacknowledged and they are instead ostracized and labeled as criminals. The urban poor in India fall into three distinct categories: the slum-dwellers, who live in juggi-jhopadis or bastis that spring up on vacant lots or stretches of land; pavement-dwellers who live in hutments built on the footpaths/pavements of the city-streets, the homeless-- people sleeping in the open without any shelter--on pavements, under over-bridges, temple stairs and so on.

Encounters with the homeless

In April 2003, as a second year student of TISS, I wanted to experience the much touted ‘nightlife’ of Mumbai and so I ventured out in the night. That is how I witnessed hundreds of homeless populations wandering in search of livelihood at various places in Mumbai. In the days to come, two of my friends joined me in my night-out mission and we teamed up with an organization named Action-Aid Mumbai. Clocking in hours of such interventions with face-to-face encounters with the people sleeping on the streets, night-outs and individual interactions taught me a lot about the issue of homelessness in Mumbai.

I met so many youth who eke out a life daily, without proper food for days, with lost hopes and shattered dreams…homeless beings who are victims of police atrocities, women taking refuge in sex work to meet their basic needs, old citizens languishing in the streets in search of security, children succumbing to juvenile delinquency, extreme misery and want.

The homeless get beaten up mercilessly by the police who mark them as criminals. They are denied access to basic facilities like medicine, education, water and so on. Even though the homeless constitute a large portion of Mumbai population, they are invisible for the general populace. Yet they are optimistic and I do believe that their reality can be changed. They can be empowered to change their lives so that they enjoy a life of dignity.

First step: Identifying the homeless

According to the census of India the homeless people are those who do not live in census houses (a census house is referred to a structure with roof.) The enumerators are instructed to take note of the possible places where the home-less population is likely to live, such as in the pavements, streets, in hume pipes under stair-cases or in the open in temples, mandaps, platforms and the like. (Census of India 1991)

The homeless population mainly consists of children and teenagers estranged from their families, young women and men lacking education and job history, and middle-aged men who have lost jobs due to recession, changing technologies and mergers. A small part of the population also consists of migrant families which belong to the same village.

See me if you can

Visible at night and missing during the day, they sleep on public land. Almost everyone keeps their valuables with him or her wherever they sleep because they are under constant threat of robbery. They use nearby public toilets if they have the money, otherwise it’s the open.

Not idlers, but workers!

The majority of the homeless are involved in casual labour or daily wage labour while some are even petty businessman, tailors, vendors and taxi drivers. A very small percentage constitutes the beggars of which few are part-time beggars, those who resort to begging during the phase of unemployment.

The violence of stigma

The stigma associated with homelessness often results in them being victimized and blamed by the general public for their circumstances in life, adding to their sense of being a burden on society. Ask any homeless person about their life and pat comes the reply:

When we approach anyone for a job, they demand proof of identity…police personnel beat us under the pretext of we being an unsocial element…when we get caught and are unable to produce any proof of identity, we land up in Chembur Beggars’ home. Wherever we go everyone looks down upon us as if we are some extraterritorial beings…we want to be treated as human beings…without identity card we are unable to live a dignified life

They feel particularly cheated by their experience at the hands of doctors at government hospitals:
We approach government hospitals, in the case of accidents…but the police catch us and we land up in jail. When we fall ill and go to the government hospital, the doctors and nurses refuse to touch or diagnose us because we are shabbily dressed and have no money to pay for our treatment. Doctors write the name of medicines on the piece of paper and ask us to get it from the market. But many a time we don’t have the money to buy the medicines.

During the rainy season, many people die without proper access to medical facilities. As dusk falls and night approaches, some of them took out some ganja and started filling up their chillum. One said:

You will go back to your cosy shelter after getting all this information from us but for us there is no concept of shelter… We are also human beings and need little peace and solitude… The roar of traffic, harsh streetlights, the dim future and contemptuous eyes of the society always besiege us… Ganja is the only thing on which we fall back upon for few moments of tranquility.

Most of them evince poor trust in social work organizations, perceiving any new intervention as beneficial to the interventionist. As a homeless youth in Mahim said:

We have seen lots of organizations and people coming and giving false promises but nothing has happened as yet…you will also do the same. We are ready to fight till the end for our rights but we need proper and sustained outside support for translating our effort into success.

There’s little hope for some, like a homeless man at Haji Ali: “Who would like to live a life of unknown and wretchedness? Simply because we cannot pay the rent of houses in Mumbai and we have no other option, every dream seems out of way for us. We just want to feel like any other human beings, like you, but alas our compulsion has pushed us in this state and we are compelled to be like this because of our homeless tag.”

Survival strategies on the streets

A common and often use mechanism is usage of abusive language. Drinking, doping, drug addiction is also common while their motivational level is probably kept high by gambling or playing cards during the periods of unemployment or redundancy.

Aren’t we all responsible?

While the city needs the labour of the homeless for its growth, it is not willing to take the responsibility of their basic survival need of shelter. The dark cover of anonymity which surrounds the homeless makes them most vulnerable among the urban poor and dehumanizes them by snatching away their basic rights. Even right to have a dignified life is a distant dream for them.

Sadly, this reductionist way of looking at things by the government machinery, wherein the problem of “migration” is treated as the problem of Mumbai alone and not of the entire country, has made the homeless people a liability, fit only for rejection and denunciation. The administration persists in using the ‘íron’ hand in dealing with them and maintains that they must be sent back. But the continued negation of the homeless community as human beings by the mainstream has created a wide gap between the so-called civilized society and the most marginalized section of the urban poor. It is only when we accept that they are an integral part of society and without them the economy of the city will suffer immensely can we seek a solution to their plight.

The writer works on the issue of homeless including runaway and abandoned children with a voluntary organisation in Mumbai

Alternative Realities

Alternative realities

On most days, they’re invisible to most of the city’s residents. But, every once in a while, Mahim’s homeless get a chance to speak out—and be seen
Anumeha Yadav
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=167573

Mumbai, January 29: On a friday evening, Gateway of India is bustling with its usual sights and sounds. Tourists strolling along the promenade, photographers trying to tempt them with ‘‘instant fotos’’, others there to watch the waves and breathe easy after a long working day. Suddenly, a group catches the eye without making a sound.

Walking together, holding hands, the 15 men and women slowly form a circle and seem to draw people in, it’s a kaleidoscope of tales.

‘‘Izzat, adhikaar, sangharsh, iske liye yeh manch hai (We’re here to talk about respect, rights, troubles),’’ they sing, in a chorus transforming the promenade into their proscenium.

For the next quarter of an hour, this motley group holds its audience in rapt attention as they narrate the truth of the homeless existence they lead at Reti Bunder, Mahim—a truth shared by thousands of similarly invisible people across the city.

Ajay Kumar (22) portrays a naive migrant forced to sleep on the footpath after being robbed of his money, Salim Abdul Khan (32) enacts the harsh treatment meted out by policemen, Shyam Agnihotri (36) tells a tale of discrimination in hospitals and Mohammed Asif (14), of the substance abuse that becomes the only escape for many.

There are no musical instruments, no placards, no banners. And yet, at the end of the performance, they get nods in agreement from bystanders like Dharmpal Singh (29).

‘‘Aisa hi hota hai (This is the way things are),’’ says the photographer, who spent 18 months on the streets after he first came to Mumbai.

‘‘We speak the truth, that is why we do not carry any placards or banners,’’ says Abhishek Bharadwaj, the social worker who started the interactive sessions while studying social work at the Tata Institute of Social Science two years ago and is now continuing with them in association with Action Aid.

‘‘That would be like having a special identity for a while, when society actually offers no identity to the homeless in the real world.’’

For the homeless people he works with, the sessions are an escape from their nightmares—and a peek into the ‘other’ world. ‘‘In logon ke saath pyaar milta hai (We get love from these people),’’ smiles Asif.