Where do slums come from, ma?

As I’ve mentioned before, I work on the fundraising and marketing team of a nonprofit school, the Parikrma Humanity Foundation. Our four branches provide education to over 1500 children from 69 slum communities and 4 orphanages in Bangalore. Our office is located on the first floor of our Jayanagar School, which is merrily ambushed on a daily basis by blue-and-green uniformed children during recess. I love that my job environment includes the hustle and bustle of children learning, joking, playing, fighting, and radiating happiness. As Nandini, the Asteroid Class teacher once said, “It’s a whole different world once you step into the gate. You forget all your worries, they just fly away.” And she’s right. These kids never cease to amaze me with their energy, curiosity, and confidence.

A sweet smile

The Asteroid Class being rowdy

The self-proclaimed “C.K. Brown”

But scratch the surface and you begin to see a daily struggle. When I look up from these students’ smiles, I often catch in their eyes glimpses of the intense cravings for attention that they do not receive at home. I’ve seen students come in with raw wounds on their legs from dog bites. Others with burn scars on their face and across their arms. Many of them are underweight. Others struggle with attention and behavioral problems most likely stemming from their home environment. 

But Parikrma works because it’s modeled on the understanding that our students exist outside of our gates, and that this existence is often one of struggle. We provide our students with two meals a day (and an evening nutritional supplement), healthcare, and community development services. We understand that success for students from slum communities with many barriers to overcome requires a holistic approach, along with an attitude that does not discriminate against children whose circumstances are a result of structural poverty.

In May, before the beginning of the school year, I went with some teachers on a community visit to see the environment our students live in, which was just ten minutes away from where I stay. In front of almost every house, women were doing laundry on the street with water from a couple of communal taps. Half-opened doors revealed one-room houses featuring a bed and a TV. We passed by a row of tents made of blue tarp, which were supposed to be people’s permanent shelter. And although it was mid-afternoon, we met a student from our school that hadn’t yet eaten that day.

The teachers go on a community visit

A 10-minute walk from my house

And my reaction was, well, someone really needs to step it up (I edited out a lot of swearing in this sentence). I knew some of our students lived in even more difficult situations. How could people live happy, healthy existences in such a crowded, under-resourced environment? Then I wondered, how did these slum communities come to be? And how do they continue to exist? What kinds of environments are actually considered a slum? I felt that even as my eyes captured these images, my mind struggled to comprehend what I perceived.

What is a slum?

The UN-HABITAT defines a slum household as lacking any one of the following five elements:

• Access to water (safe, sufficient, and affordable)
• Sanitary conditions (including infrastructure such as waste disposal systems, sewers, etc.)
• Secure tenure (protection from eviction)
• Durable housing (safe, which can withstand natural elements)
• Sufficient living area (no more than 3 people sharing a room)

The Indian Census defines a slum as “residential areas where dwellings are unfit for human habitation by reasons of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangements and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of street, lack of ventilation, light, or sanitation facilities or any combination of these factors which are detrimental to the safety and health.”

To elaborate, slums are informal settlements which develop illegally on vacant land, and are thus constructed sans zoning regulations. Overcrowding is common, with many people sharing one room in which to cook, sleep, and carry out their daily activities. Due to lack of policing and municipal services, slums have higher incidences of violence and crime (with slum dwellers often being the victims) as well as risk of disease. And as I mentioned before, the quality of life in slums can greatly differ.

Today, its estimated that approximately one billion people in the world live in slums. In the developing world, one out of every three people in a city is a slum dweller. Okay. Pause for a second because I need to repeat that. Approximately one billion people in the world live in slums. That’s the kind of mind-blowing number that changes the way I comprehend the world. The UN-HABITAT projected in 2001 that if no concrete, organized action was taken, this number would reach 2 billion by 2030.

So where do slums come from, ma?

A significant reason for slum development is urbanization (including rural-urban migration). Slums are created when there is a significant amount of migration, with people coming to cities for better job opportunities and educational systems, coupled with insufficient governmental ability/willingness and infrastructure to accommodate such a large influx of people. The idea that urban centers have more job prospects developed with industrialization, and the first slum was actually the Five Points in New York City. 

Another reason has historically been colonialism and segregation. When colonialists expelled polluting industries (i.e. tanneries, etc.) and did not invest in any kind of infrastructure for these resettled businesses and the communities built around them, slums began to develop. A classic example is Dharavi in Mumbai, which is now one of India’s largest slums (and where the western world’s good-ole-favorite Slumdog Millionaire is set… although I’m not going to get into the controversy of how this film portrays India at the moment).

How slums thrive

The informal sector is a part of the economy that isn’t monitored or taxed by the government or some kind of regulatory agency. This sector often appears and grows as a result of opaque and disproportionate government regulations concerning business along with rigid labor laws and corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. Therefore, informal businesses begin to flourish in an environment where it’s difficult for a business to become registered or licensed. This “shadow economy,” with substandard working conditions and wages, frequently employs individuals from slums who may lack the skills and education to be competitive within the formal sector.

There can be both licit and illicit parts of the informal economy. Licit activities include street vending, domestic work, shoe polishing and repair, construction, and trash picking (although they may require bribing local officials and police), while illicit activities include substances trafficking, prostitution, gambling, etc. The informal sector continues to exist because it provides services that aren’t easily found in the formal sector, and the formal economy is actually rather dependent on its informal half.

What are some measures being taken in response to the issue of slums?

Governments have tried to remove and relocate slums on the grounds that slum dwellers do not have rights to the property, but bulldozing huts and/or resettling families in cheap one-room apartments far away from the workplace has done nothing to improve slum dwellers’ lives.

Yerwada Slum Upgrade

Another approach has been “slum upgrading” in which slum areas are provided with basic infrastructure such as safe drinking water, electricity, water drainage systems, etc. while simultaneously legalizing the status of inhabitants on the land. The hope has been that giving slums this kind of infrastructure and security of tenure will lead residents to take more care of their area and engage their community to be productive. However, most slum upgrading projects have produced mixed results. Petty political conflicts, government corruption (including dependence of voting blocks in slums), and street violence often interrupt and impede the upgrading process.

The Executive Director of the UN-HABITAT admits that even slum upgrading does not address the underlying issue of poverty, and that there should be more policies which directly address the livelihoods of slum dwellers. In the future, a more holistic approach needs to be made looking at macro-level trends and challenges.

Slums are of course a much more complex issue, and poverty in each country comes with its own specific elements that confound the matter further. In India, for example, Dalits (formerly called “untouchables”) constitute 90% of the poorest of the poor and comprise a significant portion of the slum population due to historic caste-based discrimination and social ostracism. I’ve noticed that many of our students’ files denote that they come from a Scheduled Caste or Tribe.

Slums and the poverty cycle

Slums risk the institutionalization of poverty where hard-working individuals with a great deal of potential simply do not have the resources to break out of a cycle of poverty. On the first ride to the Jayanagar School in my boss’ car, she said one reason that poverty continues to exist in this country is because people have become used to its existence. I know she doesn’t speak for everyone, but I do think it’s true that we stop questioning our surroundings as we grow older because it’s human nature to habituate, and a necessary survival tactic to be able to adapt to our environment.

However, it’s critical to pause once in a while and question the world around us. I remember being struck by the sincerity of my graduation speaker’s words in that its really, really hard to keep caring about difficult issues like poverty, substandard educational systems, environmental degradation, racism, lack of adequate healthcare, etc. that seem insurmountable. It takes “courage and endurance and unflinching vulnerability” to keep caring. But it’s individuals that question, that care, and keep on caring even when it gets hard that can create change.

I’m not trying to be the girl who goes abroad and guilt trips people about the quality of life around the world. I’m not saying you need to give up your personal passions to go out there and fix the planet. For me, I personally felt the need to understand our students’ circumstances because I’m passionate about my mission-based work in education.

I’ve always believed in the wisdom of Dr. Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” In the end, though, I do think we owe it to ourselves to be informed about our world, to explore, to inquire, and then perhaps, we’ll discover naturally what makes us come alive.

 …

References:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/Slums-increasing-in-Bangalore/articleshow/21962048.cms

http://www.citiesalliance.org/About-slum-upgrading

http://ww2.unhabitat.org/mdg/

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44579.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum

http://greaterpacificcapital.com/transforming-indias-slums-a-critical-step-in-creating-the-new-india/

www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-Documents/Slum-26-09-13.pdf

Understanding Indian Jewelry and Solah Shringar

There is a small child across the street who jingles. Which, I assure you, is not another one of her quirky qualities (I tried to start a friendly conversation with her once. She adamantly held her tongue. Literally, she held her tongue between her point finger and thumb and refused to speak). I can hear the tinkling of her anklets from my second-floor apartment when I leave the window open as she runs between the hair salon her mother runs and the mobile recharge store her father runs next door.

…

A couple of months ago, I went out to buy myself some jewelry at Commercial Street. I don’t know if the salesmen were trying to bamboozle what they saw as a somewhat naïve foreigner, but they refused to sell toe rings in anything but pairs. Apparently it was bad luck. So I ended up buying myself a pair of braided silver toe rings.

…

“Akka, akka” a young student points at my toes, “Akka, are you married?”

“No.”

Apparently, in the Hindu tradition, silver toe rings on both feet symbolize a married woman.

So, finding that it was stylistically acceptable to just rock one toe ring, I took to this instead. No more marriage questions, I’d hoped. And yet, at the supermarket,“Akka!” I hear a voice down at my feet. An old sari-clad woman restocking the shelves points at my foot and then looks up concernedly. She doesn’t quite understand why only one of my toes is ringed.

Damn it, you just can’t win. I assure her it’s not a problem, I try to communicate through imaginative gesticulations that I’m neither married nor widowed nor something else…

…

Anklets and toe rings, bangles, bindis, flowers ornamenting hair. A visual richness blossoms from the kaleidoscope of multi-colored accessories complementing the already cheerful hues of sari-clad women. It’s a sight I’ll be sure to miss when I leave India. Although I think the younger generation appreciates a more minimalistic style, one can easily find all these accessories adorning just one individual of the older generation without a modicum of gaudiness.

Examining the solah shringar, the sixteen adornments that make up the ‘beautification process’ that a Hindu bride should observe on her wedding day, includes the many types of jewelry worn thereafter on a regular basis, and also gives compelling explanations as to why they are worn. I love the layers of meaning I find here, even if they are often lost in modernity and distilled to simply, because it looks nice.

 So why 16 adornments? Because historically it was believed that the 16 phases of the moon directly affected a woman’s menstrual cycle, and  that any negative effects of these phases could be nullified by the solah shringar, which would be favorable for conception.

According to Hindu mythology, the solah shringar is a celebration of the beauty of the woman. Nowadays though, a woman may not wear all  of the 16 adornments, especially those who appreciate a more minimalistic approach to fashion as I mentioned before. Now, what exactly  these 16 adornments are change depending on what source you read. These were the ones I saw recurring across various sources.

Many of these adornments worn by women are thought to bring luck, ward off evil spirits, and maintain health (and it was oft mentioned  that if they broke or were lost, it was a bad omen for the husband/marriage).

1. Anklets and toe rings 

Toe rings are usually worn on the second toe of each foot and are a symbol of a married woman. They are usually worn in pairs to symbolize a woman’s status as a sister and wife; if her brother or husband dies, one set is removed. If her husband were to pass, then her brother would offer her protection. Toe rings been around since Ramayana times, where it was mentioned that Sita, when abducted by Ravana, left behind her toe ring(s) so that lord Rama could find her.

You’ll probably never find a gold toe ring because gold is considered a metal of the gods (especially Lakshmi) and its inappropriate to wear below the waist.

From a reflexology point of view, it is believed that putting pressure on the second toe helps regulate the menstrual cycle (connected to conception) and the rings are worn on both feet to balance the energies being conducted from the earth to the body through the rings.

The wedding payal (anklets) usually have bells so one can hear the bride coming.

 2. Wedding dress

The dress can be a sari, lehenga, salwar kameez, etc. and is often a bright color (red and maroon are seen as auspicious) embroidered with gold thread.

 

 

 

3. Hairstyle (Keshapasharachana)

Keshapasharachana is the way the hair is worn for the wedding. Kesh means hair, pash means flock, and rachna means arrangement. I’ve been wondering for a long time what the significance of the braid (or the plait as it’s called here) is, and it seems like it symbolizes various trinities: the rivers of Ganga (Ganges), Yamuna, and Saraswati; the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva; and another theory relating to marriage is the bride’s father’s house, her in-law’s house, and herself (who will unite these entities).

4. Flowers

The bride’s hair is adorned with flowers and accessories (usually the fragrant jasmine flower).

5. Mangtikka

Mangtikka is an accessory worn on the central parting of the hair on the forehead. The center of the forehead, often where “the mind’s eye” is depicted, is believed to house the ajna chakra which is home to intellect and intuition. This chakra also stands for preservation and is shown with two white petals and sometimes with the deity Ardhanarishvara, a hermaphrodite form of Shiva-Shakti, therefore symbolizing the union at many levels of man and woman.

 

6. Vermillion (Sindoor)

This is applied on the central parting of the hair, and it is sometimes mandated that a married woman wear it at all times. The groom puts sindoor on his wife’s hair parting for the first time during the wedding rituals (or perhaps his mother will, welcoming the bride to the family). It is believed to symbolize the energy of Parvati or Sati (the most devoted wife of Lord Shiva), which wards away bad spirits and safeguards her husband.

7. Bindi

The bindi replaces the mangtikka as an adornment worn on the forehead (remember: agna chakra) after the wedding. In the present day, it is worn by women of many religious dispositions and also as a purely decorative item. There are many different styles of bindi. My favorite style I’ve seen so far is worn by the Head of Academics at Parikrma where I work, and it looks like a small, black lightning bolt. Bindi comes from the Sanskrit word “bindu” meaning “point” or “drop.”

8. Kohl

Kohl is used to line the inner and outer rim of the bride’s eyelids, accentuating and highlighting her eyes. It was often homemade.

9. Nose ring

The practice of nose piercing and nose rings (nath) came about as part of cultural exchange when the Mughals spread their reach through India, as Muslim brides were mandated to wear them. It began appearing in Rajput paintings around the 15^th or 16^th century. In fact, ‘nath’ in Hindi includes the meanings of husband or master. In the past, single or widowed women could not wear the nath, but nowadays it’s a common sight on anyone here in India.

10. Earrings

Karn phool (earrings) is a Sanskrit word meaning flower of the ear. Earrings were often worn as visible indicators of a woman’s wealth, and the resulting elongated ear lobes from the heavy jewelry were also considered a sign of both wealth and beauty.

11. Necklaces and Mangal Sutra (“Holy Thread”) 

Necklaces worn at weddings are mostly gold, and sometimes embellished with precious stones and elaborate designs. There is a specific kind of necklace, often with gold and black beads, that the groom puts on the bride called the Mangal Sutra. During the ceremony, there are 3 knots that are tied into the necklace, sometimes by the groom or his sisters. The knots are meant to signify obedience to the husband, to her in-laws, and finally to God.However, the Mangal Sutra is not an integral part of the wedding ceremony across India, and there are also many regional variations in the design of the necklace and the knot-tying tradition.

Because necklaces are worn near the heart, they were thought to affect emotions. From ancient times, protective pendants and necklaces were worn to bring good luck and avert the evil eye.

12. Henna (Mehendi)

The bride’s hands and feet are decorated with intricate designs and patterns using mehendi paste. Once the mehendi is dried and washed off, it leaves behind an orange-red color, which symbolizes many things such as fertility, strength, and emotional and sexual connection between the bride and groom. One popular belief is that the darker the color of mehendi, the deeper the love between the would-be couple (aww).

13. Bangles and Armbands

Armbands are worn on the upper arm of the bride, and are usually made of gold with precious stones encrusted. The bangles, which hang by the wrists, are made either of gold, glass, metal, ivory, or lac in varying colors such as red, green, white, or gold depending on custom and tradition.

14. Thumb rings

Traditionally, many brides wore a dupatta (a cape/veil which would also cover her face) as part of her wedding attire. It would hinder her from seeing her partner, so the thumb ring was often embedded with small mirrors so she could catch a glimpse of her soon-to-be spouse.

15. Kamarband

Kamarband is an ornament tied around the waist. It is a beautiful belt, usually made of gold with precious gems, and aids in holding the sari in place (it also does a marvelous job in accentuating the waist of the bride 😉 ).

 16. Fragrance

Ittar is an all-natural perfume oil made from botanical sources, which keeps the bridge smelling fragrant throughout the long ceremony. Ittar is highly concentrated, devoid of alcohol and chemicals, and have been used in the East for thousands of years.