UP 504_Podcast_Social rights and public health.mp4

This podcast intends to question the misunderstood perceptions of the living conditions of slum residents and the urge for the State to step in and correct the poor living standards. I explore the topic through the lens of residents living in slum settlements and those who have been relocated to government-aided public housing. Mumbai is a city with a restricted land area and growing population that pushes vulnerable poor families to live in slums. I support the claim of how ‘illegal’ is a misplaced term for slum residents through the case study of Dharavi. Additionally, the label of illegality pushes them into unhygienic living conditions due to a lack of basic infrastructure services. The city government often leverages their poor living conditions to evict slum residents and resettle them to public housing without consensus-building.

To illustrate the poor conditions of living in the public housing of Mumbai, I talk about the case study of the Lallubhai compound, a know Slum Rehabilitation Association’s (SRA) development. The residents of this SRA development battle with the disease of tuberculosis due to the poor design, driven by the relaxed Development Control Regulation (DCR) of the city. The regulations were altered to house the high density of slum residents in a tight piece of land, compromising their health conditions.

Following the poor condition of the poor in slums and public housing, I explore the intersectional lens of its impact. Women and girls end up facing the brunt of the harm rising out of unhygienic environments, as they spend greater time indoors. Womenfolk are typically responsible for collecting water and ensuring other domestic uses, which decreases their time for income-generating work or even education (Rao, 2015). Similarly, in the second argument about public housing becoming hotspots for tuberculosis, women are more exposed to disease due to greater time spent indoor. Large sections of women are home-based workers, who spend day and night in these unventilated and dark indoor spaces (City Collab, 2021).

The podcast hopes to leave its audience thinking about the unfair living conditions of the poor and question the status quo. It highlights how the city’s poor find themselves in a system that neither gives them the agency nor the platform to advocate for their needs.

References:

Bertaud, A. (2011). Mumbai FAR/FSI conundrum. Retrieved from http://alain-bertaud.com/

Bhadauria, S. (2016, August 30). Realty prices surge in Dharavi. Knowledge Centre.

Government of India, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. (2019). Requirement of Housing units.

City Collab (2021). Optimize and expand living and working space through efficient layout, design, and incremental upgradation. WIEGO Policy briefs.

Mistry, N., Tolani, M., & Osrin, D. (2012). Drug-resistant tuberculosis in Mumbai, India: An agenda for operations research. NCBI.

Pardeshi, P., Jadhav, B., Singh, R., Kapoor, N., Bardhan, R., Jana, A., . . . Roy, N. (2020). Association between architectural parameters and burden of tuberculosis in three resettlement colonies of M-Ward East, Mumbai, India. Cities and Health.

Ranjith, P. (Director). (2018). Kaala: True stories from Dharavi [Motion Picture].

Rao, M. (2015, October 22). Why there might be more women suffering from tuberculosis in India than we think. Scroll.in.

Shantha, S. (2018, April 10). Mumbai's 'Designed for Death' Buildings are incubating TB. Science- The Wire.

Somvanshi, A. (2015, October 30). Slums and the story of India's housing crisis. Down To Earth.

UDRI Mumbai. (2019, May 13). Free Housing- Free TB. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_AAcsU18rg