Mahila Sangathna means women's organization.  I met up with the members of one yesterday while they were holding a rally to agitate for ration cards.  There were about 50 women, maybe more, and they marched through several main roads in the Dharavi area and arrived at the Dharavi ration card office.

Most of them were long term residents of Mumbai, but with family roots elsewhere, and others had moved to they city several years ago.  They had all applied for ration cards through the correct channels but to no avail.  After months of petitioning the office responsible for issuing them and getting nowhere, they were holding a public demonstration.  It was friendly and very peaceful... just a loudspeaker and several speeches about their commitment to this issue and the injustice of their situation.  Such rallies (murcha, in Hindi) happen frequently all over Mumbai as well as the rest of India, and from what I understand so far, they are a very usual form of protest.  Kind of like burning cars in France.  Though a few years ago, the Maharashtra high court made them illegal in South Mumbai-- where there is the most development-- so now they are confined to the suburbs. 

I interviewed several women.  Initially I was just talking to one person, and other women slowly joined the conversation, until I was listening to a group of five or six tag-teaming the same basic story.  They have been in Mumbai for a long time, but most of them had roots elsewhere.  They were from all over the place-- Madras, Karnataka, UP, Bihar, elsewhere in Maharashtra.  One woman there said she was born in Mumbai, although her parents still live in the south.  She had never been to their home.  So she was not technically a migrant-- Mumbai is the only home she has known-- but for the purposes of establishing residency and having access to government services, she has the same issues as her companions because her family originates from elsewhere.   The women need the city to give them ration cards so they can do simple things like enroll their kids in government schools, have access to water and electricity and get subsidized rates for certain goods. 

This group is organized through LEARN- the Labor, Education and Research Network.  The women meet on a regular schedule several times a month, and no one seems to mind if I show up at their meetings... so that's what I'll be doing on Friday and Sunday evenings!

One of the NGO leaders I talked to made the distinction between the right of free movement-- which the Indian constitution guarantees to everyone-- and the right of residency and services.  So as an Indian citizen, even if you are allowed to move freely within India, its kind of unclear whether you have a constitutional right to expect to be treated like the residents of your new location.  Something I have to look into.

 


While I was in Dharavi, I also met a really nice guy, named Pradeep, from an organization called NIRMAN.  The group focuses on the similar issues-- migrant rights, standards of living for slum-dwellers, and especially, labor rights.  Pradeep met me at the Dharavi police station, and we walked through tiny little allies, lined with food and merchandise stalls, entrances to apartment buildings, lots of goats and just a ton of people.  Incredibly, it really wasn't that dirty.  (I guess that judgement is totally relative... I just mean not that dirty in comparison to other places I've been in Mumbai so far :)

Anyway, he took about 45 mintues to tell me about his organization, and invited me to attend job training programs for (mainly migrant) construction workers and see the NGO at work.  I hope to do that next week.  I also met his colleague, Prem, who works specifically with Tamil migrants, providing them resources and community support for getting along in Mumbai.  I hope to get to know him and his work as well.

These guys have deep links with the Brihan Mumbai Corporation (the municipal government) and private companies, they run really extensive and effective programs, and impact the lives of thousands of people.  And their Dharavi headquarters are just a very modest couple of rooms with some chairs and a computer.  Talk about low overhead.

I haven't really seen the slum part of Dharavi yet, I don't think.  I went to places that seemed pretty well developed... Pradeep said that is due to the fact that developers have been razing slums and encroaching into this area for decades now.  He didn't think development was a bad thing... he likes the spread of infrastructure, services and commerce.  And his organization basically works to mitigate the negative effects, like dislocation and higher costs of living.