Thanks to Mumbai’s land reform act, the very rich and very poor have become next-door neighbours

India’s tallest buildings, the missile-shaped Imperial Towers, rise up through the smoggy haze of the nation’s financial capital, Mumbai, like a shimmering vision of Oz. The most dramatic view of the towers comes from gazing at them down Falkland Road, a diagonal avenue that cuts through the heart of the island metropolis and dead ends right before the buildings. But the luxury high-rises’ promotional photographs never show this view because, to Mumbaikars, Falkland Road is synonymous with prostitution and is best known for the infamous cages that display the human merchandise. On Falkland Road, rates for services begin at $1; just up the street, in Imperial Towers, the penthouses go for $20 million. The economic vertigo is even more intense than the actual vertigo one gets staring down at Falkland Road from the penthouse balcony.

Presently, India has the lowest taxGDP ratio at 16.4 (meaning that amount worth only 16.4% of GDP is collected as tax revenue by the government), when the ratio is 17.7 for even the lower middle income countries (LMIC) and average 28% for G-20 countries.

Members of the NGOs including Medha Patkar, Subrat Das, Soumya Dutta, Sachin Jain, Roshanlal Agarwal addressed a press conference on Tuesday and gave out recommendations and suggestions on basis on regional consultations held across country, the NGOs have said that the stress should be on imposing heavier taxes on the wealthy and making more budgetary allocations for the marginalised sections of society.

For this, they have said that if inheritance tax was imposed on the wealthiest people in the country – the 55 billionaires worth Rs. 13,92,000 crore should be at the tax rate of 55% as in the USA, annual revenue of Rs. 16,863 crore could be generated.

Similarly, if all the 8,200 ultra-high income group individuals worth Rs. 47,25,999 crore were made to pay wealth tax even at 1% then Rs. 47,250 crore could be generated every year.

Also, if the 44% individuals in high income group – who presently don’t pay income tax – were made to pay it, then Rs. 87,282 crore could be generated – which is almost 1% of the GDP.

Source: Hindustan Times

This 70-year-old, three-storey structure is one of the oldest prostitution hubs in the city. Inside the tiny rooms, about 500 sex workers ply their trade.

It is here that German PhD student of Indian origin Maria Chaya, 36, has been coming nearly every day for the past three years, as she works on her doctorate thesis on sex workers in Mumbai, in an exchange programme between the University of Kassel in Germany and the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

“Having lived in an orphanage in Mangalore before I was adopted by my German parents, their background of poverty and marginalisation, their struggle for survival, reminds me of my own roots,” says Chaya. “So I decided to do my PhD on how these women juggle their drastically different lives at home and in the brothels.”

Over the past 10 years, Chaya has interviewed 30 women and 10 children. In March, she will return to Germany to submit her as-yet-untitled thesis by the end of the year.

The theme of Chaya’s sociology/psychology doctorate study was meant to be the dual lives that these women lead — spending half the week as doting mothers and wives in their middle-class homes and the other half calling out to customers in red-light areas.

Source: Hindustan Times

In an 82-page report, ‘Breaking the Silence: Child Sexual Abuse in India‘, Human Rights Watch said most of these victims face humiliation during medical tests and often have to deal with the police not believing their account.

It asked the government to improve protection for such victims as part of broader reform efforts.

The government efforts to tackle the problem, including new legislations, would fail unless protection mechanisms were properly implemented and the justice system reformed to ensure abuse is reported and fully prosecuted, the report said.

“Children who bravely complain of sexual abuse are often dismissed or ignored by the police, medical staff, and other authorities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The report said many children were effectively mistreated a second time by traumatic medical examinations and by police and other authorities who do not want to hear or believe their accounts. Child sexual abuse was disturbingly common in homes, schools, and residential care facilities, it said.

Source: Mumbai Mirror

Also read about Pooja Taparia and her NGO Arpan that spreads awareness to prevent child sexual abuse: Breaking Silences

Mumbai Smiles is an international non-profit organisation that works with underprivileged communities living in the slums of Mumbai.

The challenge is to rebuild a society, and Mumbai Smiles has constructed innovative and sustainable projects to tackle various development challenges — promoting livelihoods for income-generation and poverty alleviation, education projects to eradicate illiteracy, and health campaigns to improve community health, combat child malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.

Part of Mumbai Smiles’s work is about creating awareness, as developmental work will be more effective only if a larger audience is sensitised to the needs and circumstances of the underprivileged. Greater change will happen only if more people are made aware of what is happening around them.

Towards this effort, Mumbai Smiles organises visits to its projects, located in various slums in Mumbai, so outsiders can get an idea of its work and also understand issues of poverty and marginalisation.

These visits also promote cross-cultural understanding and dispel myths and prejudices on all sides. The visits are voluntary, mutually-beneficial and organised in agreement with the communities and respecting their wishes.

Most of us live in a bubble, unaware of the deprivation that a majority of our fellow citizens in Mumbai suffer through. So, we urge you to take that important step, burst that bubble and try to understand how that other half of the world lives.

For more information on organising a visit to Mumbai Smiles, mail mumbai@mumbaismiles.org.

You can also visit www.mumbaismiles.org or contact 022-29208644 or drop by the office at 4^th floor, Silver Arcade, Marol Maroshi Road, Andheri (E), Mumbai 400059.

Leaders meeting in Davos must take concrete action to reverse rising inequality – and finally put the poorest 99% first

As we enter another year of global uncertainty, government and business leaders are heading to the World Economic Forum in Davos as its own Global Risk report (pdf) identifies growing inequality for the second year as one of the biggest potential challenges the world is facing.

The Occupy protests that took place in cities from London to Lagos demonstrated the strength of public outrage at the increasing wealth and power of the richest 1%, compared with the dire straits in which the poorest 99% find themselves following a crisis not of their making.

To stem the rising tide of inequality, the world now needs bold solutions more than ever. Oxfam’s pre-Davos briefing, The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all, attempts to kickstart the debate.

The claim that the richest 1% have everything while the poorest 99% have next to nothing is not just hot air. In the US, the share of national income going to the wealthiest 1% has doubled since 1980 to 20%. For the top 0.01%, it has quadrupled to levels never seen before. A report published by Oxfam last year found that the UK is rapidly returning to Dickensian levels of inequality.

Rather than reversing the process, the financial crisis has accelerated it. While public spending is being cut, the luxury goods market has registered double-digit growth every year since the crisis hit.

Inequality of income and wealth are not good for anyone. The consolidation of wealth and capital in so few hands is economically inefficient because it depresses demand, a point made famous by Henry Ford. It is also socially divisive. If you are born poor in a very unequal society, you are much more likely to end your life in poverty. I recently heard a leading Washington economist talk passionately (and off the record) about the “lie” that is telling a poor Indian they too can become a Mumbai millionaire if they just “work hard”.

And extreme wealth and inequality pose a moral dilemma. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”

Read full article in The Guardian.

The New York Times describes Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, as a “cliché of Indian misery,” with approximately 1 million slum dwellers living on 8 percent of the land in the western city of Mumbai. Although Dharavi lacks sufficient infrastructure to provide sewerage, water, electricity, or housing for residents, this dense community in the heart of India’s financial capital has a thriving informal economy with an annual economic output of up to US$1 billion.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development observes that “slum dwellers may be at the bottom of the urban heap, but most are better off than their rural counterparts.” Urban centers, both in India and around the world, offer economic opportunities that rural areas do not. For this reason, some migrants voluntarily move to slums in hopes of learning new skills, setting up businesses, and sending their children to school.

One important way to mitigate hunger in Indian cities is by enabling the urban poor to grow their own food on local land. Urban farming is a growing trend within middle-class Indian communities, some of whom practice rooftop gardening and community farming. Although densely populated slums pose challenges for urban agriculture, non-developed land (i.e., dumping grounds) can sometimes be converted into open space for gardening. Such was the case with a former dump site in Mumbai’s Ambedkar Nagar slum, which is now a community garden.

Pockets of slum dwellers throughout India practice urban agriculture in an effort to increase community food security. In the city of Cuttack, slum dwellers rely on organic farming to grow the vegetables needed to meet their dietary requirements, and are even able to sell the surplus to local markets. Local fruit and vegetable production in and around urban Delhi allow poor communities to access cheap, healthy food, which would otherwise be too expensive.

Read the full article on Nourishing the Planet.

“My family condition was very poor,” Naik told India-West by telephone from Mumbai. “My BMC class was one teacher with 18 students and I could not understand English or maths.”

“My father did not allow me to attend outside classes because they were too expensive,” said Naik from the home she shares with her family, a small, one-room abode with a communal toilet shared by 250 people and water available only in the afternoon.

Naik started to craft women’s chains for a living, earning Rs. 9 a day. Her fellow laborers were young women, also high-school dropouts. “I thought in my mind what conditions I was facing, all the girls here were also facing.”

“Slum parents are not aware of education for their children, especially girl children,” said Naik, who is 24. “My friends and I dropped out and we had no guidance for what we would do next,” she said, adding that several of her friends started working as housemaids.

But Naik had a different vision: she started a small, informal school for six girls tutoring them to attain basic literacy. She initially encountered great difficulty from parents who failed to see the value of her classes.

A social worker fortuitously then suggested that Naik apply for Ashoka’s Youth Venture Changemaker Fellowship. Naik received the fellowship and created Sakhi for the Education of Girls, which now provides an education to 30 girls from her slum, ages 6 to 13. Once the girls successfully complete their Sakhi education, they are equipped with training to further continue their education or begin employment.

Naik is next hoping to expand the program to 100 girls in neighboring slums.

Read full story at India West.

To understand land use pattern in the city, NGO Yuva conducted a study titled ‘Ground Truthing’ in the P/North ward Malad (West), with a population of 9.58 lakh, to assess the results of the development plan (DP). Conducted in October, the study provides an understanding of land use reservation and implementation in the city in the past two decades.

With more than 60% of the city’s population living in slums, 10 million of them live under the threat of constant displacement. In Mumbai, more than 55% of the population lives on less than 6% land.

Rehabilitation has resulted in ghettoisation of the urban poor as most of it was done in one ward where the Human Development Index is the lowest. “On one hand, the BMC is mapping informal settlements in the survey and, on the other, the state is demolishing them,” said Aravind Unni, planner and architect, Yuva.

Only 5-7% of the actual DP has been implemented in the city’s 24 wards in over 20 years. In P/North ward, the execution of the public health scheme is only about 58.27%, out of which 90% is concentrated in Malvani.

On the other hand, 350 homes were demolished in Kharodi, Malvani, and an estimated 1,850 people were rendered homeless last week. “The state promised shelters for the homeless as per SC directives and has failed to deliver,” said Unni.

Source: DNA

The site became operational in March. Initially, it would receive 500 metric tonnes of solid waste daily. But, now it receives 1,500-2,000 metric tonnes of waste on a daily basis . The unscientific waste disposal and lack of composting and leachate collection facility, also mentioned by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) in an inspection report in May, is polluting the adjacent coastal eco-system in Thane creek and causing inconvenience to the residents, the petition stated.

“The BMC has failed to dispose of waste scientifically and is destroying the wetland ecology in and around the landfill site. Claiming the bioreactor landfill system is being used at the site, they have not even installed a leachate system to avoid ground water pollution,” said Stalin D, projects director, Vanashakti.

Source: Hindustan Times