The Better India: New Delhi: Thursday, July 13, 2017.
Eight years
ago, a resident of Savda Ghevra slum resettlement colony said, “I dream of a
time when I can open a tap and take a bath under it.” For the 40,000-odd people
of a colony who got just two buckets of water for each family once in two days,
this humble need was a distant dream.
The women of
the colony had to wait for hours in uncertainty for water tankers, many times
not being able to go to work worrying that they might miss the tankers.
Resettled 40km from Delhi to make way for the Common Wealth Games 2010, people
crowded and waited for the one bus that took them to the city for work. Like
this, if they continued to wait for each of these basic facilities to be
fulfilled, their time and lives would just pass.
Instead, the
women of Savda Ghevra have turned things around by being aware of their legal
rights, by filing RTIs, by asking for what they are legally entitled to.
We often
forget that we are protected by our Constitution. Our Constitution gives us
rights that no one can take away from us. Marg, an NGO that works for legal
empowerment of marginalised communities, brought this awareness to the women of
Savda Ghevra. Marg organized workshops for the women of the colony to bring
awareness about their rights and how they can legally demand them. The
workshops came as an eye opener for the women. They did not know that they
could demand water, sanitation, transport and all other basic facilities that
they lacked. With guidance from Marg, over 100 women got together to form a
voluntary group, the Harshingar Active Women Cadre in 2011.
They
prioritised their issues and decided that water is the first problem that they
want to solve.
As a first
step, the women filed an RTI to find out how many water tankers were allotted
to their colony. The RTI response revealed that Savda Ghevra was allotted 88
tankers per day, while in reality, only 22 arrived and that too not daily. With
this information at hand, they filed another RTI to find where the missing
tankers were going. The authorities now had to act. Each tanker was fitted with
a GPS tracker so that they do not go ‘missing’. They women started to follow up
every tanker individually. Within six months the entire water tanker supply got
streamlined with fixed timings for the tanker arrivals.
“With this
success the women were convinced that their rights exist not just in law books,
but law is indeed powerful. The women are now not afraid to file a police
complaint or file a case in the court. They do not cry victim or blame the
government, but take the course of law to claim their rights”, says Noor Alam,
Programme Manager at Marg.
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The women
then solved one issue after the other transportation improved, more buses got
allotted to Savda Ghevra, sanitation and cleanliness improved, water pipelines
were laid, water ATMs have been installed all these through legal means. These
women have filed more than 200 RTIs till date!
Beyond these
visible changes in the living conditions of the people, there is more change
that is taking place within every woman who is a part of the Harshingar Active
Women Cadre. Urmila, a volunteer at the Harshingar Cadre, says, “Earlier we
used to walk with our ghunghat lowered in fear. But now, we even stopped an
angry mob from raping a girl. We are able to speak up, convince and stand up
for what is right. That is the kind of transformation that we have achieved in
our lives.”
Anju
Talukdar, Director of Marg, says, “These women are ordinary slum dwellers with
little education and who do manual labour. Their lives are not easy and they do
not get any monetary reward for their community work, but they come together as
active citizens with an aspiration to better their lives.”
Savda Ghevra
has many more problems to solve alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence
and more. But looking at it positively, we know that the women of Harshingar
Cadre are at work.
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