Indian
Express: Mumbai: Wednesday, January 16, 2019.
As
a nine-year-old in 2014, when Samreen Shah told her parents of her willingness
to join an NGO in mapping safe and unsafe spaces for children in Mankhurd’s
Lallubhai Compound, they were more than skeptical. The place, home to scores of
impoverished housing quarters, was simply not deemed safe enough for girls to
venture out alone.
Today,
the teenager forms the core of a group of youngsters trained by Mumbai-based
civil society organisation YUVA to ensure children growing up in the city’s
impoverished quarters do so with dignity.
Tuesday
ended YUVA’s five-year engagement in Lallubhai Compound, a Rehabilitation and
Resettlement (R&R) colony consisting 70 towers to house families displaced
from across Mumbai to make way for urban transport projects. “R&R colonies
will keep increasing in Mumbai in the next 20 years and children will be affected
the most. While planning these colonies, it is important to ask children what
their needs are,” said Pooja Yadav, YUVA’s Mumbai convener, speaking at a
ceremony to felicitate individuals key to the project.
Children
like Samreen who was born in Lallubhai Compound and her friends Sagar Reddy
(18) and Omkar Thorat (18), who moved there with their families as toddlers
were simply not part of any such consultation process. Growing up, that left
them with unusable playgrounds, narrow unlit lanes, and schools that could only
be accessed by crossing the railway tracks. The housing colony is located in
the BMC’s M-East ward, which reports some of Mumbai’s worst Human Development
Index indicators.
“Over
the last two years, we met our local MP Rahul Shewale with a plea to build a
foot overbridge. He told us that isn’t feasible but had written to the Central
Railway to build a skywalk connecting Lallubhai Compound to Mankhurd station so
that children don’t get killed while walking to school,” said Omkar.
Also
among the interventions of the children who operate under the Bal Adhikar
Sangharsh Sangathan (BASS) has been sending over 600 written suggestions to the
BMC to mark a space in the area for a playground in its Development Plan 2034.
“Part of one ground has been lost to a building project. We have filed RTI
applications which show that it has been illegally taken over. We have raised
the issue in meetings with our local corporator, Mayor and the CMO,” said
Samreen.
Among
the speakers at Tuesday’s ceremony were Nitin Bobade, senior inspector,
Mankhurd police station, who appealed to the BASS to petition political leaders
for a playground. “Lallubhai Compound needs a good playground so that children
can realise their dreams of becoming athletes,” he said.
Shimon
Patole, another BASS member, said the group meets the local police once a
month. “We never had the confidence to even set foot inside the police station
before. But as a result of our discussions, the police have increased
patrolling in places where girls are harassed and drugs are sold,” he said.
“During training, we were taught to be bindaas and not be afraid to speak to
any adult. It is our right to speak up for our rights,” added Ormkar.
Yadav
feels children in R&R colonies are a lot more aware of lack of
infrastructure than youngsters in better-off areas, resulting in terms like
RTI, Right to Education Act and DP, among others, slipping easily off their
tongues. “They have seen politicians come to their areas and promise water
connections and build toilets. More than other children, they know who their
local corporators, MLAs and MPs are but they do not know how to improve their
situation. We only help them become organised,” she said.
For
the children, the biggest difference was simply the fact that girls outnumbered
boys in attendance Tuesday. Addressing the crowd, Samreen said, “It is a big
thing for a girl from an R&R colony to be speaking on a stage today. I
cannot claim our area is 100 per cent safe after five years of work, but it is
now safe enough for a bunch of girls to go to a tapri to drink chai.”
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