Nothing prepared me for the first day at Jahangirpuri in a community of rag pickers, of whose existence I had previously been oblivious. I was there observing a health mela, explaining the procedure slum dwellers needed to follow to get treatment from the attending eye doctors and physicians. I did not know that doctors were treated as demi-gods there; every slum dweller was in awe of them, and kept showering praises on them, hoping that, in some magical way, as a result some miracle would happen that would improve their health. There was no crowd management and the confusion was made worse with the announcement that along with the free checkups there would be free glasses available to those who came before lunch time. By the end of the mela patients were walking in and out of the different checkup rooms in disorderly patterns. The health mela was to end at 3’o clock but it stretched on till 5’o clock due to the never ending lines.
My next few visits to this resettlement colony of over a lakh were spent learning about the community. The concept of privacy was completely absent in the community - either for the parents or for their many offspring living in the 12 by 12 foot houses. Every block in Jahangirpuri predominately houses a different community. For example Bengali Muslims reside in C block, Bengali Muslims and Bangladeshis reside in CD park and G jhuggi, H block houses Gujaratis, A and B blocks belongs to Punjabis or government servants, and so on.
One of the blocks in Jahangirpuri
Conflicting Communities
Each community did not interact with the other communities. In fact the residents of H block had erected iron gates at every entry point of their block to avoid entry of outsiders. There had been reports of cases of girls being picked up by outsiders who disappeared. Chain snatching, robberies in broad day light and murders were becoming common. There was a genuine concern among the people to safeguard their daughters’ security and theirs as well. Many times, while forming self help groups for women, there would be a tussle to avoid being part of a group which did not contain enough of their community members. There is increasingly a trend to ‘do-things-ourselves’ concerning security. On a recent visit to Jahangirpuri, the residents of H block told me that their panchayat decided to hire several security guards at night to prevent any further robberies and kidnappings and paid him Rs. 4,000 a month. Not surprisingly they blame the ‘other communities’, particularly ‘Bangalis’ (Bangladeshis and Bengali Muslims) for the criminal activities prevalent in the locality.
Gated Community in Jahangirpuri
Just as the blocks were divided on the basis of communities, they were also divided on the basis of occupation. A and B block house relatively well off government servants or small time shop owners. Similarly C block, CD park, G block and G jhuggi contain rag picking families steeped in poverty. CD Park and G jhuggi are covered with illegal slum dwellings. The slums had grown there over more than a decade. CD Park, as the name would suggest, was meant to be a park to beautify the resettlement colony. Rag pickers residing in C block were legal occupants with an illegal occupation and therefore faced the wrath of the police who shut their shops if they did not get their ‘hafta’. G jhuggi consisted of houses made of tarpaulin sheets, cardboard and tin sheds. I wondered what the conditions of the houses would be like during rains. CD Park had ‘pakka’ houses constructed of bricks but they never painted them due to the fear of demolition by the MCD. The living conditions repulsed me. There was a continuous sewer leakage on the narrow lane between the houses. There is distinct smell unique to a rag picking community, that of heaps of garbage of biological and medical waste, with piles of paper, cardboards, metal, rubber which can be found everywhere.
