Henri Lefebvre once wrote,“The crisis of the community,
its dislocation, the distress of most of its members, went hand in hand with technological progress and social differentiation.”
Mumbai's Slum rehabilitation authority literally translates as
झोपडपट्टी पुनर्वसन प्राधिकरण (एसआरए) even after relocation they have the name SLUM attached to their address and thus to their identities
Urban critic & international lecturer, Brandes Gratz said
"Disconnected from their critical social, familial & economics networks, their lives & work deteriorate."
Resettlement has major consequences on mental health
because of the psychological distress associated with the loss of familiar surroundings, social support networks – break up of families, loss of familiar neighbourhoods, friends, relatives etc.
Women commonly reported a mix
of psychological & psychosomatic complaints. They do not have sufficient support systems, which they can depend upon for emotional support.
“Mostly men are seen outside.
It feels like a jail. Everything is closed, there used to be just a door 34 35 in our shanties, here, with 2 windows, which are fairly big open to the road, we peep from those windows.”
End of the day
Lack of natural light and ventilation can cause various health problems, said researchers from EPRI.
While NBC norms require homes to have a minimum of 150 lux,
SRA homes get only 112-120 lux.Though the NBC has prescribed a minimum wind speed of 0.25 metres per second inside homes, the wind in these homes was negligible.
“There should be windows on either side of the house for
cross-ventilation and the houses should ideally be oriented east to west.”
These needs could be resuming
treatment of patients withchronic diseases such as arthritis, blood pressure, asthma, and TB etc
In Mumbai, slum dwellers "dumped"in skyscrapers are confronted
with another major problem. For them, the cost of maintaining a high-rise is unaffordable. Each rehabilitated slum family receives a one-time corpus of Rs 20,000 to take care of their monthly out-goings.
That is why 50-year-old Rajkumari Pillai who was relocated to Vashi
She says life was better inside the huge pipeline she called home in Mahim because now she has to spend half her earnings on commuting. Her social life also has been rudely disrupted.
Today, the state’s urgency to economise on space allocated to the
urban poor has led to 7-storey towers with often just a few metres between them, which leaves most of the residents in darkness by day & often with worse ventilation than in the informal settlements.
Not surprisingly, most people aware of these conditions refer to
these formal developments as vertical slums that often provide worse habitats for residents than their original settlements, and push them further away from established work places and social networks.
