LEARNING AIDS IN BOOKS!

LEARNING AIDS IN BOOKS!

Survival and Life in Mumbai – Daily Bread

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Squatter Mother, Child and Hearth, in Mumbai

Two generations have born and grew up in Mumbai in subhuman conditions. But no one knows how to give them fair deal as citizens of this great nation.

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Mother and Father: Marathi proverb modified

In Mumbai about 60% persons live in "Grey Land Use Zone", which is illegal or unrecognized. They landless, homeless, displaced and marginalized in their motherland. The elite are chasing them away everywhere.

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Survival and Life in City: Mother's Little Helpers

Precious childhood learns life-supporting skills in the nursery school of Life itself: there is no better teacher anywhere. What memories would they carry as they grow-up? Who knows? They may not have entered even the Census Survey of India. 

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Mother Nature!, Give us this day our honest bread!

The marginalized and displaced have no demands even for their needs

from anyone.

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Learning aids - 1

This hawker on street has her kin and clan and close-knit community scattered in city: They don't suffer Identity crisis, though homeless in their Motherland.

"यही मुंबै मेरी जान ।"
This Mumbai My Love!

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Street vendor in Mumbai

This street vender, though s/he may be illiterate, but knows well:

• about 'survival' (meaning, to live sanely) better than 'Authority';
• about what things sell in this metropolis;
• about life that teaches lessons in the country-wide-classroom;
• about authority that is a faceless entity;
• about glossy paper books that fail to teach lessons in Real Life, Down to Earth;
• about the pampered kids pushed to live in the Virtual Reality, day in out;
• And about how to save to her portable shop, from the baton...

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Street vendor in Mumbai

There are many dimensions to this frugal figure acquired through the glorious past, an Epic Poem in Person.

The elders hardly have time to take their kids to nearby places to look at vegetable & fish market, grocery shop, gardens and parks - though a very few, paddy farms on the outskirts of the city/suburbs or town, which offer innumerable variety in every aspect described in these glossy books, and much more.

Poor kids! Despite affluence they don’t have grandparents who could help, nearby...

Children have countless curiosities — questions, keen observation with all their senses, above all, their spontaneity and innocence!
But before long, before they see, experience and understand the real world around them, not even their immediate neighbourhood, they are pushed into Virtual Reality: Ready canned food, drinks, spices, views in TV, cell phone, MP3, Info-Technology.
At a tender age of 2-3, they are admitted into a public domain called 'nursery school', when they are not even introduced to their kin and clan: So they become 'smart' guys 'n gals.
This is rubbing salt on the wounded cohesive collective by the demise of joint family.

• Can a school impart social values, which kinship and community could inculcate without a paid lecturer?
• Could the Industry & Trade remove this social lack of values and morality?
• Can a physicist and an economist sitting on high chairs at the helm of country's affairs provide answer with rockets and global market economy?

∴ The elders, each one, should try to find the answers.
(08-01-2013)

Life is larger than all Arts, Sciences, Religions, Philosophies, trade, technologies, States... through times and places, — Remigius de Souza

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Hawkers' Fundamental Rights and Contemporary City Planning

Supreme Court, on Oct 20, 2010, gave a ruling that hawking is a Fundamental Right. Delhi hawkers filed a petition challenging Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). SC pulled up the agencies on a few points. There have been several directives given to government and municipalities.

Any educated, sane person (literate or illiterate, rich or poor, layperson or professional) must be able to respond to this issue positively. But we (of The First World India) forget or ignore the millennia old Indian agrarian society and their living traditions which should be acknowledged as Unwritten Laws. Hawking is one of them.

Missing primary factor in city planning 

However, the vital and primary missing factor in this case is 'CITY' itself, therefore, 'City Planning'. City is the real cause of trouble (city being symbol of centralized power) for the people inside and outside, both.

Flower vendors during festivals, Mumbai

Judiciary, even the Supreme Court, and subsequently media-the-hawk missed this context to ‘city’ and ‘city planning’ which is at fault. City planning is not inclusive of people and their cultures in the pluralistic society of India.

When city planners write / draw map of a city, they actually write an Act of Law: That is the status of city plan. First, this map is displayed at appropriate place for the citizens to scrutinize and put on record their objections / grievances. Then it goes through hearings, redressal and then further stages of scrutiny and approval at government level. This indeed is a democratic process. 

This might seem absurd, if we consider the levels of education, literacy, illiteracy and the access to information of the citizens, and how do they use their resources This assessment may be difficult but not impossible. Media or multimedia, now, could work to spread non-formal education to all, if used effectively. 

Hawking is ancient tradition   

For millennia peasants and forest dwellers have been bringing their goods and produce for sell to weekly bazaars at villages, towns, cities and thousands of fairs annually held across the country, even in remote places. There are many cities older than thousand years, and there are 600,000 villages in India. Hawking is ancient tradition. 

Tender coconut vendor, Mumbai

Bazaar has been a characteristic feature of Indian Urban centres, small or big. If Indian intelligentsia and newfangled town planners want to ignore this fact in the name of Modernism or Westernization, and sell the land to Shopping Malls and Departmental Stores at the detriment of large majority, it is not patriotism. It is treason and intellectual slavery.

The First World India (of ruling minority) has been groomed by foreign-made education, by now a few generations. Perhaps they have lost the roots? Why architects and town planners should be an exception? If the professionals are ignorant of this loud and visible fact, and lack essential field-work, how could they ever integrate People in the Laws? How could they make People-inclusive plans? 

Each time of crisis of management of the country arises, they look for models elsewhere to imitate, or knock the doors of High Court/s and Supreme Court. But they do not look for answers from people and the ground reality; or create mass movement for divisive caused when poverty is rampant and policies oppressive.

Typically, cities 'built' in India during past ten decades have shops along roads or separate plots for shopping centres. However, in reality it seems they are planned, in the first place for cars and roads, then land-use zones, thereafter, population (numbers) that is a faceless entity. Now ‘family’ is called ‘household’ – am object. Of course, invariably the numbers prove the projections, projects, plans and planners failed.

Car takes more area than a squatter and hawker 
Cars - stationary and moving - take more area and 3D Space than slum dwellers, squatters & hawkers. It is a known fact that modern cities have lost Human Scale by domination of car. How car does consume energy, affects environment and ecology, which primarily comes from the Earth; and how it does pay back to Earth, is never questioned.

Squatters living under Mumbai Flyover

Now we pray, India's Nuke Deals don't bring further doom – by Bang Soundless and Cloud Smokeless – to the Peasants and Aborigines  by default, like that of Machine and Market so far. None speaks if the Fallout is counted in the Nuclear Safety Precautions? We ignore social – economic fallout of development. Would there be accelerated Migration from countryside or Annihilation? Already there are suicides by farmers: Annihilation by Invisible Forces?

Example of hawker inclusive Vadodara City Plan

While we (Town Planning Team) ware working on the Town Planning Schemes (TPS) for Vadodara City (formerly, Baroda), in the second half of 1960s, we integrated hawkers in the TPS. We had provided pathways for pedestrians and cyclists, besides the hierarchy of streets. At the rounded corners of the junctions of pathways and streets, small open plots were kept for the hawkers. These plots remain connected without coming in the way of pedestrians and vehicles. Corners of junctions are favourite of hawkers everywhere, not only at Vadodara. This planning action comes from ‘field-work’. 

Revamp Professional Education Disciplines  

Conclusions: There is an urgent need. The education in the disciplines of "City Planning, Urban Design, Environmental Planning, Regional Planning, Design of Indian Roads, etc. and their Foundation Courses, besides the Law”, need total overhaul, as if the Place (Land, Waters and Vegetation), People and their Cultures matter. There are no international standards for a city. A city is not a product for trade. 

Notes:
1. Images above are by Remigius de Souza
2. Links: "Flower Bazaar at Mumbai during Ganesh Festival" 
3. News Link:  Hawkers’ fundamental right can’t be left in limbo: court

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.