Not Much Has Changed For Delhi Slum-dewellers

Of as many as 1.8 million people living in hundreds of slums across the national capital, 22% still have to defecate in the open. Moreover, many jhuggi-jhopri clusters do not even figure in the list of Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board.

- Ridhima Malhotra

Geeta Devi doesn’t re-member the last time she used a proper toi-let. In past few years, she has used one only while travelling in a train to her village in Uttar Pradesh. “It’s quite a hassle to walk far away and find an isolated spot. See, this land is so bare. There are hardly any bushes where one can get some privacy,” she said, pointing to the vast stretch of land at the banks of the Yamuna. “It’s embarrassing if a passerby can see us in that situation, so women have to be extra vigilant. In the night, it’s a little scary to go all alone and it’s better to control oneself,” said the twenty-five-year-old mother of three.

As her infant daughter cried for an incomprehensible reason, Geeta folded her hand in the shape of a snake’s hood to scare her into obedience. “We often spot snakes and mongooses while relieving ourselves. We just pray to God that they go away. It’s not possible to run away half naked,” she laughed.

Geeta’s house is like any other hut — put together with wooden sticks, pieces of cardboard, gunny sacks and plastic sheets — at the Yamuna Khadar slum cluster near Kashmiri Gate. Though the cluster has existed for the past fifteen to twenty years, there are no pucca houses or sewerage system or any portable or community toilets in the vicinity. Gayatri Devi, another inhabitant of the cluster, bathes by the side of a hand pump in the open while wearing a petticoat upto her chest.

“I’m an old woman. But I have a teen-aged daughter. It’s not safe for her to defecate or bathe in the open as young girls are often harassed,” she said.