Once I had to go to Mumbai to submit fees for my MBA admission and I had nowhere to stay. Unable to afford an accommodation in the Mumbai city, I called up one of my acquaintances from my hometown to find a place to crash. He stayed in a chawl in the Dharavi slums of Mumbai and I ended up staying with him and 4 others in a small dingy room smaller with a iron sheet roof. It was hot and sultry, as Mumbai always is and the heat was almost unbearable. To escape from it we went to the nearby Juhu beach and came back only late in the night when it was relatively cooler.
But I didn’t feel uncomfortable, atleast not because of the fact that I was staying in a chawl in a slum. Because I have always felt that I am a part of these people. Even though I was born in an upper caste family, my family was not affluent. I had the privilege of getting a decent education and even though I didn’t have any luxuries of life, I would say that I didn’t have to suffer as much as others. I always prided myself on being a part of the people and how I felt for them and understood them.
Not Anymore.
A few days back when I was going to attend a meeting in a “CCD” near IHC in Delhi, due to a misunderstanding about the location, I got down earlier than I had to and then I had to walk through a narrow slum lane for hardly 300 meters. And even though I had a sense of deja vu and I promptly remembered that Mumbai day, I can’t say that I was comfortable at all. The air was suffocating, the smell unbearable. I felt revulsion to see the clogged drains and the drain water flowing onto the street. I was not comfortable with the people coming too close to me. That’s how desensitized I have become. And that’s the case with most of us.
And that is precisely what is wrong with us today. For, most of us hardly even think about the plight of the millions who are languishing in deplorable conditions like this. For most of us they are hardly anything more than an academic interest, a mere statistic. What is depressing is the fact that people like me who “used to be” or atleast thought that they are a part of the people, become gradually insensitive to their plight.
On the other hand for most of the Keyboard Activists and the so called NGOs and their “Social Workers”, the people are nothing but an “intervention point”, a “problem statement” that needs a solution. No one thinks of the people themselves, their plight, their sorrows, their happiness. No one wants to be part of them anymore. We throw around words like “Community Mobilization” and “Empowerment”. We go to them with a mindset that we will “save” them.
We spend 800 rs in an upscale connaught place restaurant in a Srategy Meeting to decide how to “Empower” women and give them livelihoods, while the same amount of money could be used to feed at least 20 hungry people. We roam around in the “Community” carrying hand sanitizers, knowing well that there are millions who don’t even have toilets. We debate for hours on end the “Scalability”, “Sustainability “and what not of the” Model” we would use to ostensibly “Empower” the “Community”, while thousands suffer from the lack of basic amenities. Because for most of these so called social activists, these people are nothing more than an experiment, an entry in their CV, a gate pass to the Ivy League Colleges, or plain and simple a “meaningful” job. And nothing else. And that is what is wrong with being an Activist these days.
Anyone who wants to bring about real change has to see them, as a vital, organic, self sustainable people. We have to have the courage to be among them and live their lives once. We need to get out of our “God Mode” and be a part of them. And that is when we would be able to make a difference. A real difference.
The people don’t need saving, we do.