Water, water nowhere

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

To see how skewed our government's priorities are, you have to see how we live," said Ashok, and took me to Jagdamba Camp, a south Delhi slum with over a thousand jhuggis, situated between Sheikh Sarai and Malviya Nagar. This tour was an impromptu one, preceded by a round of ten of the many 'natural waterfalls' that Malviya Nagar reportedly abounds in. And if you didn't know the congested middle class colony had any "" don't worry.

Neither did I, till I saw them mentioned in the MLA fund accounts, which stated that each had cost about Rs 1.88 lakh to construct.

The 'natural waterfalls' "" ugly, concrete attempts at landscaping from which water was supposed to flow "" graced almost every park in Malviya Nagar, and parks there were aplenty. But water was obviously scarce, and while few had puddles at their bases, indicating that they had once been used, most were dry.

Not surprising, as the water shortage in this densely populated area forces everyone to set their alarms at 3.30 am to fill their tanks. Ashok, my guide, was disgusted that public money was being wasted on these when it could be so much better spent elsewhere.

That is why he insisted on showing me Jagdamba Camp, not even five minutes away from the waterless waterfalls of Malviya Nagar.

The squalid slum had a totally different set of landmarks. He showed me a public tap, where women had queued up to fill water. "Fights often break out here "" over water, you see. There have been summers when we got no water for eight days at a time.

People have had to go as far as four kilometres away to fetch water," said he. Many people in the slum kept large tanks that could store as much as fifty litres of water, but Ashok pointed out that even that much wouldn't tide them over more than a couple of days. Now I could see why the waterfalls had enraged him so.

Then we walked through a narrow lane blocked by wedding festivities, where food was being cooked next to the open drains on the roadside.

"We have no drainage systen," said he, deftly bypassing a pile of goo, "no sewers either. The houses built over the 22-foot-wide Chirag Dilli drain have toilets opening directly into the drain. The others use pay-and-go toilets, or just go to the fields!" The drain is never cleaned, the slum dwellers say, so over twenty years of solid waste has accumulated in it.

The MLA had evidently been so busy making waterless waterfalls that this stinking public health and sanitation problem next door escaped his notice.

The next thing he showed me almost killed me, or so I thought. It was an electricity wire hanging perilously close, but Ashok said nobody had ever been electrocuted by it: "And it's been here for years, because we all just hook up to the main pole and get free electricity!"

The government could do nothing to stop this large-scale power theft, he said, adding, "now that electricity has been privatised, we are being told that proper meters and connections will be given to us!"

We must have walked for about fifteen minutes by then, and there seemed no end to the slum. Thousand jhuggis with an average of 6.5 family members "" I did some mental maths and said, "you people have a huge vote bank here.

If you tell the MLA your problems, at least some of the MLA fund will be put to better use, and your living conditions would improve!" He smiled ruefully and said, "nobody listens to the poor "" whether we're waterless or powerless or both, who cares?"