Delhi has become a gas chamber, where the internet is filled with pollution-awareness articles, satirical memes and cartoons and the streets are filled with masked faces. When the pollution seems to affect everyone we know, the only people carrying out their lives normally are the ‘People of the streets’- the rickshaw-pullers, weight-machine carriers, beggars, the little kids selling colourful trinkets and the street vendors. These are the ones who don’t have the privilege of acknowledging the growing toxicity of the air or ruminating about its ramifications. Their long presence has made them invisible or rather stationary objects who, even if noticed, are not thought of. In the continuously moving city, street vendors have remained static, being at the heart of the rush, they have been marginalized to the extent that their very right to livelihood is under constant threat. These self-employed poor people have been reduced to the status of showpieces which just add to the so-called aesthetic appeal of the Indian markets.
For the same reason, the sight of the balloon-selling family in the busy streets of Kamala Nagar quickly catches one’s attention. After all, it is difficult to miss the mewling baby in the worn-out pram, the playing kids, the bright balloons, the father handling the little cart and the mother trying to make a sale, all in one frame. Twenty-six-year-old Bhuwan and his family comes to Delhi in the festive season of Diwali to take advantage of the buzz in the markets during this time, all the way from Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. Bhuwan, his wife and four kids, all of them try to sell balloons, with the youngest one being just a year old becoming a sight for begging food.
This is Bhuwan’s second trip to Delhi, he came here for the first time, early in this year during the Makar Sakranti. The success of the first trip compelled him and his family to come for the second time. He admits that his kids enjoy more here, they have transformed this commercial area into playing ground—they slide over the dusty rear windshield of cars or amuse themselves by jumping from the trunk. He says, “The elder two go to a nearby school in village…we have to tell the master that we have to leave…he understands our situation and permits it.” After this he lays out their day in the city: after cooking food in the morning, they come to the market at 11 AM and stay till 11 at night. He adds, “We eat in the morning and whatever is left of it at night”. They move throughout the day with all they have and only rest during the night in front of a showroom near the Clock Tower. He says, “The shopkeeper is nice, he lets us stay there, he knows we won’t do anything, plus we also serve as watch-guards, when we are there, nobody comes.”
The family earns around 300-400 rupees a day, Bhuwan says, “We don’t have greed, we sell the smaller balloon for Rs. 10 and the bigger ones sell for 50 or 40, even if someone takes it at 30 rupees, we give it away. Our main aim is to sell them before they burst!” He mentions that they have a ‘makan’ in their village where his elder brothers and their families live. He says, “My brothers make frequent trips outside, one of them goes to Mumbai, the other to Ahmedabad, they even know the languages spoken there, I don’t know them. They sell brooms, this is not our real work. Back in home, we make brooms.”
The topic of brooms excited Bhuwan and he carefully began to lay down the procedure of making these brooms, from getting the date palm leaves, drying them to combing the leaves and finally tying them. He says, “The leaves have to be combed like people comb their hair, it demands labour, after they are combed, we tie them using the rubber from the old tyres, plastic strings aren’t effective. One leaf is sufficient to make a broom, my whole family does it.” He adds, “Rich people don’t buy these brooms, they are only required in the factories.” He shares it so enthusiastically as if not revealing a sad truth which depicts the decline of a traditional craft but an interesting fact.
The family of Bhuwan belongs to the Bagaria community of Rajasthan, this community is considered to be one of the poorest and the least literate. The Bagaria of Rajasthan comes under the category of schedule castes. Broom-making has been their ancestral business. The lack of education, opportunities and skill acquisition coerces the people of the community to still continue with it today. They earn a profit of Rs 5-10 per broom and to add to their income, they cut dates and sell balloons. Migration is also a prevalent practice in this community which has led broom-making families to settle outside Rajasthan—in Gujarat, Maharashtra and also in Kashmir. Bhuwan’s life is more the result of a determined community practice than one of his own personal choices.
When he was asked about the pollution in Delhi, he didn’t understand it, in fact, he said that the weather of Delhi is better than that in his village. He adds that until a few weeks ago, his village was facing heavy rainfalls, most of the areas were flooded. “Children fell ill and we couldn’t take them to anyone but now things are better.” He enjoyed narrating these stories, while talking about them, he comes to the story of his younger sister who died a few years ago, he said, “She was pregnant and the baby inside her died, which created poison; because of Diwali there was no doctor available, so the poison killed her.” Bhuwan’s readiness to share these stories from his life with a complete stranger not only shows his warm welcoming nature but also highlights the need of basic human attention and a shared humanity that he is often denied.
There is a certain sense of joy, contentment and innocence in Bhuwan which makes his impoverished life, a clear struggle, simple for him. He has come to accept the travesties of his life as fatal which doesn’t let him recognise them as failures of state, whether it be the malnourishment of his kids, the death of his sister because of the lack of a proper public healthcare system or their living conditions in general. At least these problems of health, education and livelihood are a constant battle for him, despite the fact that these struggles are normalised for him now, but what about the issues which impact him every day that he is unaware of? Bhuwan doesn’t even know of pollution, in the struggle of making their ends meet, he and his family are just happy about their short trip to a big city where they quickly earn money. Their ignorance and lack of awareness is a function of their lack of privilege. Their indifference towards pollution doesn’t mean that it isn’t killing them—nothing justifies their breathing of this toxic air.
Our lives are filled with incidents of indifference and ignorance; the safe haven of our private lives have dissociated us with our immediate surroundings. Sights of inequality, discrimination, suffering and even resistance have camouflaged themselves in our quotidian experiences. N. Eliasoph notes, “Political avoidance is a culture, not a strategy aimed at avoiding disagreement or any other conscious goal.” Clearly, our ability to look away even from adverse forms of inequalities and ensconcing to the comfort of our homes, is largely cultivated among us from early childhood. Our ideas on homelessness and poverty are developed in a manner that they function on the creation of ‘the other’, ripping these people of the ‘human’ element, so that their derelict state just becomes a reminder of one’s own privileged status.
Considering this, empathy and social solidarity become essential in bridging the vast socio-economic disparities and political inequities. As Harsh Mander writes, “There is a need for moral and social responsibility, and public compassion to tackle the gross injustice and inequality, and the state can’t be the only vehicle of change”. We need to acknowledge the importance of public participation in a democracy and create spaces which not only facilitate discussions but also help in solidarizing, so that no one at least falls prey to apathy because of feeling powerless in front of the rusted system of the state. We must save ourselves from mastering the art of desensitization, we need to do it to so that people like Bhuwan are brought to foreground, and we need to do it so that every other year we don’t just complain about pollution for a month without considering its effect on those who are most vulnerable to it, so that we don’t forget about these people and move on with our lives. Let us pause, reflect and act!
Picture Courtesies: Riya Lohia
Lokayata 