Slums can be ranked by their liveability, or I suppose, by their awfulness. Annapurna, Opportunity International Australia's microfinance partner in Mumbai, ranks the slums they serve in five categories: one being the worst living situations and five being the best.
On day five, Annapurna took us to a category two slum.
Conveying the rank of a category two Mumbai slum in words is beyond my capability as a correspondent. This slum sits atop and alongside a rubbish tip. The people here are almost all rag pickers: they pick through the rubbish for what is salvageable and sell it. The reality of living on a rubbish tip is that it stinks and there are dense clouds of flies everywhere. It’s grimy and dirty and cluttered. The slum we visited in Delhi seemed downright homey and liveable compared to this.
With Annapurna’s director, Mehdda, and Opportunity’s Indian director, Ranjani, I met a group of women who were on their second microfinance loans. We gathered in about the only space where 17 people could, a small paved area sandwiched in between a row of dwellings and the tip. Bags of rubbish surrounded us (there is nowhere else for the women to store their inventory). A plastic covering lay on the ground, and the women sat on it. They insisted that Mehdda and I sit on two chairs, no doubt some of the very few pieces of furniture in this place.
As we sat there amongst the flies and the stench, we were physically quite close but I felt we were worlds apart. The women I met in Delhi – whilst extremely poor – were clearly far better off than these women. The women in Delhi lived in a cleaner and healthier environment, had better food and clothes and were far more confident. These women just seemed to me, at first blush, to be in absolute desperate circumstances, and here I was to talk with them about their lives.
In my job, I’ve had to speak to people in nearly every imaginable circumstance: welcome the likes of Prince William, Bono and the Pope; meet with elderly public housing tenants with no English; speak with local residents angry about new roads or housing developments, or people living with disabilities or terminal diseases. I’ve held forth on national television, in question time, and in my fair share of tough press conferences. But here, in a Mumbai slum, I have never felt more ill at ease or nervous to speak before a crowd of people. Communicating relies on building upon a common or shared understanding. What could I possibly understand about the lives these women were living?
Fortunately, Mehdda and Ranjani were there to help, though Mehdda started in Hindi by introducing me as a ‘former chief minister’ in Australia. When they all swung their eyes towards me, Ranjani translated the introduction and said ”They are duly impressed.” Great, I thought, that’s just added another stretch of distance between my life and theirs. But Mehdda then asked the women to tell me about their children. How many do you have? Boys or girls? Ages? Are they in school? What do you hope for them?
As each woman spoke about her family, our common humanity was evident. A theology professor of mine once said that human beings are creatures of hope – otherwise why would we, as a species, continue to give birth to children we know will one day die? The women I met in that Mumbai slum were the greatest evidence of that statement. They wanted nothing more than a better future for their children, and they would pour what meagre resources they had into that aim. With the loans they were able to get through Opportunity’s partner Annapurna, they were literally building that opportunity: building roofs of tile or tin, rather than tarps, putting fly screens in their dwellings, even putting down this small area of paving upon which we sat. One woman said to me ”We don't want our children to be rag pickers; we want them to work in offices.”
Another said: “My children are going to school, and I want them to be able to move out of here.” Then another asked me if I had children. I told them I had two boys, aged 13 and 11, and they smiled and nodded approvingly, more duly impressed by my role as a mother than as a former chief minister. We’d found our shared understanding. We loved our children. We wanted the best for them.
I asked them what their husbands thought about the loans. They all smiled or laughed. Some said their husbands were really happy – it meant that there was still money, even if the husband couldn’t work. In a country where girls are not always educated and where women sometimes only eat if there is food left over after the men finish, these sentiments are pretty significant.
One woman said to me ”We want the loans – not grants. The loans we pay back. It makes us feel good that we pay it back. We want to make it on our own, not with money just given to us.” I've been a feminist pretty much my whole life, but I’ve never heard such a strong assertion of female empowerment.
I asked them what difference the life and health insurance that comes with every loan from Annapurna makes to their lives. Two women, both looking too young to be widows, told me that their husbands had died. The life insurance pay-out was the difference between their children staying in school or dropping out to become rag pickers.
We stayed for about an hour. After photos and hugs and clasped hands, we left. I will admit, I was sad to leave them there, but also relieved to escape the flies and the stench. Even some of our more experienced and local Opportunity staff found this slum hard going. Yet Annapurna works there regularly; delivering microfinance and basic health education. All of Annapurna staff are female, and mostly young, recent social work graduates or women from the local community trained up to be client service officers.
We then followed the Annapurna women to a category four slum, a place not on a rubbish tip, and where most dwellings are constructed with bricks and the most basic of necessities, including electricity. We crammed into an upstairs one-room dwelling, 20 of us, including a few children. This was a client meeting, where the monthly repayment was made and recorded by each client. Microfinance organisations like Annapurna have needed to create their own infrastructure and systems: application forms, repayment records, receipt books, insurance cards, etc. It’s an entire paper-based system that is eventually fed back to the head office and entered into a computer system. It’s a rigorous banking system invented and maintained in an otherwise chaotic world.
That was day five. The preceding day was one of high level meetings with Chief Executive Officers of major corporations and banks, trying to convince them (with some success) of the benefits of microfinance and the need for corporate social responsibility in India. It’s an emerging idea in India, with companies like Axis Bank setting up a Foundation that receives one percent of the bank’s profits. Their goal is to ‘create one million livelihoods in 5 years’.
Days four and five were an example of the two India’s that exist: one, the fourth biggest economy in the world posting strong growth, and the other, where one-third of the world's poor live.
Kristina Keneally, MP
Opportunity International Australia Ambassador
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