Unprecedented rains in Chennai over the last few months have destroyed the homes and possessions of hundreds of poor slum and pavement-dwellers. The worst-affected are children
It’s been a gruelling few months for families in the slums and pavements of Chennai, as incessant rain at the end of October severely damaged their homes and meagre belongings.
Perhaps the worst-affected were children, who had little or no food to eat, bearing the brunt of nature’s fury, and poverty.
During the wet spells, the children were forced to live out in the open, close to the speeding traffic. Being small, they were in danger of drowning. At the Greams Road slum, a mother almost lost her son, three-year-old Monesh, to the floods. In some areas, children had to spend the nights sharing space with drunken men and drug addicts, as families crowded into schools and other spaces for shelter.
According to the 2001 Census – which, for the first time in its history, marked a slum demography for the country based on the actual count -- Tamil Nadu has the third largest number of cities and towns with slum populations (63) after Uttar Pradesh (69) and Andhra Pradesh (77). According to the census, 10-20% of the urban population of Tamil Nadu live in slums. That’s 2.9 million people; over 100,000 are children in the 0-6 age-group.
Chennai itself has over 1,000 slums; the government still has to categorise a number of unknown slum settlements. Official estimates indicate that there are over 300,000 children in the city’s slums and on its pavements. “The number of families in slums in Chennai is estimated to be over 100,000 lakh, of which 33,000 families live by the river, including the Cooum and other canals. The rest live along the pavements,” says N Balaganga, chairman, Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board.
People living in slums do not receive the attention they are due, in the government’s agenda. When three-year-old Sarojini got jaundice, her mother took her to the government hospital close by only to be met with rude attendants. “They asked me to take her to the hospital she was born in. People at the hospitals treat us badly. Where do we go, emergency or otherwise,” she asks.
While the city corporation lists the number of hospitals that slum people can access, it does not do anything to ensure that they are attended to. “If the official in the area is proactive, alternatives are found easily,” says Andal Damodaran, honorary general secretary, Tamil Nadu chapter of the Indian Council for Child Welfare.
Then, perhaps, children like 10-year-old Anjali, who lives in the Egmore slum area, would have been more secure during the rainy season. Anjali recalls how children in her slum, who number around 50, slept the night at bus stands, under bridges, in any dry place they could find, during the months it rained. They still do. Worse, they went hungry. “We used to eat three meals every day but after the rains we lost most of what we owned, and there was no money to buy food. Now we eat only two meals a day,” says Anjali. All the houses in her area have been damaged.
In many slums, there were no officials organising medical assistance on a big scale, to cover every family, or even enquiring about the situation the families were in. Doles were promised and given out, but often they did not reach the people at the right time.
According to M B Nirmal of Exnora International, who worked with people in the slums during the rains, the government machinery was not fully geared to meeting the unexpected intensity of the rains. “Our corporation’s priorities are wrong. They spent crores of rupees on creating new parks, when their first priority should have been to clean the storm water drains that have become dysfunctional. Moreover, because of encroachments at the outlets of floodwater canals, the water could not flow away and so entered the slums. The same rains could have been a gift to the poor… instead the children will be psychologically affected by all this,” he says.
Recent dry weather has given these poor people some cause for cheer. As children got re-equipped for school, families were hoping to begin rebuilding their homes -- a time-consuming process that they will have to undertake themselves, brick by brick.
Resettlement is a different ball game altogether. The government has new plans to clear some settlements and provide the slum-dwellers with alternative accommodation in resettlement colonies. Sites have been earmarked but nothing has been finalised. “The Corporation of Chennai, the Slum Clearance Board and the PWD will have to jointly decide on the process. It will take two to three years to materialise. You know how governments work…” says community development officer Zafarullah.
Data on the exact number of slum- and pavement-dwellers affected by the floods is yet to be compiled by the five talukas. According to the Chennai collectorate, 595,151 people -- categorised under low-income families, including slum- and pavement-dwellers with ration cards -- have received the relief announced by the Tamil Nadu government which includes Rs 2,000 in cash, 10 kg of rice, one sari, one dhoti and 1 litre of kerosene, the last through the public distribution system. Around 55,000-60,000 more will receive their dole by mid-January this year, completing the relief work for the entire city.
But two months after the first rains, people are still crowded together on the streets waiting to start rebuilding their homes and get back to a normal routine. What appears to be lacking is not just a sensitive approach towards poverty and deprivation, but a continuing denial of standards for families caught up in the poverty trap. And, as a result, for the children wedged in between.
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