Clean the drains before the monsoon rains

Now is the time for cleaning the drains before the monsoon rains. We are told that the local joke about Juhu is that when someone takes a leak or when a person spits it floods in Juhu. Not hard to understand really when you see how flat it is and in places not much above sea level. The drains don't function too well as they are either blocked or the outlet is blocked. This morning I saw what looked like a family cleaning the "box" drains in the street. The young boys were small enough to get into the drain which may be half a meter deep and scrape out the decaying rubbish, silt and anything else that is in there. In places the drains are open, like infront of our place and in the more glamorous areas the drains are covered with concrete making it a mining job to clean out.












A story from opendemocracy.net highlights the Mumbai's street workers toil in desperate conditions to clear the city of the 7,000 tonnes of refuse its people produce every day.

There are 30,000 Municipal workers employed by the Greater Bombay Municipal Corporation. These workers pick up our garbage, sweep our streets, clean our gutters, load and unload the garbage trucks and work on dumping grounds.

Without exception, all 30,000 of them despise their work, despite getting a salary of Rs. 7,000 (AUD$ 200) per month. In some cases whole families are entrenched in this work. The men are known to abuse their wives and children. On the death of their husbands at a relatively young age, the job passes to the widows as a “pity case”. The despair continues.

The black and white pics to follow are from a photo study, "Not a pretty picture" which looked at the living hell that constitutes the life of a municipal worker. The study questioned how much do the citizens, contribute to the dehumanisation of these workers? Do we realise that life in the city without this workforce would be a life of ill health, disease and even death?

Each and every one of us creates waste. We do not deny this fact. In Mumbai, we create 7,000 tonnes of waste every day. We know that such huge amounts of garbage can pose a serious health risk, that it can lead to outbreaks of disease, including cholera, dysentry, typhoid, infective hepatitis and plague.

Twenty hard strokes of his heavy, wooden broom is what it takes Parmar to sweep one step of the overhead bridge. Sweeping tiny leaves and gathering them into a small pile requires 30 to 40 brisk strokes of the broom. Gathering and making the pile has to be done at a fast pace, before the leaves scatter away in the wind. Thirty strokes a pile, 10 to 20 piles on a single tree-lined pavement. How many strokes of the broom a day?

Manek reports to work in a galli (narrow lane). He is always worried that the supervisor will mark him absent and give his duty to a temporary worker. This happens all the time. It is an easy way to make a little money on the side.

Manek first sweeps the main road and then, around 11am, the supervisor directs him to a house galli. In this galli, which he has cleaned every day for the last 15 years, Manek has had boiling rice water, packets of fish shells and beer bottles flung upon him. Once a sanitary napkin landed on him. His co-worker used her broom to wipe the blood off his face. But they did not get out of the galli. It had to be cleaned.

The western suburbs, where these pictures were taken, have 65 kilometres of big nallas (drains), 56 kilometres of small nallas and 52 kilometres of box drains. Some of the drainage lines are deep enough to accommodate a double-decker bus.

Once inside, there is nothing but darkness. The worker is totally cut off from the world above. Anything could happen to him - he could pass out from inhaling toxic gas, slip in the slime and lose consciousness, or be carried away in the rush of water and waste. Clearing garbage is back breaking work.

After an hour or so, when the worker comes out of the drain, he is shivering. Yes, it is true - this work requires no special skills. Just a pair of arms and legs and the courage to descend into hell.

We've found that there is a great sense of Indian pride when it comes to the cricket or when India flexes its populous might in spark of world power but it is very difficult to imagine a "clean up India day" such as there is in Australia. A typical scene any hour of the day along the crowded roads may be an old woman and probably her great grandchild sifting through one corner of a mound of rubbish while there is a holy but worthless cow chewing what may be food which is covered in fresh piss from a stray dog. This is all while the traffic crawls buy with the occupants of the air conditioned cars spraying empty water bottles, packets and wrappers from a window which is opened for a spilt second to be rid of the item. This image is a broad generalisation but unfortunately we see it or a form of it everyday.
We can't help ourselves and still separate recyclables from perishables even though there is, unfortunately, no reason to do so.