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| Usha is one of an estimated 42 per cent of India's population who lives in a slum. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
In the dry season, Usha's tin roof traps the heat inside her shack until she feels like she is baking.
There is no ventilation and until recently, she didn't even have a fan.When it rains, her house fills with water that drags black mould down her walls and seeps under her door, bringing with it the festering sludge of outside Mumbai.
Before she had a bed, she would lie in the sludge until morning.
There are millions of people like Usha in cities all around the world living without proper infrastructure, housing or employment opportunities.
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| Usha has one door and no windows. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
Without the resources to empower themselves, most of them have little choice but to stay where they are and brace for what is to come.
Haves and have nots
Last year brought violent weather and environmental disasters across the world, and in India, at least 2,038 people died due to extreme weather events.
According to fiction novelist Suyash Shreekant, even his upper-class community experienced water shortages.
"People around me have fancy bungalows and you have Bollywood stars and celebrities… so it is always made sure that [we] have everything," he said.Eventually, his building only received water a few hours a day, but because the neighbourhood had money, they never ran out.
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For Suyash's community, Mumbai's erratic weather is little more than an inconvenience.
India's class structure clearly delineates between rich and poor, and the attention paid to lower classes by government and upper-class society is minimal.
Usha doesn't remember the government ever offering her community support.
Before elections, politicians come to raise votes, but after they win, they never return.
Often, upper class society is not even aware of the poor's situations.
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| The streets around Usha's neighbourhood are teeming with people. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
"But it doesn't strike us that 'Oh, it might be bad for the farmers'."
Adversity is escalating
An estimated 42 per cent of Mumbai's population lives in slums.
Some slums consist of just a few houses, while others are vast — Mumbai's famous Dharavi, for example, spans almost 2.2 square kilometres with a population of about a million.
Living conditions in these communities are rough. Slums lack effective infrastructure and the houses are fragile, leaving people already highly exposed to the weather.
This tends to compound every other problem.
Imagine self-isolating in these conditions: How could you "stock up" when you don't have the money? Even if you did, how could you store your bulk-buy? Many people don't have fridges let alone a proper kitchen or a toilet with a toilet paper holder.
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| Very close to Usha's slum is this nicer neighbourhood. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
Heatwaves last year directly killed roughly 350 people in India. In Rajasthan, temperatures reached 50.3 degrees Celsius.
For people like Usha, retreating inside offered little reprieve.
Shopkeeper Jagdish Jaiswal and his son Shobhit live just a few doors down.
Last year was far hotter than any previous year, they say. Nowadays, they can't sleep without a fan even in the winter.
The drought also left India in the grips of extreme water shortages.
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Slum dwellers always live with limited water, but as shortages worsen, what little they have is likely to dramatically dwindle.
Water shortages, monsoons and floods
Usha shares one tap with 11 other households. Water only runs from 5:00am to 8:00am every morning.
She relies on just two buckets to drink, cook, shower and clean with.
If the tap runs dry, people borrow water or rely on government tankers. But even then, slum houses have no tank to fill and buying water is very expensive.
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| Shobhit uses plastic sheets to protect his father's shop from monsoon rains. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
Many of Mumbai's urban poor don't have proper walls or roofs.
Jagdish's family lives under just a few strips of tin. During the rains, they use buckets to catch the drips.
"We take plastic sheets and put them on top of the roof," Shobhit said."Then when the monsoon is over, we remove them."
More dangerous are the floods. At an average of just 14 metres above sea level, Mumbai is highly vulnerable.
Last year, the city experienced its worst floods in a decade. Heavy rains led to the collapse of three walls, one of which killed 29 people.
Slums are particularly vulnerable during the monsoon.
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| Piles of rubbish are a common sight in the slums of Mumbai. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
This land is typically low-value and often dangerously low-lying.
'Even the fish, they've kind of changed their route'
In low-lying slums, The resulting waterlogging has many complications.
The water stagnates easily, creating the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes and therefore mosquito-borne disease.
There were four times more dengue cases in Mumbai in November 2019 than in the same month of 2018.
Because the monsoon continued late last year, mosquitoes were able to thrive for longer.
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| A corner shop is a common employment opportunity but earning options are limited. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
During Mumbai's rains last year, millions of homes were inundated with dirty water, trains and buses were stopped, and flights were cancelled.
Rising sea levels complicate things further. Sea water backs up into Mumbai's drainage system, making it difficult for flood water to drain.
Kalpesh, the son of a shopkeeper in a Colaba fishing village, has noticed the sea edging closer to his home.
His father, Ashok Jain, said the ocean itself had also become more dangerous, with far more storms in 2019 than in the years before.
This is hardly surprising given how rapidly our oceans have been warming — in fact, in 2019 the ocean was hotter than ever before.
Tropical storms increase in severity over warmer water.
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| Usha shares one tap with 11 other households, which only has water from 5:00am to 8:00am every morning. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
Rising water temperatures lead to coral bleaching and loss of habitat for fish and marine mammals, and push fish to divert their normal migration routes.
"Even the fish [themselves], they've kind of changed their route," Kalpesh said."[People] have said that they have reduced considerably… [this might] be due to the storms or some other reasons, but they're not here anymore."
The biggest factor is education
When asked about the solution to their immediate situations, most of those interviewed for this story said they needed employment. That way, they could lift themselves out of poverty.
There used to be plenty of factory and labour work in Mumbai but now the city is becoming ever more white collar.
Mumbai's population is also booming, as migrants flock to the city for work.
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| Slum dwellers say education is the biggest factor to help them improve their lives. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
The biggest factor is education.
"It's the money that's the biggest issue," said Rajan Yadav, a metal-worker with a shop right next to Usha.
"There are [private] schools, there are colleges, but we can't afford them."Public schools are free in India but according to Usha's community, the standard of education they provide is low. Because of this, much of Mumbai's poorest are being left behind.
Even the most menial jobs require some level of education and there is always someone more qualified.
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There is other work — selling vegetables, cigarettes, papers — but the money you can earn in these jobs is minimal and there is no chance of promotion. Other jobs like construction work are hard to come by.
Enabling social mobility
Many slum dwellers feel that the state should be providing a solution.
"Either you create jobs for people who don't have education, or you give them education so that they can develop," Rajan said.
But currently, the only real state initiative that can be applied to Mumbai's urban poor is a resettlement program under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), a government entity that handles slum policy and redevelopment regulations in Mumbai.
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| The road dividing the wealthy apartments (on the right) from the slum apartments (on the left). (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
But if they don't do so within a certain amount of time, the squatters gain certain rights to that land that mean that if they are evicted, they have to be rehoused.
The SRA, and a few NGOs under it, work to create financially viable situations for developers and slum dwellers alike.
"Families have been able to educate their children in better schools… because they have safe housing," said Yorick Fonseca, the director of the Slum Rehabilitation Society, one of the NGOs.
"A lot of [people's] children have grown up to become doctors and engineers…. that is the kind of social mobility that we've been able to enable."But only those who are the original inhabitants of slum properties are required by law to be rehoused.
If she were evicted, Usha, who rents her home from a slum landlord, would have nowhere to go.
'Employment is not more likely here'
There are other complications.
For example, the transition from slums to apartments can be challenging.
Previous slum-dweller Neeta was told her family would be able to move to an apartment after one year.
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| Neeta (left) and her daughter are living in a slum rehousing complex with poor water quality. |
To add insult to injury, even though Neeta's family has now made it to their new apartment it may not be viable for families like theirs to stay.
They are concerned they will have to move back to the slums after a few years because they can't afford to pay for their utilities.
"The expenses increase but employment is not more likely here," they explain.
"Maybe next month we will not have electricity because we aren't able to pay for it."
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| Expensive apartments lie immediately opposite Neeta and her daughter's slum rehousing. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
Neeta's family could retreat to their home in the countryside, but the situation in rural areas is often worse than urban poverty.
Climate-related extremes have destroyed farms all over India.
Neeta's home in Gujarat has been bone-dry for decades.
Rajeed's village's crops failed because of a plague of insects that came in droves with last year's rains.
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| In the monsoon season, rubbish near the slum rehousing complex mixes with the water, sometimes knee-deep or deeper. (Supplied: Zoe Osborne) |
The only resource they really have is one another.
Pradeep Mishra has lived in Mumbai's Dhobi Ghats all his life.
As the ocean rises, it is likely that the Ghats will be one of the first areas to be swallowed by the sea.
But when asked what he will do when his home inevitably sinks, Pradeep just shrugs and smiles.
"If nature has to do something, it will do it," he says. "We can't really do anything beyond [sticking together].
Links
- Extreme weather events killed 2,038 people in India in 2019
- Over1,000 passengers rescued from partly submerged train as Monsoon rains flood parts of India
- It's official: India just experienced its hottest decade on record
- Deadly Tensions Rise As India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low
- 12-Step Climate Change & Global Warming Action Plan For India
- World Water Day: Water Could Both Starve and Drown India as Climate Change Intensifies
- Climate change is taking its toll on India
- The growing threat of climate change in India
- It’s Man Vs Wild in India’s Economy, and Wild Has the Upper Hand
- Climate Change: A National Security Threat Multiplier
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