Our work focuses on the most vulnerable pockets of urban poor in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Some areas were selected because of extreme lack of education opportunities. We have found that the greater the challenge of gaining education is to students, the greater the challenge of survival is for the larger community be it through cultural factors or poverty. We work particularly with scheduled tribes, who have faced dislocation and marginalization for years in Bhopal and generations all over India. Read more about our health, savings, livelihoods and violence related programs by click on their tabs to the left or read below to find out more about the challenges facing Bhopal’s slum dwellers.

Bastis, or slums, are places which are considered to have unhygienic living conditions, impermanent shelters, lack of adequate space for the number of inhabitants and lack basic services such as water and sanitation. But many bastis are completely rudimentary, though rudimentary is not the right word, because basic structures are not in place. Many a times, bastis are just places where people live and instead of the open sky, have a panni (plastic tarp) over their heads. Community members explain, “Is this a house, it is just living by the road. But what is a house if you don’t get to eat. At least we are able to feed our stomachs here”. With extreme water shortage in Madhya Pradesh, the slums sometime reach a point where people have to choose whether they should have a bath or wash the utensils with the one mug of water. There is rarely a toilet to be found and no space to construct them, even though theoretically there are government programs to help with this. People go out in the open spaces available, railway tracks, small plots which are still not constructed, lanes which may be comparatively less used, and nullahs (drainage ditches). Girls from the basti explain these experiences, “Whenever we sit by the nullahs, the boys come and try to take a look. They just stare at us, and finally we have to move and find other place. We sit by the roadside after 8, when it is dark, but if a car comes, by, then the lights shine on us, and I feel very conscious.” Women’s lives remain compromised, as mothers who are threatened by adult sons, or wives beaten up by alcoholic husbands.

The level of poverty of a community can by and large be gauged through the height of the walls. If people have any additional money beyond the requirements of basic survival, they try to invest it in improving the infrastructure. In many areas, there are houses with mud clumped just a few inches high. In other slums there are houses with pucca (brick) walls, but polythene covered roofs. Vulnerability on the other hand, cannot necessarily be judged by the height of the homes. Many aspects in the life of slum dwellers are out of their control, for example, debts arising from illness, bribes to the police, and social obligations. Further, working in the informal economy in domestic work, selling items on wooden carts, rag picking, or construction, is highly irregular and leads to financial insecurity. Land tenure in bastis is also an area of almost continuous threat.

According to a UN Habitat study (2006), Bhopal has a slum population of 128,170 households living in 380 slums. According to the Directorate of Food and Civil Supplies, Government of Madhya Pradesh, 122,076 families were issued BPL cards in keeping with their economic status in the year 1997-98. The average size of households in Bhopal city was 5.2 (Census 2001), making the slum population over 6 lakhs according to either of the above estimates. The 2001 India Census shows a decrease of 8.8% of the city population living in slum-like conditions in 1991 census to 37.6 % in 2001 in spite of a more inclusive nature of the definition of slums in 2001. The quantum of population living in slums is also reflected as having dropped drastically in absolute numbers from 399,662 to 126,346, which is not at all reflected on the face of the city and has no logical explanation; it also does not correlate with other documents of the local administration and therefore cannot be considered reliable.