Illegal
cities
Illegal incomes
Illegal land
Illegal houses
Illegal water
Illegal electricity
Illegal businesses
Illegal economy
Illegal jobs
Illegal lives
Illegal maids
Illegal drivers
Illegal cooks
Illegal vendors
Illegal masons
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Our Constitution. Their Rules.
Did you know that the lakhs of slums of all over the world are all illegal cities?
That’s because no government recognises them. And they comprise of 1 billion
dwellers, making them illegal too. Why illegal? Well look at how an illegal city is built
in the first place. Usually a group of squatters occupy a large stretch of abandoned or
unused government land. With time, more squatters come and you get a large colony that
becomes a permanent fixture of the landscape. There are no title deeds or legal papers, so
the land on which they live is termed illegal.
The local authorities recognise the houses
as illegal because they don’t meet the standards for lighting, ventilation and
sanitation. Water for cooking and washing comes from an unauthorised source such as a
river or an illegally dug well or an illegal water connection. Even the electricity is
'stolen'.
Small enterprises spring up which don’t
follow official laws on labour, health, safety or environment. Even the food that local
vendors sell is illegal, because they aren’t authorised.
Our Country. Their
Cities.
But it is not that the people who live in these cities are deliberately breaking the law.
Since 1950, the number of people working in developing country agriculture has declined by
20-30 per cent. Many are forced to abandon villages. Villagers also see migration as a way
to bring some of the city’s wealth to the village. Most migrants see city earnings as an addition to their meager rural income, and their stay in the city as temporary. |
GROUND
REALITIES
Over 90% of India’s workforce earns its livelihood in the informal sector.
Over 94% of women workers in India
fall into this category. |
But once they come to the city, they have no
choice but to build, buy or rent an
"illegal dwelling" as they can’t afford the cheapest legal house available.
So looked from another angle, slum dwellers have found their own solutions when the state
failed them. These unnamed millions then become the most important organisers, builders
and planners of the new urban reality.
Since it is the State that recognises these dwellings as illegal,there is very little
it does to change the situation. Most governments’ attitude is either of indifference
or repression. And that is why
slums are shut out from basic infrastructure.
Our Problem. Their Solution.
The problem is that most of the world
regards the informal sector as something illegal which has to be eliminated because it
"undercuts" the formal sector.
However, the formal
sector has failed to give enough jobs to most of the world. Informal economy experts feel
that the formal economy manages to employ only 25 per cent of working people.
Slum-dwellers and peasants comprise the remaining 75 per cent.
So reducing
long-winded regulations and doingthe financial problems of the so-called illegal world.
way with large under-productive public sector enterprises in favour of these informal
workers could hold the key to a new economy. The illegal world is actually full of
micro-entrepreneurs who can provide goods and services at lower costs.
A case in the point is
the SEWA (Self Employed
Women's Association) Bank. The bank started in Ahmedabad in 1974 with a capital raised
from 4000 slum women. Today the bank has funds in excess of $2 million and provides
housing loans for slum dwellers. It also runs programmes that provide basic infrastructure
like roads, electricity and water, to people living in slums all over Ahmedabad.
Now imagine if every slum in the world
decided to launch such a bank?
The informal economy might then overshadow the formal one and take care of most of the
financial problems of the so-called illegal world.
Our
Economy. Their Earnings.
Slums and slum dwellers are not part of the formal economy, but still power the city with
their goods and services. Think it over. Maids. Labourers. Drivers. Masons. Food and
vegetable vendors. Hawkers… The list is endless. While all of these may be living an
illegal existence, they provide you and the whole city with a host of cheap goods and
services. They are part of the Informal Economy. But what exactly is that? Economist
Teodor Shanin says that the concept emerged in Africa 25 years ago. Researchers noticed
that there was no economic explanation for how the majority of the population survived.
They didn't own land. They didn't seem to have any assets. According to formal economics
they should have died of hunger long ago, but they survived.The researchers found that their way of life was completely the
opposite of how a human being in an industrial society survives. They didn't have a job,
pension, steady place to work or regular flow of income. Families held a range of
occupations from farming and selling in the market to doing odd jobs or handicrafts.
Their aim was survival rather than the
maximisation of profit. Rather than earn wages, labour was used within family enterprises,
or shared out among the village. This way of life was brought to the slums. And today most
of the world may be regarded as being part of the informal economy! |
| According to formal economics they should have
died of hunger long ago, but they survived. |
|
