No Transportation
H’s wife stood on the doorstep when a neighbour came out and said, “hum husband ke siva nahin baat karte (we don’t talk without our husbands).”
We returned the next day when H was home. Dusty and dirty paths led the way to H’s house. There was no road to speak of and the vacant plots lining the streets were strewn with rubbish. Dark pools of water had collected on some parts of the streets. Pipes for water supply were installed on some streets but had not yet been connected to residents’ homes. To collect drinking water, H and his neighbours used a communal tap and had private borewells installed inside their homes to supply water for other uses. Because none of the houses around him were registered with the local housing authorities nobody paid housing taxes but neither did they get services. He had lived here for the past decade, and said that the area was worse than a village. “In villages people have sewers, the government helps them by giving them money to build houses and toilets. Here there is nothing.” Municipal trucks for waste collection did not come all the way inside the residential area, so residents had to resort to throwing garbage over the wall of an empty plot. There were power cuts lasting for four hours each day, and the local school and nearest hospital were both too far away.
“Please write this,” H said.