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Maharashtra
By Kalpana Sharma
On the last day of his two-day visit to Mumbai, the Prince of Wales spent over an hour at a slum redevelopment project in Dharavi that stands apart from the mushrooming multi-storied buildings in this slum because it has been developed with the complete involvement of the community. As a result, today 134 families who lived in an area dominated by leather tanneries are the proud owners of one-room-kitchen flats in the Rajiv Indira Cooperative Housing Society. The project, initiated by the NSDF, is supported by the British Department for International Development (DFID) in partnership with the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) and the U.K.-based Homeless International through a financial facility set up for such projects. Prince Charles deftly broke a coconut and inaugurated the second of the buildings that is part of the project before making his way into the surrounding settlements that still wait to be resettled. He also went into one of the remaining leather processing units where a primitive method is used to clean and treat animal skins. He spoke to the tannery workers and agreed to pose with a young boy who took a picture of the two of them with his cell phone. According to Mr. Joachim, Prince Charles repeatedly asked the workers how much they earned, whether they were being exploited by sub-agents and whether they were getting a fair price for the leather. "We were amazed that he came face to face and talked to us," said Laxmi Thevar, a pavement dweller from the nearby King's Circle. "He met us who have no home. Even our own Prime Minister does not come so close to us. There were no men with guns behind him. He might be a Raja but he behaved like an ordinary man," she said. Many of the other women, like Vidya Sawant, who lives in a slum adjacent to Mumbai's domestic airport and is part of hundreds of savings groups that are part of Mahila Milan, voiced identical sentiments. "Poor people never get a chance to meet such powerful people. We are never allowed to get close to them. He asked me and I told him what kind of house I live in, that we have no toilet, no water. I explained that we had nowhere else to live. At least if people like him understand our situation, something can happen." Above all, for the Farooqi family this was a red-letter day because the Prince of Wales spent some time in room number 114 of the Rajiv Indira Cooperative Housing Society. Until two years ago, they lived in a congested slum with no toilet and little water. Today, they have a 225 sq ft room with an attached toilet and bath and a loft that accommodates additional family members. As a result, nine persons belonging to three generations seem to live quite happily in this space. According to the excited son, 25-year-old Mohammad Majid and his 15-year-old sister Nadia, the Prince talked to every member of the family, inspected the staircase going up to the loft where Majid's computer was kept, spoke to the old grandparents who had come from Allahabad. Mr. Joachim said that the Prince of Wales first expressed scepticism about the multi-storeyed building until he realised the density and saw for himself how people used the space given to them. He told Mr. Joachim that he wanted to see what more could be done to help such efforts.
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