The ravishing film star Raveena Tandon, I learnt from the Bombay Times in early March, has kicked off a campaign in support of Maharashtra's chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. She has appealed to people to back his slum clearance efforts, and this appeal went out by SMS. It carried fax numbers for Deshmukh's party boss, Sonia Gandhi, in Delhi, so you could write to her directly. Citizens, Tandon believes, must come together to help the CM "in his campaign to make Mumbai a better place to live."
After all, she told the Bombay Times in no uncertain terms, "people continue to defecate in front of our building."
All of which sets off several thoughts in my mind. What are our CM's efforts towards making this a better place to live, the efforts Tandon means? His government has destroyed the homes of – at last count – nearly half a million people. That is, he has made it harder for half a million residents of this city to live their lives. For that half million, clearly, Deshmukh's efforts have not made this a better place to live. So are we to believe that even with this damage to so many lives, Bombay is somehow, taken in aggregate, a better place to live?
But if so: a better place to live for whom? Over half of my city – that's right, better than 50 per cent – lives in slums and on the streets. Why shouldn't Deshmukh be making this a better place to live for them? Why is he instead destroying their homes? Shouldn't this be a better place to live for all Bombay's residents, including that 50-plus per cent?
Or put it this way: suppose some cellphone-toting slum resident starts up a SMS campaign suggesting that Deshmukh make this a better place to live by demolishing blocks of flats in the city. Would you support that? Would Tandon? Why or why not? Logically, how is it in any way different from Tandon's SMS campaign? Why, if you took numbers alone, you might even find that such a campaign would get greater support than Tandon's. Then which campaign should prevail?
It's simple. Does Ms Tandon, or the Bombay Times, or anyone who gets this campaign SMS and decides to sign up, not see the contradiction between "a better place to live" and half a million people who live in this place driven from their destroyed homes? But of course, there's that defecation in front of Tandon's building. Can't have that! Except, in superpower-aspirant 21st-century podcasting India, seventy per cent of our people lack access to sanitation. Meaning seven of every ten Indians, if they want to defecate, must use the sides of roads, railway tracks, rocks at low tide and so forth.
Half of those, meaning the women, wake before dawn every day just so they can hang on to some little bit of privacy. Some years ago, I bumped up against this reality when I walked through a Madhya Pradesh village one dark pre-dawn. A series of embarrassed feminine giggles on either side – it was too dark to see the women – told me where I was and what I was doing.
This is our Indian reality. What happens when you hold Tandon's distaste – all our distaste – for defecation near her building up to the mirror formed by that seventy per cent?
Besides, consider this. Every morning, I walk my son to school through the leafy lanes of Bandra. They're leafy, but in the mornings, those lanes are also serious obstacle courses. Defecated lumps lie everywhere. But not the human stuff. They are courtesy the dogs who live in the buildings around us.
We are OK with our own dogs going out to take a dump and leaving the results on our streets. But we are not OK with humans doing so; in fact, such humans must be driven out and their homes destroyed. Got that. And finally, I have an excellent suggestion to tackle the proliferation of slums. I offer it as an alternative to such things as banning the entry of "outsiders" into Bombay, or to declaring all slum housing built after 1 January 1995 illegal, or to demolishing homes by the thousand.
Here it is: declare all jobs created after 1 January 1995 illegal, and ban any further creation of jobs in Bombay. Given that it is jobs and opportunity that attract people to this city, such a step will quickly put a halt to "outsiders" coming here. Which means that eventually, we will have no more slums. Eventually, no more defecation outside buildings. (Well, overlook the doggy variety).
No Deshmukh to take this up, no Raveena Tandon to fire off text messages in support? Well, can someone explain to me how this suggestion is logically any different from demolishing slum homes?

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