Fifty three per cent of the Muslim population of Mumbai lives in just 19 per cent of its land area — an alarmingly disproportionate figure by any standards and enough to give the community leadership sleepless nights.
Much is written on the inhuman living conditions in slums and their role in breeding crime and disease. Contrary to popular belief, slums are highly structured and regulated spaces. They arise in particular places at particular times and so are very context-specific. Migrants to the city choose to live in particular slums on the basis of a host of factors such as proximity to the workplace and the demographic composition of the slum.
The poor have to redefine their survival strategies, in such a way that each member of the household, including children, has to contribute either through direct participation in the labour market or through helping in the house as a caretaker. Children, working in restaurants, garages or small factories, not only are extra hands, but enable adult labour to seek employment away from the villages.
Migrating to towns and cities becomes an important component of this survival strategy where children are employed in carpet factories, brick kilns, lock-and-toy making units, the sports goods industry and other enterprises in the unorganised sector. The ever-increasing numbers of old and young migrant workers living in the slums and shanty towns in cities constitute the low-wage, low-skill labour for the small and medium enterprises.
Those who ask for help; most often they get the help. Those who deserve help, but because of self respect do not ask for help remain impoverished and suffer. There is a substantial Muslim upper middle class and elite class who do contribute Zakat. But the issue is why there is no discernible change in the conditions of the deprived section? Why do zakat and donations by Muslims not reach them?
There are many issues which can be solved with some focus from the community without huge investment. Muslim intelligentsia is too pre-occupied with decorative issues such as discrimination, political empowerment, higher education etc, totally neglecting the issues of the most deprived section of the community.
The pressing issue is not political empowerment of Muslims, but the high percentage of illiteracy amongst Muslims. There are many Muslim- managed educational schools in Mumbai, but their access to slums dwellers is negligible. Most of them cater to the middle and upper middle class.
There is no creativity to tackle the task of illiteracy. Poorer sections of the community neither can afford school expenses nor find them useful, especially when the family is under-nourished and under-clothed. In some instances, children from disadvantaged class and poor backgrounds might stay enrolled in a school to avail themselves of mid-day meal schemes or other such incentives.
The community can learn from the experiments such as doorstep schools, i.e. school-on-wheels. These door-step schools or a classroom in a bus can reach entire communities of children outside the system: street kids, children of poor construction workers, seasonal migrants, and other representatives of the unorganised sectors with no permanent address. They are also human, they are also part of our community, and how can we forget them?
How does the concept of door-step school work? The bus-parks in a regular slot every day while the staff caters to the schooling needs of local children. If there is a municipal school nearby, they help children enroll in it.
Alternatively, social workers look for a site where permanent arrangements can be made for a door-step school in the area, sometimes in an existing Balwadi or in a space donated by a kind resident. After setting up the school, the bus moves on to a new area.
Normally, a tin shed is erected at the site so that the kids do not have to travel long distances Then volunteers inform the parents about the school. Most of the time the parents are ready. If thereare small siblings because of which the child is not able to attend school, the door step school provides childcare facilities for them.
The door step school can cover most of the construction sites or slum pockets in the city and admits children as young as three. It also provides books and basic stationery. Door Step School provides the kids with a platform and gives them a good foundation to prepare them for a municipal school. If need be, it even provides transportation to children to reach a nearby municipal school.
The idea is not to be a parallel school, but the objective is that kids under any circumstances should not miss school. The teachers of Door Step School are educated at least up to Class 10 and are trained according to the needs of the school. The children are taught basic subjects like mathematics, science, social studies in the Marathi medium.
Says Rashida Anwar , coordinator, Door Step School, Study Centre: “We have a different kind of classroom. In one class itself, children of different age groups sit - there are some kids who have never attended school at all. It takes a while to get them into a discipline.”
Doorstep School has also created ‘parallel’ schools for drop-outs, like adolescent girls who do domestic work during the day, whose needs remain unmet. They attend evening classes taught in each lane of the slums between 7 and 9 p.m. Once a Doorstep School ‘graduate’ is enrolled in a government-funded school, the organisations could follow up and conduct study classes to guide the children through the formal school system.
