Mumbai in March: Hot Weather, Chilling Poverty

Travel articles about Mumbai focus on the exotic, the cliché. They don’t talk about the poverty, the families sleeping on the streets, the children begging. Sure, I watched Slumdog Millionaire before I went – but that was hardly adequate preparation for what I would see there.

I was only going for one week for the World Tobacco or Health Conference. I wasn’t going as a tourist. I wasn’t going to look around. So, I didn’t read any travel books. I didn’t know anything much about India. The November 08 ‘terrorist’ attacks on Mumbai had happened just three months earlier, with the Oberoi Trident, one of the venues for the Conference, targeted. Mum didn’t want me to go. Others questioned if it was safe. I naively assessed that the risk was over. Anyway, I wouldn’t be staying in one of those excessively expensive hotels. Many Americans decided not to attend the conference, putting it at risk of being able to go ahead. I made a political decision to support India, to support the conference being held in a developing nation and attend despite the terrorist risk.

You can see the slums adjacent to the airport, as you fly in and you pass them on your way out of the airport area. Anything I’ve ever seen about the slums, has been negative. But, on my way out of Mumbai, my thinking was that at least many of the people that lived in the slums had a roof and somewhere to put their stuff.

In the street my hotel was on, there was a family (man, woman and a baby, infant and or toddler) living on the footpath every 50 metres. They were there all day and night. They were there lying together asleep at 6am in the morning when my colleague and I went out for a walk. They lay seemingly in their one set of clothing, on a piece of cloth or cardboard, uncovered. One baby, naked from the waist down, had rolled off the cardboard and was sleeping on its back directly on the concrete paving.

Every day, the women and children would try to sell us their wares: flowers or blown up balloons. They weren’t begging. But, the travel guides, I had by now consulted said don’t give money to the beggars, don’t buy from them: because they’re run by gangs; because it supports their dependency on begging; because only more will come. None of these reasons made me feel any better about ignoring the pleading. In my stomach it felt wrong and all week I slept badly, not knowing what I could usefully do.

My Indian colleagues answered my questions which helped a bit. It was hot, humid and it wasn’t the rainy season – sleeping outside was quite normal in India. Okay, but the little babies and children living in the street dust, unwashed for I don’t know how long, with no toys – is that okay? As one conference organizer put it, “for Mumbai, accommodation is very expensive so living on [the] footpath is not exactly indicative of extreme poverty. And many such families and children consider persistent begging especially from foreigners as craft for easy money.” He said, “if you can get these children out of their mask, and get them engaged in an activity and conversation, they would seem like children anywhere else.” Oh okay, so they can afford to eat (cooked food at least could be found very cheap, though not at the places the tourists want to eat at). Still, I doubt they get to choose the pavement over the white-washed gleaming palace-like homes of the richest Mumbai residents. Maybe they have a suburban flat but they make a good living camping out for a week at a time outside tourist hotels begging and selling flowers and taking whatever the tourists will give them? Yeah, right!

The conference organizers responded very kindly to my concerns. Another said, that whilst it does not condone the poverty, it might help to know that “the people who are poor and homeless do not blame anyone else for their lot. They just feel that the opportunity either did not come their way because it was not meant to or they did not use it.” And another said. “Everything is not exactly what it seems to be. For one thing, poverty in India does not inversely correlate that well with happiness as in many other countries.” So, because they don’t mind, I shouldn’t either? But, I do!

They said it was difficult “to advise others on what they should do with our problems. Probably one thing we can say is not to get overwhelmed by our problems.” Well I was quite overwhelmed and worried for weeks on my return. I felt ashamed by my behaviour whilst there: walking around like rich tourists ignoring the poverty of others. It wasn’t til the end of my week there, that I grasped how much our money could buy (lunch for four Kiwi adults for just $NZ4). I was leaving by the time I realized I should have just bought the flowers and balloons and decorated our hotel room with them. If that was their craft, their business – good on them. Seems like they’re creating opportunity where best they can and that’s what I’d be supporting - poor peoples’ enterprise, not their dependency on tourists.

The book I found that helped me understand what action I should have taken and what I could do now I am home was: “The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty” by Peter Singer. www.thelifeyoucansave.com

Whilst I was not able to donate to help the babies living homeless in Mumbai (because no charity in New Zealand does that), I am the 3849th person to pledge to donate at least as much as required by Peter Singer’s recommendations to appropriate organizations, which in New Zealand is Oxfam www.oxfam.org.nz. I also have increased my donations to ECPAT (who work to eliminate child prostitution and child pornography and the trafficking of children for sexual purposes) www.ecpat.org.nz.

Mumbai has given me a greater appreciation for the privileged life most of us in New Zealand enjoy, and because I think it’s healthier to stay aware, I’m going to hang on to my guilt and shame about how I come by such a comparably rich and easy life - at the expense of the poor in other countries.