In our very backyard…about 300 meters from our IBM Research India offices, and right in front of Teri University, there is a tent village that has sprung up, for families working on some of the nearby construction sites. The living conditions are….horrific. These are tents with no sanitation nearby, no water, no electricity. The kids play around the site with no formal structure; a couple of kids go to government schools but the vast majority do not.
So many questions emerge. One question is….why would these families come from their villages to live in the city of Delhi under these conditions? Some of my colleagues point out that the cities have better infrastructure, with respect to water, electricity. This may well be true….but THESE communities aren’t enjoying the “better infrastructure” of more available electricity. They are so close to the bottom of existence, that I can’t imagine what is worse in their home villages, unless they are literally starving there. A friend of a friend works with village NGOs….she has indicated that people are in fact more nutritionally deprived if they stay in their villages, and that life in Delhi hutments is an improvement.
Another question that emerges (though I should have stopped asking this question by now) is, how is it tolerated? There might be construction going on at 34th street in NYC, and it might be convenient for the builders to have low wage laborers pitch tents right outside, but this just wouldn’t/couldn’t happen. Can’t there be some mandate that requires the developers to build some off-site accommodation for their low cost laborers?
Some of my colleagues have initiated tutoring sessions for these kids, an activity that I have thoroughly and completely embraced. We meet with about 25 kids 3 evenings a week, and tutor them in basic math, and teach them letters/reading (in Hindi). We provide them with a healthy snack (mango, bananas) at the end of the lessons. Some of the adults have joined in as well…they, too, are illiterate, and some of them want to learn. Getting the adults involved is a great boon; it suggests they will support, encourage, and tutor their own children.
We have provided the kids with a lot of “stuff” - - we bought them some clothes that we call their “school uniforms.” We got them notebooks, pencils, folders, pencil boxes. I need to learn to deal with some of the unpleasant sides that accompany desperate neediness. They always want more. Jesse and Tom volunteered for a few of these tutoring sessions before they left India. Jesse was annoyed when he saw kids taking a mango at the end, then hiding it and claiming they had never gotten one. I pointed out that hunger, and the fact that you might not get another mango anytime soon, can spawn these behaviors. Jesse said that they are ignoring the kid next to them…who is ALSO hungry…and will go without getting any fruit at all if other kids take multiples. Maybe kids can’t think that philosophically when they are hungry. Our IRL colleagues have created more orderly systems for distributing the treats at the end of the lesson. I muse about whether we are teaching them behaviors that are MALADAPTIVE for the circumstances that they live in….not “grabbing” from us is fine, and everyone WILL get their share…but perhaps in their “real worlds,” not pushing to the front to get what you want will result in not getting what you need to survive….
We took the kids to see a movie a few weeks ago. (Stanley Ka Dabba…particularly appropriate, since it addresses child labor.) So many firsts for these kids. The movie was in a nearby mall (1 km from their tents, but a world away.) The kids had never been on an escalator, and needed help to take the first step. We got them ice cream after the movie. The girls (aged 5 – 10 or so) asked me to take them to the “toilet.” I did. They went into the stalls, closed the doors…and peed on the floor. It hadn’t occurred to me that they had never used a toilet. The maintenance woman was forgiving; it was clear to her that I was accompanying kids that didn’t know any better and that I was from “outside” and wouldn’t have suspected this. I asked a nearby Indian woman to explain to the girls (in Hindi) what they were supposed to do in bathrooms. These poor and illiterate kids need to learn so much more than just their letters and arithmetic. A song keeps running through my head that reflects this experience...."There's a hole in the bucket, dear Henry dear Henry..."
I am so grateful for this opportunity to get involved and help these kids in some small way; it has been a gift for me. But I get really “judgmental” when others walk by while we are working with the kids, and don’t also get involved. Some men from the community that work in nearby offices come out in the early evening to do yoga on the same field where we are tutoring. And I am bothered that they don’t ask to get involved….this is their own community that will grow up to be illiterate, perhaps criminal, and a drain on social welfare….How can they so blithely do yoga, with these clearly needy kids just a few meters away from them? If we have 25 kids, we could benefit from 25 volunteers…we only have an hour or so, 3 times/week, and all the kids are at different levels and could benefit from more individual attention. I am reminded of a quote from a book that my friend Erik lent me many years ago, about the wealthier class not hearing/seeing the poor people nearby:
From Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward - - Utopian Novel from 1888…
Do none of you know what sights the sun and stars look down on in this city, that you can think and talk of anything else? Do you not know that close to your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! Their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery turned half-way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped your ears that you do not hear those doleful sounds? For me, I can hear nothing else.’
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