When one turns towards the Qasimabad area in Hyderabad, off the superhighway from Abdullah Sports Complex, one cannot miss the hundreds of jhuggis [slum dwellings made out of mud with corrugated iron sheets for roofs] located on empty plots on the outskirts of the city. This has been my route to the University of Sindh Jamshoro for the last couple of years. Since then, I have been curiously watching life in these jhuggis at least twice a day.
Many a time, I wanted to walk into this jhuggi-sphere and see for myself who these people are, living in this pitiable way. But somehow, it never happened. However, my interest in the wretched jhuggis and their resilient residents started reviving after the unprecedented rain and floods in the last monsoon season, which forced them to shift their broken huts to the other side of the road as well.
They were mercilessly displaced. The jhuggi area which they call Machhar colony is situated in a land depression and hence the rain and overflowing drainage water from the roadside and the nearby city settlements gushed in and gathered to form a large lake. All they could do was to temporarily settle on the brink of this double road. One could see a sudden mushrooming of the jhuggis from one corner of the road to the other with only a small patch of the road spared for the traffic to commute through. Now, the jhuggis and the lives of those living within were exposed to everyone as they were literally on the road for at least two to three months or until the water subsided.
I walked into the jhuggi area around 6 pm with the sun setting in the background. There are around 500 Jhuggis, according to Ali Jan who runs a roadside dhaaba tea stall just in front of this huge colony. I asked Ali if he could provide me with a resource person from amongst the jhuggiwallas to take me inside the colony. He signalled to someone called Ameeruddin for the purpose, who sat at the gate of the only mosque in the area after offering his Asr prayer.
Mevo Bheel with his family in their open kitchen
Ameer is a new Muslim, converted from Bheels along with his family and cousins some 20 years ago. “I am a ‘Shaikh’ by caste now and offer prayers regularly,” he says proudly. I sat with Ameer at the dhabba and had tea with him to develop a rapport. We quickly finished our tea and headed for the jhuggis.
We started from the northern clusters belonging to Shikari Bheels. To my sheer surprise, Ameer avoided entering these jhuggis pointing at their open kitchen with marked disdain and hate on his face. “It seems they are cooking meat of some dead animal or have hunted a haram beast,” he said. My impression that all jhuggiwallas are one community ethnically, culturally, and socially died at the very onset.
However, leaving Ameer outside, I entered the jhuggi of Mevo Bheel. He was washing some meat in a big pot. Looking at us, he tried to hide the pot, and we didn’t ask him to show what was inside the pot. We took some pictures of his jhuggi with his permission and sat down to talk to him. Aged 53, Mevo has been living in this jhuggi settlement for the last thirty years along with his 45-year-old wife Hashoori and their three daughters and a son. Their jhuggi life is miserable beyond imagination. Mevo sells seasonal fruit on a tiny hand-pulled cart from which he hardly earns four to five hundred pounds a day. “From this amount, we can hardly arrange tea and rusks in the morning and one meal for dinner time,” says Mevo, his eyes brimming and his wrinkled face earnest as he swore that they have never cooked lunch in their home since many years. Built on someone else’s land, his family has two shabby huts with no toilet facility. In fact, the entire community or settlement does not have even a common community latrine or bathroom. They still follow open defecation practice and use nearby agricultural land and both sides of roads as an open privy.
Two Jhuggis of Mevo Bheel
This is a major cause of conflict with the neighbouring farmers. Many times, they have been severely beaten up and warned. They also face a severe threat of dislocation by landowners and farmers because of this problem. Women bathe themselves in the open courtyard of jhuggis in a makeshift enclosure of charpoys and rallis. There is no piped or pump water in the entire Jhuggi settlement. Their children fetch water from nearby mosques, hotels, or under-construction homes and plazas.
They do not receive any financial, economic, or social support from any government, non-government, religious, or cultural organisation. However, there are many organisations and forums of the scheduled caste community in existence but so far they have not been effective and instrumental in solving the problems of these people at large because their organisations do not represent and stand for the entire scheduled population. “Instead, they work for individual castes within this population,” says Hussain. “There are individual forums for Bheels, Kolhis, Meghwars and other castes falling in the group. But neither there is a single effective and vocal organisation for all the castes nor these caste-based associations and organisations are united with other similar groups. The Schedule Caste Federation of Pakistan was formed to unite and work for all the marginalised castes in the scheduled category but it has not borne the desired results because of caste-based disintegration and polarisation within the federation.”
The major reason for this exclusion and marginalisation is that most of them lack identity. The majority of the jhuggi dwellers do not have CNICs. Mevo and his wife possess old national identity cards that were made some twenty years ago during an election. Without CNICs, they are excluded from all institutional mainstreaming programmes. Neither can they take financial assistance from government windows like BISP, nor can they avail a small loan from a microfinance organisation. They cannot send their children to schools. They cannot get their patients admitted to a hospital. They cannot travel freely from one city to another on public transport. They cannot purchase mobile phones. Most importantly, they cannot purchase property. This is one of the major causes that they are homeless. They cannot settle down anywhere without their piece of land. As they do not have their homes or even a permanent settlement, they face difficulties in registering themselves with Nadra and getting CNICs.
Wife of Mevo preparing meals for the family
When the Nadra office in Qasimabad, Hyderabad, was approached about the CNIC issue, *Jawaid Ahmed, assistant director Nadra, Qasimabad said, “The major difficulty in the registration of these banjaras [nomad gypsies] with Nadra is that they lack official documents required by the office. Neither they have their homes nor permanent addresses, utility bills, or other documentary proof verifying their whereabouts or addresses”. It seems this is why they are called nomads/banjaras. It is the vicious cycle of poverty in practice.
Another marginalisation caused by the lack of CNICs is that they cannot vote as they are not registered as voters with the election commission. This implies they are also marginalised politically. As they are not registered voters, they do not get the attention of political leadership in any election. This adds to their economic and social suffering. However, the upcoming general elections may be used as an opportunity for their registration if they can succeed in catching the attention of the local political leadership.
“Jhuggiwallas are historically marginalised communities,” says Hussain about the poverty, exclusion, and marginalisation of the community living in jhuggis. “Their poverty and marginalisation date back to hundreds of years. They have not fallen to this abject socioeconomic setting suddenly but they have been in this life for centuries. Officially, they are described as scheduled castes according to article 260 of the constitution of Pakistan. Some political activists from the scheduled castes call themselves aadesi i.e. original dwellers of the land and claim to be the founders of the Indus valley civilisation. But specifically, the jhuggiwallas are ultra-subaltern or people who do not have a voice i.e. they cannot speak for themselves. Someone else can write or speak for them but they themselves lack this ability. Who will write and speak for them? We find no clue. All scholars, politicians, social workers, and academicians become dumb at this question.
This is the story of almost every family in the jhuggis. After Mevo, we roamed around the entire settlement to see if there was any difference in their jhuggis or lives.
Shoukat Ali in front of his hut
I expected to see the Muslim-Shaikh families to somehow be better off or different from the others. But I was equally disappointed to see their condition. There was no visible difference in living standards, jhuggi structure, water and sanitation facilities, clothing, cleanliness or even culture. The only difference observed was that they hated each other without bounds. They are different only in their feelings about one another.
Having walked across the settlement, we talked to Ameer’s cousin Shaukat Ali. Shaukat, 45, also embraced Islam along with Ameer and others. His wife is twenty years younger than him and they have five children. Shaukat is a construction worker and also collects garbage when there is no work. One of his sons is also in the garbage-collection profession. His younger children beg in the nearby markets of Qasimabad. Together they earn an income of around Rs700-Rs900. None of their children go to school but some of them go to the nearby mosque to learn the Quran.
According to Ameer and Shaukat, there are around 100 Muslim families living in the jhuggis but only a few of these families have CNICs. Shaukat’s wife received income under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) but the income has stopped for some reason. When we spoke to Shoaib Ahmed Qureshi, a local BISP official on this issue, he said, “The income of the beneficiary stops if the CNIC expires.” Just like Mevo’s hut, Shaukat and Ameer’s huts are built on the landlord’s property. They too lack water and sanitation services.
Shoukat’s TV set
However, unlike that of Mevo, Shaukat prepares meals twice a day in their open kitchen. Shaukat also has a television which is great entertainment for his family and the families of his brothers and cousins living nearby. There appears none to mainstream, help, and support these wretched on the earth. So why can’t these semi-nomadic jhuggiwallas be mainstreamed? “Caste stigma is a major issue,” explains Hussain, an Islamabad-based anthropologist working on Dalit communities of Pakistan, especially in Sind. “Because of the caste system, neither Hindus nor Muslims own, support, and help them. Within themselves, they are divided into more than forty different castes each hating one another. They are discriminated on caste basis. Even emerging castes from them such as Meghwars and Oads also are not spared from this discrimination.”
Despite this gravity of the issue, policy response at any government level to mainstream these scheduled castes is missing altogether. Pakistan’s constitution urges that backward communities such as the scheduled castes be taken care of so that they can grow and develop themselves. There is no universal quota for scheduled castes. The minority quota for jobs or admission is for all non-Muslims including Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs but the separate quota for these outcastes is missing. According to Establishment code (ESTA CODE) of Pakistan, the scheduled castes are to be given especial privileges and the district management, especially deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners, are required to proactively take concrete steps to mainstream the scheduled caste communities. But one wonders if the district management is aware of this, let alone taking any measures.
With the general elections approaching soon, one prays that these poor people get attention from some political party for their benefit if not of these marginalised and hapless humans.
*Name changed to protect privacy
Dr Ali Gul Khushik teaches economics at University of Sindh, Jamshoro
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer