Ultra-slum dwellers must be given access to welfare provisions
The open sewer runs straight for 10 kilometres. In a gorge about 8 metres deep and 50 metres wide, with sides sloping such that 20 metres of its width in the middle is flat. The 6-metre-wide sewer is in the middle of this flat stretch.
An elevated highway runs over this gorge for its entire length of 10 kilometres, about 20 metres above the sewer and about 12 metres above the land on the banks of the gorge. A busy railway line runs parallel to the southern bank for most of the stretch, and a road on the northern bank. The highway above covers the entire width of the gorge.
From the high-speed six-lane highway, the gorge with the sewer in the middle is not visible because it is right underneath. Swirling dark muck flows fast in the sewer. It is the worst of the waste from a city of over 2 million people.
The stench is thick and settled. Over 2,000 families live on the slopes of the gorge. In shanties made of discarded plastic, metal sheets and rotting wood.
The sewer overflows during monsoon rains, so the shanties are only up to half the distance down the naked slopes, with no obstruction to the eye, stark from both banks of the gorge. At intervals along the sewer, frayed saris can be seen wrapped around four bamboo sticks dug in the ground to form a two-by-two square foot toilet. Outside the gorge, even those who live nearby believe that the shanties house hooch-makers, drug-peddlers and other petty criminals.
But if you do not judge from the high banks and brave a descent into the gorge, you will meet the typical poverty-stricken Indian. A labourer, traffic signal-vendor or a beggar, doing what it takes to survive. There must be a few criminals amid them, but unlikely to be any more than in the swanky high-rises that
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