By Danielle Batist
As Nagma Sultana opens the curtain to the room where she lives, the stench of an open sewer nearby is overwhelming and the filthy room she calls home is empty apart from a thin rug placed on the floor.
Her abode is in a slum in Bangalore, and for Nagma and two million other impoverished citizens life on the margins in this city is a daily struggle for survival. Life is even tougher for Nagma – a young Muslim girl who suffers from polio in her left leg.
“Sometimes people push me away from a busy bus stop and I almost fall over. They don't see I'm disabled when I wear the burqa,” the 15-year-old says.
Her living conditions are not what politicians and investors wax lyrical about when they promote India’s own "Silicon Valley", a moniker given to a city famed across the globe for its burgeoning IT industry. Nagma’s slum is a far cry from the glass-panelled, steel-framed offices and mega malls that have come to dominate Bangalore during its technology boom. Indeed, the metropolis is one of the world's most famous icons of globalisation.
When the renowned New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman announced in a 2005 book that The World is Flat, the prime example he gave was Bangalore. The world's next Silicon Valley was, Friedman said, “able to compete equally for global knowledge work as never before” and he concluded that India was at the heart of “globalisation 3.0”, which was “shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time”.
Seven years later and millions of Indians have moved upwards socially to become middle class. Women in particular have made a huge leap forward, but prosperity has not provided the trickle-down effect that many people assumed. In its latest country overview from September 2011 for example, the World Bank warned that although the nation’s impressive economic growth has brought significant economic and social benefits to the country, disparities in income and human development are on the rise.
With 17.4 million people in need of urgent help to cope with their physical disability and to escape extreme poverty, the challenges are huge. The United Nations predicted that, by 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 81 per cent of urban humanity.
Disparity between rich and poor citizens in these cities is vast, and bridging these gaps will be one of the biggest challenges of the century. Last year's official Census of India statistics showed that Bangalore's district population rose a staggering 47 per cent in just ten years, making it the second-fastest growing city in India, after Delhi.
The Indian Institute of Science estimates that Bangalore has about 30 per cent of all IT workforce in the country. Global corporations such as Infosys, with 60,000 employees, have drastically changed the city's – as well as the country's – image. American Express released a report in 2007 revealing that Bangalore is home to 10,000 millionaires and 60,000 near-millionaires. At the same time, about a quarter of the city's 8.4 million citizens still live in slums, with 20 per cent living below the poverty line.
Chiranjib Sen, a professor of economics and social sciences who recently retired from the Indian Institute of Management of Bangalore, says the phenomenal growth has not been inclusive. “Prosperity is very much linked with the IT sector. It is giving rise to a large number of well-paid people in the service sector, but it is not able to integrate large numbers. We have got just 11 per cent of people with higher education, and the skilled workforce makes up only 5 per cent of the total. It has not led to a great spread of equality.”
Nagma is at the sharp end of inequality. She contracted the polio virus when she was just nine months old. Her father walked out on the family when she was a toddler, leaving his wife alone to care for five daughters and two sons. The family struggled and with no money for a hospital examination, Nagma's mother resorted to traditional and religious healing methods to try and cure her daughter.
“They used to take me to the Dargah temple, some 100 kilometres away by bus," she says. "People with illnesses go there on a pilgrimage when it is full moon and half moon. They did lots of pujas [ritual prayers] for me. I also got oil massage treatments for my leg and my family was fasting for 16 days at a time. They believed it would cure me.”
While the city around Nagma underwent the biggest makeover in its history, her childhood was a constant struggle. “I could not go to school because I couldn't walk," she says. "The neighbour kids used to call me names, like 'spastic', and when they were skipping they said I couldn't join. It made me really sad.”
As a single-parent household, her family's income is barely enough to live on. “My mother and sisters sell dosa [crispy savoury pancakes] from morning to evening, they make around 30 or 40 rupees per day [less than 50 pence]. I help by rolling incense sticks, which earns us around 10 rupees per day. We usually only eat dosa, no vegetables, fruit or meat. Sometimes we just drink water and go to sleep. I feel angry because my dad does not care about us, but we are lucky to have the type of mum that we have. When we don't have enough food, she gives her own to us and does not eat herself.”
Thanks to a local charity, the Association of People with Disability (APD), Nagma has received mobility aides including crutches and callipers which allow her to walk independently and attend school. APD, which is supported by Scottish charity SCIAF, also assisted Nagma's illiterate mother in applying for a government disability pension. Although it amounts to just 400 rupees per month [£5], the money often makes the difference between food or no food for the family. Parent training classes helped the mother understand Nagma's disability, and she now assists her daughter with physiotherapy exercises.
Nagma is part of the last generation to grow up with polio in India. After decades of battling to eradicate the virus, India came off the World Health Organization list of polio endemic countries in January this year. In 2009, India still had the largest number of polio cases in the world, but after a 12-month period without any new cases, the disease is officially tackled. With only Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria left on the world list, polio will soon be a disease of the past.
For young patients such as Nagma, however, her condition will very much determine their future. “In my culture, girls usually marry at 16," she says. "But who will marry me? If people see my leg, they think that Allah is punishing me. My family will have to pay more dowry for me.”
Although India banned the payment of dowries in 1961, the practice is still commonplace. Brides' families who cannot afford to pay the often high sums of money requested by their new in-laws encounter harassment and sometimes violent threats. Women's groups claim that up to 25,000 brides are murdered each year when the demanded dowry cannot be paid.
The future for Nagma's family remains uncertain, as the room they live in belongs to the family in-law, who have threatened to throw them out since their son stopped paying for their rent. Nagma looks up to the sky when she thinks about what might happen to them. “Only God knows where we will go.”
– Danielle Batist is news editor with the International Network of Street Papers.
● The Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) has been working with vulnerable people in India since 1985. SCIAF supports people affected by conflict, hunger, poverty, injustice and disease, regardless of their religion. Its annual WEE BOX, BIG Change Lent campaign runs until 7 April. You can get involved by simply giving up a favourite treat such as chocolate during Lent, putting the money you save into a WEE BOX, and then donating it to SCIAF. To order your WEE BOX and sign the campaign action, visit www.theweebox.org or call 0141-354 5555.
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