By Matters India Reporter
Mumbai: Founder president of National Slum Dwellers Federation Jockin Arputham died on October 13 at Sion Hospital, Mumbai. He was 71.
His funeral is scheduled for 4 pm on October 15 at St. Peter and Paul Church Rayapuram in Chennai.
He took pride in calling himself a slum dweller and accepted with the same felicity when he was referred to as the `toilet man.’
For Arputham, the mission was to give dignity to the residents of ghettos across 37 countries.
Redeveloping slums, providing them access to water and sanitation, and forming savings groups were some of his initiatives — all with the participation of the community and cooperation of the state machinery.
Ever since Arputham made Mumbai his home he has worked for the people around him.
The visible transformation especially in the ghettos of Mumbai, where he is based, is a testimony to his tireless work.
His work earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize 2014, which eventually was shared by fellow Indian Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan.
Arputham’s office was situated amid dingy and meandering lanes of the dusty and crowded market across the main road that leads to Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum.
Years ago Arputham too was shocked by the huge urban slum and its filth when he migrated to Mumbai from Tamil Nadu for greener pastures. But the youngster, just 18 then, could find a home only in the slums of Janata colony.
He started with sundry carpentry work and then managed to obtain a sub-contract at the nearby Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
Later, he began an informal evening school for kids as his first service project for the community.
And when the garbage menace in their locality became intolerable, he simply took the municipality head on. It all started with his students, on his direction, dumping packets of trash wrapped in newspapers near the municipal office in Chembur.
When the police were called, he had fearlessly said the act would be repeated until the garbage was cleared. The civic body was forced to act.
Arputham’s maiden proactive protest fetched a positive reaction and then there was no stopping him. He took every civic issue plaguing the colony in hand and set a precedent by cleaning the toilets himself.
His leadership came to the fore when he mobilized 70,000 inhabitants of Janata colony against an eviction drive in 1976.
Arputham escaped arrest several times during the Emergency for spearheading protests. Later he moved to Dharavi and founded the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF).
The citations of Ramon Magsaysay award (2000), Padma Shri (2011) and an honorary Ph.D from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar (2009) adorn the sparsely furnished office.
Arputham, a recipient of 2014 Skoll award for social entrepreneurship, worked in 37 countries through Slum Dwellers International (SDI), a global movement that has benefitted thousands of people living in ghettos across 453 cities.
According to SDI, around 1 million people have benefitted from the 15,000 slum dwellers-managed saving groups. The movement is said to have secured land rights for 128,000 families, built over 20,000 toilets, and 100,000 houses.
According to Arputham, slums may remain an eyesore but the harsh reality is that a demolition drive would render thousands homeless. “These people are the human resources that make a city livable,” he pointed out.
Many found better housing, thanks to the rehabilitation projects. “
The NSDF has rehabilitated more than 60,000 families in Mumbai alone.
He firmly believed that women empowerment went a long way in mobilizing the community.
When Arputham started NSDF, his primary concern was housing to the poor and elimination of open defecation.
Arputham’s leadership came to the fore when he mobilized 70,000 inhabitants of Janata colony against an eviction drive in 1976.
“The community should fend for itself without depending on the Government or anyone else,” Arputham insists. His underlying principle of putting the onus on the community and creating a demand-driven system has been highly successful.
Police panchayat is another novel initiative started under his leadership in 2004 replicating IPS officer A.N.Roy’s successful concept implemented in Pune.
“A petty matter like fetching water from the community taps ends up in serious squabble among the people in slums. Finally, they end up paying fine to the police besides wasting their time and energy. In matters like this police panchayat has a constructive role to play,” says Jeenat Aziz Mirza, a local.
The police panchayat resolves minor disputes within a community of 800-1000 families. Each panchayat has ten members consisting of three men and seven women, whose verification is duly done by the police.
Arputham is all praise for the police panchayat. He cites a recent incident wherein a teenage girl was raped and killed in Baiganwadi slum by a local tailor who had conveniently wrapped the dead body in a ‘chatai’ (mat) and dumped it in a garbage bin.
The police panchayat women recognized the ‘chatai’ and the shreds of cloth found in his shop clinging on to the dead body, which pointed the needle of suspicion to the tailor. The tailor was cornered and he admitted to committing the crime.
Whether Arputham being proposed for or even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize does not have a bearing on the slum fraternity among whom he stands tall for his unrelenting commitment to ensuring them a decent and dignified living.
Arputham, true to his name (which translates to Miracle in Tamil), was indeed a marvel for the slum dwellers of the world, says Kavita Kanan Chandra, who wrote a feature on Arputham in theweekendleader.com