mumbaiweeklyMumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011, Pages 08 Issue # 01 www.mumbaiweekly.net facebook.com/mumbaiweekly twitter.com/mumbaiweekly

newspaper run by students of Udaan school of photography

Anna threatens fast against slow government.

Indian protestors wave the Indian tricolour as they ride a motorcycle during a rally in Mumbai on 11 December, 2011 The vehicle rally was organized by ‘India Against Corruption’ (IAC), a voluntary group, to urge the government to pass the ‘Lokpal Bill’, wan anti-corruption law in the winter session of the Indian parliament. Similar protests were witnessed in Delhi too. Shankar Narayan / Mumbai Weekly

FACES OF PROTEST

Hundreds of Mum-baikers on Sunday par-ticipated in a vehicle rally to express their solidarity with Indian anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare , who is campaigning for an ef-fective anti-corruption bill called the “Lokpal Bill’. Over 250 vehi-cles that included cy-cles,motorcycles and

even heavy vehicles like truck and buses, were part of the rally that began from ‘Shiv-aji Park’ in central Mum-bai and ended in South Mumbai’s well known ‘Azad Maidan’. Prior to the rally, Indi-an young-sters partici-pated in a street dance. The rally was organ-ised by the Mumbai

chapter of a voluntary group, ‘India Against Corrup-tion’ (IAC).Similar protests were witnessed in other parts of the western Indian state of Maharashtra and the Indian capital New Delhi too.Earlier in the month, Hazare had announced that he would go on an indefinite fast and start

a ‘jail bharo’ (fill pris-ons) agitation from the month-end, if the bill was not passed in the winter session of the Parlia-ment. The ruling Con-gress has urged Hazare for ‘patience’.

Shahnawaz Sheikh, 13-year-old runaway, waits in a shelter run by an NGO called Samatol in Mumbai on December 14, 2011. Sheikh had run away from his home as he was ill-treated by his father and step mother. According to the NGO, around 200 runaways arrive in India’s maximum city every month from across India, many of which eventually fall prey to drugs, beggary, physical abuse and illegal activities. Chirag Suttar / Mumbai Weekly

In a small room lo-cated in the distant suburbs of Mumbai, the atmos-phere ap-pears normal. Children run around, play an odd game of carrom, and fight among them-selves like any normal child would do - the only difference is that all the nine kids in this shelter, run by an NGO, are runaways from across India.Among them, Shah-nawaz Sheikh, the 13-year-old boy sits in a corner of the room. He enjoys a game or two in company of his other runaway friends, but every time some-one asks him about his par-ents and home he goes into a silence. The rea-son why he chose to leave his home was torture and abuse by his alcoholic father and step mother. “My parents are di-vorced. I have a elder

There is a sizeable number who escape from their homes be-cause of abuse, bad living condi-tions,” says Vijay Jad-hav, the founder of Samatol.

have scolded them for not performing well in studies, while oth-ers runaway because they want to meet bol-lywood stars or well-known cricketers.

the figures gathered by Samatol on runaways are revealing. “Around 200 children come to Mumbai every month for various rea-sons. Some runaway because they parents

back to my home,” he says. Most likely, the NGO will send him to a social centre where his basic needs and schooling will be taken care of. Meanwhile,

brother who is mar-ried, but he doesn’t look after me. My fa-ther is unem-ployed, and whatever he earns from odd jobs he spends it on alcohol. I do not want to go

Escaping for a good life

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2 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklypeople

A boy sells balloons on the pavement. Krishanu Nagar / Mumbai Weekly

A small child begs on a street in Mumbai as passerby’s walk along. Shankar Narayan / Mumbai Weekly

A disabled man sleeps on a pavement in downtown Mumbai. Satya Kirti / Mumbai WeeklyA mannequin lies in the scrap in a dump in Mumbai. Githartha Goswami / Mumbai Weekly

Children of a lesser God

Despite India’s eco-nomic growth, In-dian poor continue to remain poor. Accord-ing to the UN, India has over 600 million poor people

which is roughly half the country’s total population and ac-cording to a ten-year-old Indian census there are over 70 mil-lion home-less

people in the country, many in crowded cit-ies. And over three hundred thousand chil-dren live on the streets of Mumbai. India’s official

poverty line has been set at Rupees 26 (around $0.50) per day in rural areas and Ru-pees 32 (around $0.61) per day in ur-ban areas.

3 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklymetromumbai weekly

A monk walks among the ruins of a mill in Mumbai. The last few years has seen the once majestic mills being converted into residential and commercial complexes all over the city. Shailesh Andrade / Mumbai Weekly

Members of a social awareness group perform street play to spread awareness about HIV AIDS in Mumbai on 20 December, 2011. According to a UN health report, approximately five million people are af-fected by AIDS in India. Pratham Gokhale / Mumbai Weekly

Indian film star Shahrukh Khan speaks to mediapersons while sitting in front of his portrait during a promotional event in Mumbai on 11 December 2011 Khan’s ambitious Don 2 , where he will be playing the role of a gang-ster, will be releasing on 23rd December. Saarthak Aurora / Mumbai Weekly

A boy records the happenings of the Muhharam procession in Mumbai using a Tab. True to the city old traditions always have preceded newer changes.Saarthak Aurora / Mumbai Weekly

4 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklyeditorial

A senior citizen sleeps in a crowded Mumbai local train. Chirag Suttar / Mumbai Weekly

A man sits in front of a burnt shop in Mumbai. Shailesh Andrade / Mumbai Weekly

OPINION Battered and lonely

H u n d r e d - y e a r -old woman saw her daughter (70) dy-ing in front of her eyes. Since she was old, her feeble voice could not raise the alarm for help. For two days, she lay next to the dead body of her daugh-ter, and

the neighbors only dis-covered them after foul stench of the body started spreading in the sur-rounding area. This certainly isn’t a rare case, accord-ing to a research, the number of old people dying of loneliness and

abandonment is far more that old peo-ple dying of any disease.The numbers are magnanimous, but action taken so far, is none. The re-search by World Health Or-ganisa-tion suggests that there are 77 mil-lion old people in

India, and this number is likely to rise to 177 million by 2025. Ironically, 90 per cent of the older people are from un-organized sector with no social se-curity, while 40 per cent of the old live below the poverty line. t

Longevity has been one of the greatest achieve-ments of the 20th century, but it also means that today the number of older people is on the in-crease than ever be-fore. The last century has seen stupendous growth due to rapid

industrialization and ur-banization, but the same growth, soci-ologists suggest, have brought about some major changes in our so-cial struc-ture. The centuries old joint family sys-tem has disintegrat-ed, and with it has

collapsed the safety net of parents and grandparents. To add, since the wel-fare of the aged has been a low priority with the state they have no-where to turn, they are left disillusioned, shat-tered and lonely.

POINT OF VIEWNo lessons Learnt

for a reacting for a day or two and then willing our-selves to forget it in fa-vour of a Bollywood com-edy. After all its bet-ter and cheaper than spending money to re-vamp our fire preparede-ness. And definitely pay-ing a ‘token amount’ to a regulatory official is eco-nomical and quicker than laying deeper founda-tions or using the best quality cement for our buildings.Its not in our wealth, or the lack of it, that lies our country’s third world status. Its in our mind.Am I too cynical ? Well, whats the cricket score then, if that makes us feel any better.

Fire kills and we know it better than any other na-tion. Around 90 people died recently in a fire in AMRI hospital in Kol-kata. Earlier a fire in a school in Tamil Nadu claimed the lives of over 100 school children. And in a mental institu-tion in TamilNadu, and in an office com-plex in Banga-lore and in Kolkata’s Park Street. The list can go on and on. Yet we learn no lessons.And now there have been a report that a few Mum-bai hos-pitals are fire traps as well. And so are our homes. As a na-tion, we like to turn a blind eye to these, a tragic news report

mumbai weekly 5 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklyphoto essay

to sit. And while the government run Sarvashiksha Abhi-yan Scheme of free food might be en-couraging to some, students make do with drum lids for a plate. But despite the struggle, their smiles don’t fade.

As more and more Indians move to-wards educating their children in Eng-lish medium schools, vernacular schools seem to be on the verge of extinction in an ur-ban setting. Ironically, for the not so affluent section,

education in vernac-ular medium schools is perhaps the only affordable option left. Mumbai Weekly photographer Chirag Sutar visited one such Hindi medium school located on the

outskirts of Mumbai which has an overall school strength of 300 students.The school appears ramshackled, with broken sheets for clasroom partitions, and broken benches

no Inglish please

6 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklyeconomy

Above:Workers construct a building as Mumbai’s Worli Sea Link is seen at the background. Krishanu Nagar / Mumbai Weekly

Sahara Group

t o i n v e s t i n

Kingfisher?

E -waste and furniture scrap lie in front of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai. Krishanu Na-gar / Mumbai Weekly

Workers prepare to harness a load to a crane in Mumbai Krishanu Nagar / Mumbai Weekly

Mumbai’s Infra in

Redjust to meet the exist-ing requirements.Coming to Mum-bai specifically , the commercial capital of the country, has been steadily losing out to even other In-dian cities. In a re-cent study, Mum-bai gave way to Delhi as the most competitive Indian city. While Mum-bai’s roads are a dreaded by its citi-zen’s, its more than

India’s striking economic boom in the last decade, that symbolized the aspi-ration and energy of the new genera-tion , has hit a road block with the economy dramatically slowing down to a below 7% growth rate. And this compounded with high inflation lev-els, has hit where its hurts most – In-dia’s infrastructure spend-ing. While India is far behind China in

over 4 million kilom-eters of roads, suffer-ing from decades of neglect. A recent In-dian report identified that country needs to spend almost a thou-sand billion dollars on its infrastructure building its Infra-structure, even the existing projects have hit bottlenecks due to the slowdown, with an immediate need for India to up-grade its

matched in noto-riety by its drainage sys-tem espe-cially dur-ing monsoons.While there is no quick fix, the gov-ernment needs to start amending the situation before it too late, feels San-tosh, a young taxi driver, as he is al-most pro-phetic in his forecast “abhi nahi to kabhi nahi” (If not now, then never).

As India’s stock In-dex BSE fell more than 1.2% in early trade on Monday, the market’s focus how-ever, re-mained on the fate of the cash-strapped King-fisher airlines. Several In-dian media reported that India’s Sahara Group, may lend be-tween Rs 2500 mil-lion

(around $ 48 million) to Rs 5000 million (around $ 96 million) to the Kingfisher airlines.The chairman of the Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya said that negotiations are going on with Indian investors and bank-ers for infusing addi-tional funds into the struggling airlines. A Kingfisher Airlines aircraft stands in Mumbai’s Chattrapti Shivaji airport. Shailesh Andrade/Mumbai Weekly

mumbai weekly 7 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklysports features

A stunt performer rides his motorcycle during a ‘Wall of Death’ show in a wooden, cylindrical motordrome at a city fair in Mumbai on 15 December, 2011. This sideshow is part of a ‘Mahim Dragha fair’, a Muslim religious fair, attended by hundreds of thousands of devotees. Shankar Narayan / Mumbai Weekly

An Indian boy imi-tates former South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes dur-ing a training ses-sion at a coaching camp in Mum-bai on 15 December, 2011. Rhodes will be hold-ing a series of field-ing camps for bud-ding cricketers all across India. Forty-two-year-old Rhodes said that fielding is an aspect of cricket that makes one stand out from the rest.

Shankar Narayan / Mumbai Weekly

On roadto be aJonty

A group of Capoeira artists perform at a shopping mall in south Mumbai on 13 December, 2011. Saarthak Aurora / Mumbai Weekly

A group of Capoe-ira artists perform at a shop-ping mall in south Mum-bai on 13 December, 2011.Indian shoppers at Phoe-nix Mill were treated to a taste of ‘Capoeira’, a Bra-zilian art form, that combines mar-tial arts, sports and music. A group of Brazilian artists en-thralled the audience at the upmarket mall with their energetic perform-ance that in-volves the grace and flexibility of a dancer and strength and skill of a sportspersons.

The artists comprisi-ing of students of Ca-poeria, held the show with the aim to pro-mote this Bra-zilian martial art in the city.Capoeira, often mis-taken to be a dance form be-cause of the involvement of mu-sic, is a form of mar-tial arts with a com-bination of complex at-tack and defense moves. It was cre-ated in Brazil, mainly by descendants of African slaves with na-tive influences, which is believed to have started in the 16th century.

Is it a sport? Is it a dance?

It’s Capoeira!

8 | Mumbai, Tuesday, December 20, 2011 mumbai weeklyfeature

These are not imag-es from rural heart-land of India, but in the centre of India’s commercial capi-tal, Mumbai. While iphones, multi-plex-es and playstations are a rage in Mum-bai, where wrestling means WWF on television, Mumbai Weekly

photographers tfound that the traditional Indian mud wres-tling called kushti’ was alive and kicking and grappling, right in the heart of Mum-bai. ‘Kushti’ takes place in a clay or dirt pit and the wrestlers are expected follow strict rules – abstain from drinking,

smoking and sex. Kushti is pre-domi-nantly a North Indian ethnic sport— popu-lar in the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. However, Kushti is on the decline, with the advent of modern sports and entertain-ment and with the

Indian youth opting for more high pro-file and finan-cially lucrative sports like cricket and tennis. Here are a few im-ages of pehelwans (strongmen or wres-tlers) training in an ‘akhara’ (training centre) in Mumbai.

Rural mud wrestling in the cityPhotographs by Gitartha Goswami and Arkadaripta Chakrabhorthy

Kushti’