India: Potters In the Shadow of India Gate by Shubha Menon

India: Potters In the Shadow of India Gate
By Shubha Menon
A short six kilometres from the swish new Metro rail line at Delhi's Uttam Nagar East and a 25 kilometre drive from India Gate, lies Asia's biggest potter's colony.It is located on the fringes of Sainik Enclave and the approach to the village is like entering any lower middle class residential area in this city. Anil, the driver, has often regaled me with stories about the progress that has visited his colony recently: How land prices have shot up with the arrival of the Metro, how halogen lamps have transformed night into day in even the innermost lanes of the 'mohallas' (local area) and how an upcoming flyover is going to ease traffic congestion. As he speaks I imagine that Delhi is fast becoming a more attractive place for all.
Such a pre-conception is hastily discarded as I finally reach the potter's colony. The approach road is a stinking six kilometres of potholes. But once I reach, I am entranced: here is a place that is a reservoir of art, where potters practise the skills handed down from one generation to the next. I am fascinated by the numerous neat rows of 'gamlas' (flowerpots) stacked up on every roof. The entire colony is tinted in hues of earthy brown. Everywhere, pots are in different stages of completion. I see women of all ages engrossed in work, some putting pots to bake inside kilns, some stacking the baked pots, others colouring them burnt orange. In fact, women participate in every stage of pottery making. Starting with beating and threshing the mud, they mix it with water and knead the dough into a malleable consistency. The pots are then shaped and placed in a secure place to dry. Finally, the women stoke the fires in the kilns and bake the products. They do this amidst their daily chores of cooking, cleaning and looking after the children.
I spot a strong, buxom woman in a courtyard. She is mixing water with mud, manipulating the dough that will be shaped into pots. I go up and ask her where she is from and if she is content with life. Her story is one that is echoed by woman after woman in the village.
Santara, AGE, came to this village twenty years ago when opportunities for work dried up in her village in Rajasthan's Alwar district. The family bought land, built kilns, set up living quarters and were ready for business. Santara pauses in her work and wipes her brow with a deep sigh. In one pithy sentence, she sums up the situation, "Paani ka ghana rona hai." ("Water is a huge cause of distress here.")
It is ironical indeed that while the potter's mud soaks up very drop of water it comes in contact with, there is no proper supply of drinking water here. At the same time, sewage water stagnates in the drains. For Santara and the other women, this is a situation without a solution.
Election posters and announcements are loud and insistent in making their presence felt, but civic amenities are conspicuous by their absence. In this village of more than 3,000 families, there is no water or tap and no provision for drainage. The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) does not acknowledge the existence of this village, while politicians come only when they need votes.
So what is really happening in this village that the authorities cannot see or refuse to do so? To begin with, cholera, typhoid, dengue and the flu.
The villagers have constructed toilets in every home. But the refuse from the toilets flows into drains where it either overflows or stagnates to become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Since there is no sewage system in place, the water simply stays there. When the drains start spilling over, residents scoop up the filth in buckets and fling it on the road. The lack of hygiene is apparent everywhere. Plastic bags float in murky pools by the roadside. Household waste rots in piles, around homes and in empty plots. Slush pools are everywhere, dark with algae, humming with breeding colonies of insects.
I enter one of the homes. In the verandah, Sapna, 13, is scouring dirty dishes. The rancid water flows into a narrow drain a metre away, right next to the hand pump that draws up ground water. I ask Sapna where she goes for a bath. She points inside. I see a single room, a pile of mud, half-finished pots, a cooking area, all in the same space. Sapna tells me that when she wants to bathe, she simply shuts herself into the house and uses her home as a bathroom.
In school too, the young girls face the problem of lack of privacy and the paucity of water. "Sakool mein toh hum kabhi toilet nahin jaatey. Paani nahin hai na, bahut gandagi rehti hai, badboo aati hai (In school I never go to the toilet. There is no water so it is very dirty and smelly)," explains Sapna.
A group of women gather and giggle as I click pictures of toilets and open drains. I ask them what problems they face given these unhygienic conditions and why none of them protested against the situation. They tell me that the lack of a sewage system and the non-availability of drinking water are making their existence unbearable. The ground water is unfit for drinking, as it is untreated, hard water. The municipal water supply does not extend to the colony. Tankers arrive once in 10 days, leading to a mad scramble to fill vessels. Squabbles are common.
When the tanker water runs out, women and children have to walk up to five kilometres to the nearest municipal tap. But only a few families make the effort to procure clean drinking water. The majority subsists on ground water. The hand pumps and wells have been dug in the midst of sewage waste, which freely seeps into the ground water. Consequently the water the pumps yield is often muddy and smelly and in the rainy season, there are insects in it. As a result, children fall sick regularly. Eye infections are rampant. Every year, dengue fever and chikangunia snatch several lives.
So why don't they take action, I ask the women around me? Why don't they get together and clean up? Manju, AGE, the most outspoken of them all, pipes up indignantly, "If the municipality does not provide us with drinking water, what can we do? As for cleaning up, we scoop up the water from the drains when they overflow and throw it on the road. There is no arrangement to take away garbage, so we let it collect. As for the politicians, they are interested only in our votes, not in our woes."
Full of questions, I turn to Rahul Barua of South Asia Foundation (SAF), a Development organization that is engaged in preserving the artisan's way of life. According to Rahul, the potters are trapped in a never ending cycle of debt, borrowing money to buy raw material, paying off the loan with earnings and then borrowing again.
As I trudge back to my car at the end of the visit, I notice my feet. They are covered with brown mud. Is it the dust from the potter's wheel or is it the toxic mud from some gutter, I wonder. Well, it is probably a mix of both. I can drive away from this squalor but for the women I leave behind, there is no escape.