Jobless villagers keep pouring into the Subcontinent's exploding megacities. Urban life will be bearable only if now communities organise to help themselves.
It was easy to find Shivram Goregaonkar. His directions had been clear: "Shack number 194, near Matunga railway station." A rotund clay Ganesh – the god of success, Bombay´s reigning deity – welcomes the visitor. A signboard on the grilled window says, "Girish Tailors – Ladie´s, Jents and Allteration".
It is difficult to miss the pavement shacks on Senapati Bapat Marg. They force themselves upon the senses as you drive downtown from Santa Cruz Airport. They have been there for decades, even when the road was known as Tulsi Pipe Road – after the huge concrete drainage pipes which the locals took over as living quarters before they could be placed underground. The pipe squatters were ultimately evicted, but many came back. That was when the shacks sprouted.
Shivram's pavement shack is just one among thousands of huts on Senapati Bapat Marg, patched together with asbestos sheets, plastic, canvas, jute, strips of plywood, bamboo and bricks. On one side is the railway track, across the road a branch office of the Bank of Baroda and a billboard trumpeting "Visapower". The floor above the bank houses "Seigneurs French Academy" offering middle-class Bombayites the cosmopolitan touch at a bargain. Nearby are grey residential buildings, many of whose inmates come to the tailor across the road. Shivram had fondly named the shop after his 11-year-old son, Girish.