Enslaved urbanism

Samhita Barooah

(The writer can be reached at samhitaworld@gmail.com)

The dream of being urban is higher than personal freedom. In my own journey of life I have seen my dream of being urban was so much rooted in a deep sense of classism. When I was growing up in a small town of Namrup in the upper Assam district of Dibrugarh, I would always compare the lights of the town to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. My uncle from a bigger town of Golaghat would make fun of me that Namrup had only one house and one ambassador car. His teasing would make me defend Namrup to be more urbanized with multiple lights in apartments which were similar to Mumbai. The urban dreams were infused into me since my childhood. What I used to find fascinating as a child was interesting. I really wished to be in a city with big lights, drive cars and stay in style. Urban dreams were beautiful. They made me value things which were superficial. When Guwahati got its first Cafe Coffee Day outlet, I remember going and taking pictures there.

There are people who posed when KFC reached Guwahati. All these places were youth icons in some way or the other. I was also basking in the glitter of such spaces. In the 1990s when we were students of Cotton College, we could afford a cup of red tea and a goja atmost during our lunch break. But today students have more options in the glamour-driven high-end food joints even within college campuses. Times have changed and nowadays life is more complex than we think. We would like to enslave ourselves to a superficial urbanism which is far beyond our earnings but never value the local pitha, sah, sana, muri, amlokhi, thekera and rice shops which have been feeding millions without much earning on the streets.

Urban slavery has diverse forms. People can survive in some of the most dilapidated living conditions just to be part of city life. The craze for being in cities is a very unique condition. It entails the practice of being forever in debt to maintain the glittery lifestyle and engaging in socialization practices which include or exclude one within the urban lifestyles. In Guwahati itself people from far-flung towns, hamlets and villages across Assam, come to find their dream livelihoods. They need some basic accommodation and food to survive in the city. These are marginally educated unemployed youths who have urban dreams. They become chefs, drivers, domestic service workers, delivery agents, private water supply providers and e-rickshaw riders.

Within urban street food spaces, pan shops and major construction work spaces are dominated by men. Women urban workers are seen mostly in home based livelihoods like tailoring, stitching, weaving, food packaging, homecare work, cleaning and maintenance workers in urban malls, salespersons in diverse small and medium shops. Urbanism has made more women labourers rather than being owners of businesses or enterprises. Inequities are ingrained in the documentation practices. Just recently while engaging with women domestic workers to apply for government job opportunities, one 9th pass Adivasi woman could not enroll herself in the employment exchange for lack of adequate certificates. Despite having better qualification the women workers could not be ready for a fair competition for lack of documentary evidence with them. When women migrate for work to urban areas they are focused only on the instant cash that they earn. They do not value the relevance of documents in this regard. Thus all other opportunities which might be available for everyone, women seem to be losing out for lack of documents. Migrant women workers also envision piece meal, daily wage or very temporary reproductive work whether within the domestic space or within the public space. They assume that they are not eligible for official jobs despite having the required qualifications. Educational heirarchy within urbanism also exclude migrant women in a huge way. In this relation men gain more prominence through their acquired skills of driving, mechanical works and mobile livelihoods. Moreover, male migrant workers are preferred in the urbanism as they are relatively more adaptable and less risk is involved in engaging with them. Women workers in an urban context pose a physical, sexual and more recently surveillance threat constantly while working within the notion of urbanism. All those women who have been able to negotiate across these threats, they have better bargaining powers.

Trans-women within the context of urbanism have visibility in public spheres as a marginalized identity. They are also visible behind the glamour industry but most migrant trans-women are invisible in tabooed livelihoods and living in extremely vulnerable living conditions which are ghettos and many are located in urban slums. In case of gender diverse identities who are female at birth are also extremely vulnerable in the context of urbanism. Defense mechanisms of the queer community also positions them on great vulnerability within their own homes or rented accommodations which lead to different forms of discriminatory practices in the urban context.

Mostly the migrant workers whose lives revolves around rents, EMIs, daily wage earnings across all genders in the pursuit of belonging to an urban dream which gets fizzled out under the heavy burden of debts. These are debts which keep increasing and enslave people for life to get a tiny glimpse of the urban ecology.