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Why a bias against Jamia Nagar?
Posted By:Hajas On 9/29/2008

Why a bias against Jamia Nagar?

29 Sep 2008, 0310 hrs IST, Rakhshanda Jalil

 

Living in the Jamia neighbourhood has always been tough. The incidents of last week, being dubbed the Battle of Batla House by the press, will only make it tougher. Biases, I suspect, will get sharper; discrimination more covert; and the gloves, I fear, will be off. A few years ago when I moved from Gulmohar Park, a tony locality in South Delhi, to the Jamia neighbourhood, little was I to know that I would be changing not merely a postal address and a landline telephone number but virtually exchanging one way of life for another.

The first rude shock came when I arranged my daughter's birthday party at our home. I sent detailed directions along with hand-made cards. My daughter, then nine, came home in tears because most of her friends had said they couldn't come. Perplexed by this sudden about-face, I called all the mommies only to be told by most that they wouldn't be able to come there. Gulmohar Park ki baat alag thi; Jamia side ka hame koi idea nahi hai. (It was different in Gulmohar Park; we have no idea about the Jamia side.) I persevered by offering to draw maps, even volunteering to picking the kids from the nearest big landmark, the Holy Family Hospital. Yet, attendance slumped hugely from previous years. Thereafter, I learnt my lesson by organizing all such events at a conveniently located McDonalds.

That Delhi is ridiculously snobbish about addresses is a well-known fact. But I have seen another colour creep into harmless idiosyncrasy when I disclose where I live. There is an imperceptible change. Some wonder aloud, Oh, isn't it far? Others look blank, Jamia? Okhla? As in Industrial Area? Still others walk away, wanting to have very little to do with someone who lives out there. And out there where I live, several basic amenities are missing, that others in other parts of the city take for granted. Pizza boys from the nearby Dominos outlet in New Friends Colony do not venture out there. You can go blue in the face arguing that Jamia Nagar is closer to NFC as the crow flies than the most far-flung pocket of Sukhdev Vihar, but they stick to their rule! Nor will dry cleaners who promise free home delivery to the furthest block in Maharani Bagh come to your doorstep. The same applies to an assortment of chemists, florists and grocers. Believe me, I have argued, pleaded and threatened. Nothing works. They won't go out there!

When I decided to spend less time commuting and move closer to my place of work, the Jamia Millia Islamia, I spent ten tortuous months looking for a house in nearby New Friends Colony, Sukhdev Vihar, and Sarita Vihar. Perfectly decent people in their perfectly middle-class drawing rooms froze us off when they saw our business card or heard our name. Others reneged on deals worked out through property dealers saying they wanted vegetarian tenants! So, while a great many Muslims no doubt prefer to live in the Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods of Shaheen Bagh, Ghaffar Manzil, Noor Nagar, Zakir Nagar, Batla House, Abul Fazal Enclave et al for reasons of security, many, I suspect, do so because they are left with no choice. They come in droves to live in some of these over-congested ill-equipped localities that are no better than urban slums because landlords in mixed neighbourhoods look upon them with suspicion and mistrust.

And what do the civic authorities do to tackle the chaos that unspools from these densely-packed warrens? They turn a blind eye. They drop an invisible cordon sanitaire between here and out there, thus, for all practical purposes demarcating civil administration into two clearly-defined spaces: one neatly labelled organized, the other falling under the clamorous category of unorganized. Other epithets can be used for these two categories: authorized/unauthorized, clean/filthy, orderly/chaotic, spacious/cramped, cared for/uncared for, and so on.

In the case of the outer fringes of Zakir Nagar that skirt the A Block of New Friends Colony, this contrast is especially stark: pockets of abysmal neglect exist cheek-by-jowl with oases of privilege. Yet it seldom causes so much as a raised eyebrow let alone any real degree of concern or introspection, either among the duly elected peoples representatives or on the part of the bureaucrats who head our civic bodies.

While all of Delhi has a population of 11.72% Muslims, the Jamia Nagar neighbourhood is almost 98% Muslim; the Okhla ward alone has a population of 1,25,935. For this large body of people, there are branches of only three nationalized banks; the area having been declared a Red Area, i.e. populated by defaulters, few private banks even dream of venturing out here. The 8km radius bogey for school admissions (mandated by the Delhi High Court) applies far more rigorously here than elsewhere, the mere address being enough to invoke the rulebook. There is no functioning MCD dispensary; local doctors refer all emergency cases to the nearby Holy Family Hospital (the nearest Government hospital is several km away). There are no Mother Dairy or Safal outlets (franchised by the Delhi Government and ubiquitous all over the city for their moderately priced fruits, vegetables and assorted perishables) for this sprawling area; a small booth vending milk products has been installed on the Jamia campus a few months ago on the vice-chancellor's personal initiative but that can barely cater to the students from nearby hostels. There are no Fair Price Shops, no government-funded training institutes to provide vocational training or any sort of facility to absorb the huge mass of school dropouts. In certain colonies such as Shaheen Bagh and Abul Fazal there is no drinking water; people buy water just as they would buy vegetables or groceries. Every morning you can see rickshaw pullers do a brisk business selling water of dubious vintage by the can-full.

What is happening in the Jamia neighbourhood can provide several useful lessons in urban morphology: (a) No community can take everything upon itself; it cannot be the provider and user of civic amenities, be it schools, universities, hospitals, ration shops, roads, electricity, water, group housing, sewage disposal or what-have-you; (b) While one cannot reverse the process of ghettoisation, one can certainly do much to integrate those who live in communally-charged ghettoes; and (c) If one fails or is seen to fail at all attempts at integration, one is creating conditions of urban unrest that have the potential to spill over.



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