Thanh Nguyen ttn35 ARCH 5402 Final Illustrated Paper
“Mumbai, India: The Informal Economy and its Emerging Spatial Constructs”
In his essay “ Negotiating the Static and Kinetic cities”, Rahul Mehrotra charac-
terizes the “ever-transforming streetscape”, “a city in constant motion” as manifests of the Kinetic City. Such buzzing livelihood is an outstanding characteristic of the bazaars, train stations, the streets and intersections of Mumbai, which are also the settings for the informal economy to perform. The informal economy and its social construct, as this paper will illustrate, are the linking factor between the Kinetic City and the Static City. By tracing the daily routines of 3 actors in this economy, each representing a significant informal enterprise in Mumbai, the research aims to reveal the social mechanisms that construct the different urban experiences for each actor as well as the countless interactions between the “kinetic” and the “static” city, and within the “kinetic” itself. A dabbawala, or tiffin man, a street vendor and a potter, through their means of income-earning and social experiences, inhabit the city in various ways and thus are creators and inhabitants of the emerging urban conditions in Mumbai.
In order to understand the spatial implications of the informal economy, it is cru-
cial to understand the scope in which the informal economy performs. With an increasing role in developing countries’ economic gain, “Informal economy” is known a diversified set of economic activities, jobs or enterprises that perform outside the state’s regulation and supervision . The most commonly know in this economy are hawking, street vending, home-owned businesses, small enterprises as well as waged labor in unregistered business. The scale of these activities, though small individually, spreads across the city and ingrains into the urban landscape. From the street corners to bazaars, from neighborhood alleys to right at living quarters, the trading and production of goods happen simultaneously. While this type of activities makes up half to three quarters of the non-agricultural labour force in certain countries, it has been reported that in Mumbai, 68% of the city’s workforce lies in the informal economy (Chen “About the Informal Economy”). On the other hand, even those that don’t work in the informal
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economy participate in it as buyers or end dealers. And thus, people from all classes and backgrounds are actors, through the acts of trading and producing goods, alter and add meanings to the stage set of Mumbai.
This stage set, however, is constantly in flux and thus the shaping of the city sure
has great influences on the actors of the informal economy. Under the aspiration to become a “world class” city, Mumbai is continuously demolishing and reconstructing housing and commercial structures, relocating housing away strategic locations and heavy investment in transportation systems (Sharma 69). This “world class” or Shanghai-like aspiration represents the aspirations of a Static City within Mumbai. This Static city forces these activities into exclusive zones and limitation to grow, as seen in strict regulations on hawking and attempts to formalize traditional crafts. On the other hand, recent studies and theories have supported the emerging spaces created by people working in this economy. Jane Jacobs argues that the safest and most vibrant urban space happens on the curbsides with children playing and street vendors, while Anjaria suggests that Mumbai city planners should utilize on the wealth of public sociality and multifarious uses of public spaces ( Anjaria 2143, 2145). The tension in which the urban experiences created by the informal economy exist makes it a subject worthy of a deeper look in its mechanism. A narrative method, tracing the live of the actors of this economy, provides a close and effective observation of spaces and social interactions.
Dabbawala, or tiffin delivery, is a more than a hundred years old business, utiliz-
ing the railroad system in Mumbai to deliver lunch to thousands of workers and students. A dabbawala begins his day waking up at 7am. Because of their monthly wage of around 8000 rupees, dabbawalas often live in slums or low-income neighborhoods. Their living quarters, therefore, can be characterized as one-story, single-room house, with shared courtyard with neighbors. While this clustered space of hanging clothes, metal roofs and plastic panels are described with much fascination in Mehrotra’s writing, these entities represent the urban density that is both unfamiliar and uncomfort
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able to the dabbawalas (Quien 637). Quien also suggests “reference to the village continues to regulate their lives, whether culturally, emotionally or socially”(640). Most dabbawalas come from the same region and their relationship to Mumbai is merely functional. There is a strong sense of the temporality of space in the mental detachment of the dabbawala from their living spaces. The images of village lives make the urban living condition a strange, temporary situation to the dabbawalas. This situation undoubtedly applies to migrants working in other industries as well. Such mental detachment also creates a very interesting paradox with the dabbawalas’ mastering of Mumbai’s urban landscape.
As the dabbawala’s day goes on, he meets up with his colleagues at a meet-
ing-point in a rear courtyard in Mulund, a suburb in north Mumbai before going off to pick up tiffins using bicycles ( Quien, 637). Being illiterate, the tiffin man finds his way through town via visual signals, such as signages or street corners. Such practice requires years of experiences, which allows the tiffin man to understand the city from a visual perspective. Once back to the train station, he and his colleagues do the first sorting before the train arrives and continue with a second round of sorting once in the luggage compartment of the train. Riding the train takes up about 3 hours of a dabbawala’s workday. A non-place, like a train compartment, soon becomes the “workplace” for these dabbawalas. The dabbawala and his colleague rest, eat or participate in communal activities like singing or chatting while being on the train. The temporality of a moving space becomes a static space for these people. This notion also applied to the case of street vendors. As they move their stalls through various parts of the city, the busy streets and curbsides quickly become a place to work, to sell and to participate in social interactions.
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Once their train has arrived to the center of Mumbai, where most offices and
schools are located, the dabbawala begin their delivery job, which allows them to transverse through multiple boundaries in the city. It is extremely interesting for Quien to point out that although the dabbawalas remain distant from the city, they have the ability to enter buildings that other citizens would not be able to (Quien, 640). Not only do they understand how Mumbai is physically laid out in terms of streets or neighborhoods, they also witness the political and social structures of Mumbai through offices and government buildings . This is where the actors of the Kinetic City enter the monuments of the Static City. Seen in the movie “The Lunch Box�, the dabbawala does not participate in the culture of the offices, but rather just indifferently complete their jobs. The tiffin man now embarks on the reverse journey, with empty lunch boxes. He gets home at around 8pm and begin the next day promptly at 7pm.
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The dabbawalas may very well be residents of one of Mumbai’s slums. Numer-
ous other workers in the informal economy, therefore, share their living condition. Unlike dabbawalas, the workspace and living quarter of small enterprises owners are intertwined, creating interesting reconfiguration of communal and private spaces. Secluded from the booming development of Mumbai, Dharavi, spreading over 540 acres in the heart of the city, is one of the largest slums in India and home to numerous household enterprises. The traditional pottery industry, along with textiles, accounts for 25% of enterprises existing in Dharavi. Surprisingly, such large production is tucked into the living space of the potters. According to Manish Chalana, typical housing unit in Dharavi is often a rental structure between 100 and 200 square feet shared among families and without a water closet (31). Therefore, a day of a potter already begins with maneuvering through the neighborhood for access to water closets. At her house, the upper floor is the living quarter with beds and closets while the lower levels are used mainly for pottery making with the open space at the front housing pottery kilns to share with other neighbors. The workday begins very early at 7am, right at the front of the house with molding clay in a 92m2 area, shared by her neighbors. The neighbors are also her co-workers, who share fair portions of work and profits, along with daily products like food or household utensils. Children also participate in the business, helping drying the pottery outside or painting them right inside the house. Pottery will then be baked in the kilns, which release heat and toxic gas, coating the entire courtyard area with smoke. The finished pottery products are stored right at the front of the house, along the side, or stacked in a walled area right in the middle of the shared courtyard, around which laundry- doing and cooking happen. Utilization of space is at its best here in Dharavi, with any alley, open courtyard or rooftop becoming a place for work, for social interactions and for daily activities (Mitchell, 117). Although recycled materials and found objects are the physical construct of these spaces, neighbor kinship and partnership are the actual drives for these spaces to function.
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Interestingly, in these spaces, the relationships between owners and workers, between family members and neighbors are intertwined, which lead to the conglomeration of spatial use. The pottery worker works almost 15 hours per day within the slum setting. At one point of the day, she went to buy food from the street vendors, operating around the slum area, those who offer cheap produces and are also her acquaintances.
Street vendors, without examining closely, are perhaps the participants with
most flexible mobility in the informal economy. They have the versatility in the goods they sell, more flexibility in moving through the city and set up their stalls wherever seems beneficial. However, Jonathan Anjaria’s study reveals the social constructs put the street vendors in a “spatial hierarchy” around Mumbai: the street vendors do not have the freedom of conducting their business but rather pick and choose places based on their social situations with residents, the city authorities and their backgrounds. Hawkers in markets pay for their spots and through years of being in business claim their permanent site. However, street vendors ,who have to circle around an area to sell ,face problems of discrimination in certain upper-class neighborhoods. Anjaria describes that “tropes of language and religion are invoked to prove the hawkers’ outsider status”, as there are multiple cases where only hawkers coming from certain regions with friendly relationship with residents can be allowed (2141). Such discrimination separates street vendors into certain areas of the cities based on their social statuses. Apart from this informal segregation, street vendors also constantly face regulations by the government. Curbsides and pavements in central areas are likely to be “no hawkers” zone. Very similar to the dabbawalas, street vendors often settle in “satellite townships” at the edges of the city, choosing to exclude themselves from the of the city (Anjaria 2142). As much as they contribute to what is called the “livelihood” of the Kinetic city, the migrant workers in the informal economy remain detached from the urban mentality, due to Mumbai’s authority and class-based systems.
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On the other hand. apart from such segregation, the kinship shared among busi-
ness partners is also a large contributing factor to street vendors’ urban experiences. One food vendor would set out in the early morning into wholesale markets to pick up their goods, be them fruits or vegetables. In wholesale markets, the street vendor find his way through the chaotic, unfamiliar in scale space created by goods, transportations and people to pick up his products. He navigates through signs and faces, then figures out his sales and deals based on friendly relationships with other dealers. From the markets, he then finds his way through city, managing to sell while commuting to their usual selling area. Some street vendors choose to make themselves apparent through shouting and singing while walking, while some choose to settle down at street corners. The interactions with customers occupy most of his day as the hectic life of the city lies in front of him. The pavements and streets have become familiar scene of his workday. Upon returning home at 8pm after hours of commuting, he is finally back to the quietness of his home in Thane, an outskirt town of the city.
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Along the urbanscape of Mumbai, the lives of these 3 actors encounter each
other at multiple intersections: train stations, slums’ periphery and interior, suburbs, markets, streetsides or may be in upper-class neighborhoods or financial centers. A common day in a informal economy worker’s life is closely attached to the physical presences of Mumbai in multiple scales. The omnipresence and functionality of the informal economy allows it to be the location for the Static City ( infrastructure, zoned neighborhoods) to interact with the Kinetic City (informal space of bazaars, curbsides or slum courtyard). Working in the informal economy allows city dwellers to inhabit the city in meaningful ways. And yet these actors are also constantly subject to discrimination and social isolation from elitism and class hierarchy ingrained in Indian society, and fostered by the structures of the Static City. In his essay, Mehrotra argues that ”the Kinetic City- a landscape of dystopia, yet a symbol of optimism- challenges the Static City” (216) . However, the research has also revealed the social constraints and inequality that the Static City imposes on the actors of the Kinetic. Regarding the optimism of the Kinetic City, looking at the spatial experiences from an up-close perspective also discloses that rich urban experiences are constructed through social structures , illustrating ideas of “ place making”, characterized by Sen and Silverman as “ to express, personify, and give concrete and perceptible form to a concept that may exist only as an abstraction” (4). Turning a “non-place” into a place, working with the temporality of traffic and transportation systems, as well as carving out pockets of functional and communal space within slum density are all characters of informal placemaking in the city.
In conclusion, the informal economy, with its own performative mechanism and
social constructs acts as the platform for the emerging urban conditions of Mumbai. These urban conditions, however, are not always filled with optimism and dynamism, but comprised of a complex system of socio-economic statuses, social interactions and exploitation of urban spaces. They are, perhaps, a spatial product and a linking factor of the coexistence of the Kinetic and Static Cities.
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