Dulari and Deep Narayan have lived in the JJ Colony since 2006. Originally, 20 years ago when they were 15 and 20 respectively, they moved to Delhi from Chapra in the state of Bihar hoping to earn a living and forge a better life for themselves in the city. They lived in central Delhi for14 years until forcibly evicted from the Naraina industrial area and sent to the JJ Colony in Bawana. Since then they have watched the district grow and shuffle forward. The Narayans have 4 children between 7 and 19; a family of 6, living in a single story 12 square metre house is standard for many in the district. Still, larger families in the colony live in similar sized homes with as many as eleven children. Deep Narayan works as labourer in a local factory, industry that provides steady employment and a wage. Dulari explains,‘my family wakes at 5am and my husband goes to work in the Bawana industrial area located nearby. He works in a factory making handbags from 9am - 9pm, 12 hours a day and earns 9,000 rupees a month.’ Managing the affairs of the household, Dulari works from home and belongs to Chetanalaya, a local woman’s self- help group working in the Bawana JJ Colony, gives participants new practical skills and builds community trust. Deciding they wanted a larger house with a toilet, a luxury many don’t enjoy here, Dulari and Deep Narayan worked hard to put aside a little money to afford a loan with the financial support of local NGOs.
In JJ Colony, a typical house occupies a tiny plot of land, approximately three by four metres. A basic two-storey brick house, sometimes with a toilet, constitutes a vernacular architecture dominated largely by stairs to the first floor and a roof top terrace. Inside are just two rooms, an enormous improvement on the bleak plastic and bamboo shelters that usually occupy these lots, and more secure in legal terms than the illegal settlements and slums that continue to expand in cities all over India. As recently as 2004, the site of the JJ colony had much the same outward appearance as any other locale on the outskirts of Delhi, defined more by large open spaces that separated the houses than the sea of red brick visible today. In 2004, the area even retained some of its agricultural character; the urban landscape we see today in Bawana is devoid of public open space and the built environment overwhelmingly dominates, the product of less than ten years of rapid development. There are many growing families in the JJ Colony; living in a single story 12 square metre house is standard for many in the district. Some of the lanes in JJ Colony have been concreted and have improved the quality of life immeasurably. Others are still dirt and they fester, a cocktail of muddy grey water and rubbish that residents must navigate to reach their houses. These lanes in particular struggle to accommodate daily activity as families spill out of their tiny houses in the morning, and where the daily routine sees mothers on porches, preparing food and washing clothes, keeping an eye on their children as they play.
The drainage system here is inadequate, clogged, with no effective system exists to collect domestic grey water. A user-pay municipal toilet is so revolting that local residents are unable to use it. Instead, children defecate openly in public, while others head to the open fields surrounding the settlement. Large expanses of stagnant water are present, not from heavy rainfall, but broken water pipes. Unsurprisingly sanitation issues are rife. Makeshift shelters on non-existent plots between the road and footpath at the periphery of the colony are cobbled together from bamboo, black plastic and other found materials. Bawana lacks the urban infrastructure, related to issues of sanitation and water, that many other residential areas of Delhi already take for granted. There are many improvements the community might organise and implement on their own, from unclogging drains to cleaning up much of the accumulated rubbish, to taking charge of the municipal toilets. However, there is an empowering contribution at the scale of infrastructure to be made by the local government, a vote of confidence in a struggling community. The high incidence of sickness and disease in the community could be swiftly improved by addressing many of the obvious sanitation issues present.
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