Mehnat Manzil: A Tribute to the Lives of Informal Sector Workers
January 12, 2022
- By Sayali Marawar, Lead - Field Engagements, IHF
Disclaimer: This article features certain key exhibits at the Mehnat Manzil museum and states their explanation along with complementing photographs.
Note: The article encourages readers to visit the museum physically, gather a first hand experience and discover their own interpretations of the display. The views expressed in this article are based on the author’s own experience.
Introduction
The team at the Indian Housing Federation (IHF) visited the Mehnat Manzil: Museum of Work on November 18, 2021, as part of the exposure planned for the UnATHI Fellows during the convening in Ahmedabad. Mehnat Manzil is an initiative envisioned and brought into being by the Saath Charitable Trust based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in collaboration with Conflictorium: Museum of Conflict.
Mehnat Manzil celebrates the lives of informal sector workers and brings to light their realities ranging from migration and livelihood to housing and infrastructure. Mehnat Manzil aims to create a space where individuals and families that inhabit the informal domain have their own stories and experiences seen and successes acknowledged. It also gives insights into how people’s lives figure into broader societal structures and its mechanisms. Alternatively, it is also a space where visitors who are privileged enough to be oblivious of these difficulties may come to appreciate and learn about the importance of informal workers’ contribution to the society. Here, one may see the complexity of the issues and dispel preconceived and inaccurate conceptions about the nature of problems faced by the urban poor.
Mehnat Manzil has been designed in collaboration with Conflictorium, a participatory museum that addresses the theme of conflict and facilitates dialogue through art and cultural practice. Such museums seek to display the existing differences in the society and encourage conflict expression in artistic and creative ways. The museum mirrors different identities, cultures, politics, past and present through conversation and curation which influences thought processes and future action. It becomes a medium through which unique perspectives and alternatives come to light.
The Mehnat Manzil museum has been developed in a house in the Guptanagar basti which is Saath’s homeground and a neighborhood where it has been intervening with its social development programmes since last three decades. The team at Saath had insisted that IHF shall meet at Mehnat Manzil rather than at Saath’s office. While we were initially unsure of this idea, it eventually turned out to be a good decision. Sitting in the verandah outside the museum and discussing the journey of Saath, created a suitable environment for the topic at hand.
The board outside the museum displays that 81 percent of all employed persons in India are working in the informal sector. This statistic is taken from a 2018 report published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Photo Courtesy: IHF
Intriguing Exhibits at the Museum
Mehnat Manzil museum has curated powerful exhibits that engage the audience and push them to reflect on the realities of the informal workers and urban poor. The experience at Mehnat Manzil was enhanced significantly by the passionate narration and commentary from Mr. Rajendra Joshi (Managing Trustee, Saath Charitable Trust) who comes with over three decades of experience in working with the urban poor and is an ideal guide for new visitors. Some of the memorable exhibits are shared below.
1. Dal in the bottle
This remarkable exhibit has two identical bottles, each with dal and water mixed in it such that the final level of the mix was the same. However, the proportions of dal and water were different. While one was a 70:30 proportion of dal and water, the other was in 30:70 proportion. The prompt was to figure out which of these bottles would signify the food consumption of the privileged compared to the disadvantaged. This exhibit made a resounding commentary on the prevailing inequality in our society and the uneven accessibility to food and nutrition.
IHF team at the Mehnat Manzil museum seeing the exhibit and understanding its explanation from Mr. Rajendra Joshi
Photo Courtesy: IHF
2. A scrap of green net
This exhibit of a piece of green net was the most simple exhibit of all yet very gripping. The plastic green net is commonly used for various purposes like marking or covering enclosed spaces, making divisions and other temporary uses. In Ahmedabad this green net was widely used to ‘beautify’ the city by hiding the poor informal settlements along the main roads when the Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the city in 2014. This exhibit brought to the forefront the unfair and casual manner in which we treat the urban poor in our society and attempt to consciously invisiblise them instead of addressing their housing needs. They are the very same people that bring ease and convenience in our lives by facilitating a number of services but we fail to acknowledge their contribution to the sustenance and growth of our cities.
3. The sewer
This exhibit was unique and comprehensible when one takes a closer look at it. The exhibit consists of a ladder leading to a pipe placed on top of a slab. The visitor must climb onto the ladder and peek inside the pipe. On looking inside, one can witness the harsh reality of manual scavenging. At the two ends of the pipe, there are powerful photos of manual scavengers in the midst of their life-threatening work of cleaning sewers. The gaze of the manual scavengers in the photo comes straight at the visitor such that one can't help but notice and acknowledge their vulnerability.
Mr. Rajendra Joshi pointing to the exhibit of a sewer which displayed the vulnerability of manual scavenging.
Photo Courtesy: IHF
4. The maze game
This exhibit uses a common ball maze game that one may have played at some point of their lives. The game is designed as a maze/labyrinth with a small ball inside it, covered with a transparent lid. The aim of the game is to maneuver the ball in the maze from one side to another by navigating through the protruding barriers. Mehnat Manzil’s maze board comes with a slight tweak — it is created in a way that gives an illusion that there is a way from bottom to the top, however by design, the ball can never reach the top. Hence, this exhibit illustrates how upward social and economic mobility is structurally constrained for urban poor in the informal economy. Even when one laboriously navigates their way through a labyrinth of difficulties, there is no room for exit. This is not a coincidence, it is by design. Poverty and oppression are highly systemic in nature and it is the vested interests of the privileged classes that maintains such a system, ensures persistence of poverty and reproduces the informal sector just as it is.
An exhibit of the ball maze game which illustrates the experiences of individuals and communities in the informal economy.
Photo Courtesy: IHF
5. Lego blocks
This exhibit had several blocks of different shapes and sizes and the visitors are expected to assemble these block by block into houses and create a neighborhood in the end. The message from this exhibit was that urban poor build their homes and communities brick by brick in an incremental manner. They build and plan for improvement and expansion of their houses as and when the resources become available. This type of housing supply is widely known in the housing policy domain, but has received limited public acknowledgement and has rarely found place in contemporary housing policies and schemes.
Exhibit on incremental housing and creation of a neighbourhood.
Photo Courtesy: IHF
6. Headgear of construction labourers
This exhibit too was simple yet impactful. The exhibit was a stack of headgears worn by the labourers, specifically the ones engaged in loading and unloading of goods, construction materials and other heavy weight objects. This headgear is a thick cloth wrapped around to make a flat cap that fits on the head. This headgear provides the padding necessary for shielding the head from the overbearing weight of the goods. Seeing the pile of the headgears sensitises and reminds the visitors of this seemingly ordinary artefact that assumes such an important significance in the lives of the informal sector labourers.
Exhibit of head gears belonging to informal sector labourers.
Photo Courtesy: IHF
In Conclusion
The IHF team had numerous questions, reflections and most importantly realisations by the end of the museum tour. The museum serves as a great medium of ensuring public memory of workers’ lives and also brings one's cognisance of the informal sector from the subconscious to conscious. It clarifies that poverty in itself is a kind of oppression and that it is systemic and by design. The exhibits brought the realities of the informal sector to the forefront and made us slightly uneasy as the conflict was right in front of us and it was a call to action! After visiting Mehnat Manzil, IHF team wishes that more and more people will visit here. This initiative is crucial to pay tribute to the informal sector and to sensitise our society about its realities such that all communities can grow together and build truly inclusive cities.