Photos narrate plight of open defecation in Mumbai

India's commercial capital, Mumbai, may have been declared open defecation free, but a photo exhibition seeks to highlight the plight of lakhs of people going out in open.

The exhibition is a result of five years of work by Mumbai-based photo journalist Sachin Haralkar. The exhibition — Bare Necessity — is currently underway at the Piramal Art Gallery and was inaugurated by Shobha Bhatt, a 30-year-old woman who lost both her legs while she was defecating along the railway tracks. A book with the same title was also released.

"There are several such stories like that of Shobha. Sangeeta Bhatt, when she was a student lost her legs. She now stays in Jaipur. She married in 2014," said Haralkar.

Shobha, who is now settled in Pune, said that the issue has to be understood in detail. "People don't go to the tracks by choice, it is a necessity coupled with helplessness," she said.

Sachin, 40, thought about the issue in detail, around five years ago. "I used to see people defecating in open, along roads, open areas and tracks," he said, adding that for girls and women the issue is far more pathetic as they have to go before dawn in the darkness.

He said that while he was working on the project, his resolve to complete the project magnified after a bizarre incident. "On 19 September, 2018, a man was murdered after he came out of the public toilet late. He was punched and he died....this happened in Wadala. A similar incident was reported in Santacruz," he said. Queues outside public toilet is long and hence people are forced to go in open.

"My father has worked all his life for the rights of sewerage workers in Mumbai. Manual scavenging and its related horrors that continue in some parts of the country, despite a Supreme Court order, are discussed in my home daily," Sachin added.

He pointed out that ironically, while he was working on this project, the ruling Maharashtra government declared Mumbai 'open-defecation free'. "Really? My camera was gathering evidence to the contrary each day," he regretted on a serious note.

"One day, while shooting pictures, some women told me about several women who have lost their legs during their morning ablutions. I went to the addresses they gave me to find these women," he said, adding that he went to Pune, Jaipur and other places to look for them.

"While covering the project, I realised that the early morning hours between 6 am and 8 am is when communities in shanties need to use the lavatories and rush to work. These open defecators are the workforce that makes Mumbai tick. They are industrial workers, hawkers, shopkeepers, domestic workers," he said.

In slum pockets, either there is a scarcity of toilets or there are toilets which exist but are locked, or closed due to lack of water. Some of these slums are located in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. For example, at Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade, a 10x10 sq ft kholi fetches a rate of up to 1 lakh per sq ft. But, they have very poor sanitation facilities.

"My objective was not to shoot while they were in the act, but to connect people to their living and working conditions. I went to many of these toilets again and again, sometimes without a camera, and gradually, some of them opened up and co-operated. And thus, I gathered my images over the last few years," he said.