Page 259 - EducationWorld November 2020

Contributing to the Urban dystopia
stigma is the alleged UNCIVIL CITY: ECOLOGY,
sexual profligacy of lower EQUITY & THE COMMONS
caste women which MITA BAVISKAR IN DELHI
requires surveillance brings careful and Amita Baviskar
and disciplining. Thus Aserious consider- SAGE/YODA
registered nurses are ations to the city of Delhi Rs.1,195
skilled, modest, austere and its environs, includ- Pages 243
bhadramahila while ing Gurgaon, giving us
private nurses and revealing insights into this
sisters are dismissed as fast-growing urban con- ganised into neat, readable
unskilled, primitive and stellation plagued by toxic chapters, even as Orojit The author provides a
loud chotamahila. But all pollution. She looks at the Sen’s illustrations pro- timely reminder that
the nurses interviewed way a city is constructed vide insightful glimpses social conscience,
insisted they were not in terms of experiences into the austere world of civic sense and justice
doing “bad work”, sexual and events, each in its abstractions that Baviskar for the poor must
or immoral. own way structured by the depicts. The author uses be woven into civic
It is not surprising memories of those who spare but engaging prose management & urban
that given the precarious are witnesses to urban and which occasionally turns planning discourses
and uncertain nature of rural transformation. chatty, but only to intro-
their employment, other The megalopolis is duce us to an anthropolo-
than registered nurses defined by the people who gist’s sense of being part of to life, and their exclusion
in government hospitals, live in it. They commute the picture. It represents a from its richer pockets.
nurses have not been long distances in private subjectivity which does not This bloodletting of oc-
able to unionise. Indeed, or public transport to detract from the key theme cupations, which is smugly
the Nursing Council of get to their workplaces which is, ‘What is our endorsed by the wealthy
India itself disapproves of and back home again day responsibility as citizens to as outside the pale of their
unionisation. How, then, after day. For Baviskar, migrant workers?’ everyday experience, is the
is this precariat to fight for these simple routines are We don’t get a detailed real subtext of the book.
overhaul of working condi- telling as she asks ques- description of how Parti- Similarly, Baviskar
tions and pay? tions about them. How do tion created the concentric is keenly interested in
I have one cavil: there people cope in a metropo- circles of residence of Del- understanding how waste
is no description of the lis? What happens to the hi, or how history defines management and the
structure of medical care rural hinterland which is segregation of places into lives of people employed
in Kolkata, and how this continuously appropriated Old Delhi, Lutyens Delhi, as domestic and factory
has changed since India legally or illegally for pur- South Delhi, Yamuna Paar workers, pan out in the
took the neo-liberal turn poses of residence or for (middle-class professional city. She describes how the
in 1991. Nevertheless, this showmanship? To what enclaves across the river). bourgeoisie makes claims
commendable book must extent are basic amenities However, for Baviskar, to serving the idea of the
be compulsory reading not available to people who the geography of Delhi in- city superficially in terms
just for those interested live in the city? Who are cludes the adjoining areas of their goodwill and
in nursing education, but the urban policy makers, of Noida and Gurgaon and promotion of cleanliness
the medical fraternity as a and to what extent does it’s so-called ‘nonspaces’ and beauty, but actu-
whole, including doctors, global capitalism erode or unrecognised domains. ally through conspicuous
hospitals and nursing human rights when politi- She deals with this adroitly consumption contribute
homes managers. The cians and the bourgeoisie by examining lifestyles, hugely to the flotsam of
book is also important increasingly begin to see and people are classified garbage and pollution that
for scholars of labour and the working class as aliens, not just by their address is the omnipresent reality
gender studies. Panchali migrants who clutter up and locality but also by of the country’s adminis-
Ray deserves accolades their cities? their mode of transport. trative capital.
for this valuable and Despite addressing There is a very telling By addressing events
eminently readable work, these complex questions, description of rickshaw such as the closure of fac-
a labour of infinite love. Baviskar manages to pullers and their entrench- tories to shunt out workers
MOHAN RAO (The Book shuffle the pack of cards in ment in a city which in the cause of clearing the
Review) a way that the data gets or- doesn’t recognise the right city of polluting industries,

NOVEMBER 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 259