“I am Khushi. I am six-years-old and I go to Junior Modern School,” quips the tiny figure in her maroon cap and low waist blue pants. Khushi is the only person in the servant quarters of the Jodhpur Mess near Pandara Road who can speak fluent English and so is a ‘mini celebrity’ here. She and her brother Yash (four-years-old) are the first in their family to go to an English medium school.
“The Congress government opened the doors of private schools for our children. My entire colony (consisting of nearly 50 households) celebrated. However, my children will need additional tuitions to cope with the school syllabus and it isn’t easy to maintain a lifestyle that they are now being exposed to at school. They are growing up very confused and neither the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Aam Aadmi Party understand or care enough to provide help to people from the lower economic strata,” says their mother Rachna, who works as a domestic worker in nearby households.
The lower-income group is a large and crucial vote bank for all the three major political parties trying to win the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections.
Stating that schemes are brought by the political parties “without them actually thinking it through”, she said: “My vote would go to the party which can bring up the standards of education in government schools where my children and me are comfortable and belong.”
“My children have the right to education with equality. Give us good, standardised education in government schools, good health services in government hospitals and access to cheap, nutritious food for our children. After over six decades of Independence, which government in Delhi has been able to give us this?” she asks.
Not far away from her accommodation is another family of five – three children and parents (a stay-home mother and a father working as a driver). Living in a jhuggi cluster right behind Tughlak Lane, the children are students at the nearby New Delhi Municipal Council school.
“I don’t want reservation and ‘pity’ privileges for my children. Political parties are busy distributing free blankets, promising to give us land, free electricity and cheap food. I am willing to work and pay for all of this… Take away all the subsidies and reservations, allow our children to grow up with dignity and claim what they truly deserve,” says Chandan.
His wife Ruby adds that there is little difference between the various political parties. “I personally feel that all the parties are the same. They promise to give us everything from free food, clothes, education, health care, money in our banks and even free land. Despite free everything why isn’t our lot improving? Why are generation after generation forced into the same cycle of poverty and dependence on subsidies and reservations? Why has India had only one ‘chaiwalla’ reach a top office in this huge country? My vote is for the political party that can guarantee us a corruption-free society,” she says.
