If the quality of a city’s public spaces determines the quality of its citizens’ lives, then what do you say about a city whose children are routinely forced to play football on mounds of putrefying garbage, or cricket between crumbling tombstones or fly kites at the side of railway tracks? This is the reality in many fast-growing Indian metropolises – all poised to become ‘smart’ cities and imitate Shanghai or Singapore, but with little regard for the playtime of its youngest residents.
Lest you think only poor children are so treated, talk to children living in gated middle-class housing colonies. Despite their privilege, they are often obliged to play in-between parked cars of residents, that is if they aren’t pushed out of building compounds altogether because Uncleji didn’t want his SUV damaged by an errant ball or the building society wanted to protect its freshly-manicured lawn from a rough game of football.
So where can our children play? As per the latest news reports in Mumbai, almost nowhere. Already about 75% of Mumbai schools do not have their own playgrounds, as per the NCERT All-India Education Survey (2013). And now, the Mumbai Traffic Department has sought 22 maidans — covering over 50 acres — which are popular as children’s playgrounds, from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), to develop them as pay-and-park facilities. This only confirms what is well-known: that we love our cars more than we love our kids.
Open space is contested terrain in our overpopulated cities. Only a few give their citizens substantial public space. These include Gandhinagar, which offers 160 square metres of open space per person, Chandigarh (55 square metres per person) and to a lesser extent Delhi (22 square metres per person) and Bengaluru (19 square metres per person). Chennai and Hyderabad have less than 5% of their area planned as open spaces.
But Mumbai, with a population of 12.4 million, offers only 1.1 square metres (or 9 square feet) of open space per person, one of the worst ratios among world mega cities. The National Commission on Urbanisation (1988) suggests the ideal ratio of open spaces is 4 acres per 1,000 persons.
Not that our governments seem overly concerned. They hand over valued public space/playgrounds to private developers under the guise of caring for it. Either that public space is lost to the public forever, or it is usable by only a small section of the public. It’s the poor who lose out the most when public lands are privatised or made accessible via user-fee.
Converting open playing fields to parking lots is sad for city children in general, but it’s worse for girls who have always been marginalised on the playing field. This move comes at a time when activists are attempting gender equity on the playing field by encouraging girls to exert their right to the maidan and pursue sports. Parcham, a non-profit group, for example, trains girls in football in municipal schools of Mumbra, a Muslim-dominated suburb in the Mumbai Metropolitan region. It has successfully agitated for the girls to have their own playing field and participate in tournaments. They are just starting professional coaching for the girls and aiming for entry into local football associations. Introducing the girls to play has also led to their increased agency over personal choices. For outdoor play has many important benefits. It’s time to assert our children’s right to play and our right to access our public spaces. Otherwise the cars will win.
Sameera Khan is a Mumbai-based journalist, researcher and co-author, Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets
