In 2000, a visiting team from the Committee of Resource Organisations (CORO) – a grassroots organisation that works with marginalised communities – was surprised when a resident of the Chembur slum asked why ‘people from outside’ should come to work in her area.
The CORO team responded by asking Mumtaz Shaikh to take it up herself, and she immediately enrolled as a volunteer. Over the next decade, Ms Shaikh rose steadily to become the organisation’s joint secretary and the executive president of the Mahila Mandal Federation founded by CORO.
She fit right in into CORO’s Right to Pee campaign in May 2011, comprising 32 organisations, and has been a part of it from the beginning. In 2012, CORO surveyed 129 toilet blocks in Mumbai and found that none of them had women operators or safety measures.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We came across one case of rape,” she recounts. Though the civic administration was indifferent to the findings, public support was overwhelming. “We gathered 50,000 signatures at 16 railway stations,” says Ms Shaikh.
She says women working in the unorganised sector, including at construction sites, spend between Rs 2 and Rs 30 a day just to pee. “They are a part of Mumbai. Why can’t Mumbai provide facilities for them?” she asks. Her efforts achieved small results, and pay-and-use toilets are now beginning to reserve a toilet seat and urinals for women.
ADVERTISEMENT
While her rise in the field of social work was steady, her personal life was in stark contrast. As a child, Ms Shaikh was witness to her mother being abused and physically assaulted by her father.
Her own life took a similar turn when her parents married her off at 15.
Fighting domestic abuse, she found the courage to fight the conservativeness of family courts and walk out of her five-year marriage in 2003. She remarried in 2006.
Though her education was interrupted in Class IX, this mother of two is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in politics. Aiming higher, she plans to contest the civic polls in 2017.
The BBC recognition ‘feels good’, but a lot needs to change on the ground, she says, adding, “We cannot celebrate as yet. The honour is a small step towards what needs to be done. The fight is still on.”
Mumtaz Shaikh, 34
Education: Undergraduate
Her game changer: ‘Toilets are women’s rights’ campaign