Ghetto

 

GHETTOS

                

A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.^[1] The term was originally used in Venice to describe the part of the city to which Jews were restricted and segregated.

Indian example 1- Uprooted from Mumbai after the 1992-93 riots, thousands of Muslim families found safety in Mumbra on the city’s outskirts. The Bombay riots of December 1992, which overwhelmingly killed Bombay Muslims, and the retaliatory bomb blasts in January 1993 by the Muslim underworld, reconfigured the social geography of the city. Bombay Muslims from riot-hit areas sought safety in numbers and found it in Mumbra, where Muslims from the Konkani coast had a long-standing presence. Through a combination of the desire for safety among Muslims, the relatively cheaper price of apartments, and continued rural-urban migration, Mumbra’s population grew 20 times from about 45,000 before the 1992 riots to more than 9,00,000 in the 2011 Census — possibly one of the fastest expansions of an urban area in India.

Indian example 2- This is one of the very few mixed neighbourhoods left in communally divided Ahmedabad, with more ghettos coming up over the last decade. Muslims from many areas who used to be scattered across the city are now flocking together in ghettos like Vatwa, a disorganised, industrial suburb.

Features

·         Power and water supply was feeble. There was little public infrastructure. The crisis provided a business opportunity for Mumbra builders; they set out to build illegal and substandard apartment blocks, which were (and still are) a lot cheaper by Mumbai standard

·         The poor building quality exacted a terrible cost in 2013 when a building collapse killed more than 70 people

·         Desire for upward mobility

The impatience with the status quo and the desire for upward mobility screams from roadside billboards advertising the achievements of Mumbra boys and girls in coaching classes and private schools.

·         Neglect and discrimination

Along with the strivings, a sense of neglect and discrimination pervades Mumbra, which does not have a single public hospital

·         Mumbra also lives with a hostile relationship with the police