[Reader-list] the Act of leisure

[taha at sarai.net]

Hi Zainab,

I largely agree with your take on the street as a site of surveillance/
contestation/control. But what amuses me the most is the way in which the
state seeks to manage spaces like public parks/ community centers/ roads
inside a residential colony etc. There seems to be a method behind
innocuous measures to gently push the outsider out. The discourse of
hygine/ crime/ cleanliness/ security is invoked on a routine basis  to
secure land/ pavements/ municipal roads/ public parks and of course
community centers.  Not that crime is mythical in this case but does
securing public land in the name of crime prevention help??? I don't
know?? or WHY the fencing of land appears to be the only creative solution
to crime prevention ?

The public-private partnership of Mumbai  is also mirriored here, but its
more subtle. The chief minister's  motherly smile carefully hides the
sneer as the Bhagidari between the government and the residents shifts
into  higher gear. The Delhi Police accelerates its neighborhood watch
campaign encouraging neighbors to spy on each other and report any
'suspicious' activity to the police.  The RWA's tighten the noose around
the hawkers/ sales person/ vegetable vendors/ scavengers and pedestrians. 
The RWA fences the residential colony area and installs gates around them
restricting the access and control of 'public' parks/ streets/ roads/ and
shops. The DP also installs CCTV cameras around jantar mantar complex to
monitor agitations and also ofcouse keeps a watch on every vehicle/
pedestrian  that passes by its watchful gaze.

The act of contestation in this haze of assumed/imagined  rights [of
possession/ ownership of land/ area/ property] then becomes interesting. 
The missing iron bar on a road divider which is wide enough to let a
person pass or a gap in the  wire meshing of a colony fence  becomes a
site of relief.

But the arbitrariness through which  this kind of  power operates makes it
 more dangerous. The  question then becomes  how does one negotiate with a
quasi legal approach of power. For example, during  Christmas last year, 
the Head constable of New Friends Colony thana with eight constables went
around the community center evicting idlers, who were generally sitting
and chatting around CC. I was one of them, when I questioned him, he
waived his Danda angrily at me,saying, ' Agar Aapko Baat Karni Hai To Cafe
Coffee Day Ya Barista Ja KE Baitho Par Yahan Aise Khali Nahi Baithna'.

When I reiterated my 'right' to sit here and do whatever I so damn well
please, he just stared at me and said with a heavy accent 'Suna Nahi Kya'.
That was it. I couldn't do anything about it.

This brings us again to the question of leisure. Why in a place like CC
sitting idly and chatting around the campus invites  the state's wrath but
Barista  and Cafe Coffee Day are a safeguard to its harassment. It isn't
that CC is always like this, God forbid no,but what drives this manic sort
of obsession of the state with the street, common grounds where people
converge/meet/walk.

cheers

Taha




> Hi Iram,
> Thanks for the insightful email. I draw some analyses from your last
> email,
> very quick and brief ones for the time being:
>
> 1). Streets and side-ways are increasingly being seen as loose,
> uncontrolled
> spaces which need to be controlled. So, we have moves from the corporate
> sphere, the government sphere, to demolish, have private and public
> security
> around. At least that is what I see happening in Mumbai. In Delhi in any
> case, streets are largely vacant from whatever bit I have seen. In fact I
> feel unsafe walking on the streets in Delhi, except for Old Delhi.
>
> 2). Streets and side-ways are also being seen as spaces of illegality,
> again
> a Bombay perspective. Here is precisely one of the sites where the
> everyday
> battles between legality and illegality are being fought. And then again
> the
> issue of controlling loose space.
>
> 3). In this discussion on security, there is a very strong need to think
> in
> terms of the corporate-government perspective. I cannot think of one
> without
> the other in these times in Mumbai. Battles of competition, economy are
> being waged between the corporates and the loose urban spaces. For
> instance
> the four 7 star hotels at Nariman Point pooling money and hiring private
> security to evict hawkers. While the public is not involved in this
> tussle,
> we are talking of some kind of public when we refer to thge hawkers which
> is
> being seen as 'outsiders, encroachers'.
>
> 4). Then again, the media generates tremendous images of the terrorist,
> the
> encroacher, the illegal entity and these condition the public mind very
> strongly.
>
> In debates on security, these three angles are critical.
>
> When we talk of public spaces, one of the things I am wrestling with in my
> research on the seafronts and railway stations here is who is the public?
> And the public seems damn dead when you ask me. They are snoring, caught
> up
> in the humdrum of daily lives. I have often thought of public and
> community
> spaces in Mumbai city to be problematic because people tend to use less of
> these owing to tight notions and practices of time and these then become
> dangerous. For instance the Shivaji Park. Then you have surveillance,
> rules,
> regulations, laws, policing, etc. And the media contributes to this all.
>
> For now, I am saying this. But there are several thoughts. Particularly
> about institutionalizing entertainment and leisure which is what happens
> in
> malls and now with a spate of festivals in Mumbai City which aim to
> commecialize and brand street food. There are terms of entry into public
> spaces like malls and multiplexes and you were damn right when you said
> that
> if your scout around outside an upmarket place, you are seen suspiciously
> by
> the guards. What I am wary of is this increasing fuzziness between private
> and public security and the use of private security in public spaces.
>
> Cheers,
> Zainab
>
>
>
> Zainab Bawa
> Mumbai
> www.xanga.com/CityBytes
>
>
>
>
> From: iram at sarai.net
> To: reader-list at sarai.net
> CC: taha at sarai.net
> Subject: [Reader-list] the Act of leisure
> Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 16:44:47 +0100 (CET)
>
>
> Dear Zainab and all,
>
> Thanx for sharing your experiences/ observances of Delhi, Bangalore and
> Bombay.
> I guess as cities go, there are many similarities in all three except that
> Delhi being the national capital can always cite security as a justified/
> valid/ legal reason for many things.
>
> Taha and I should have been more clear on what we mean when we use
> categories such as private/ public and non formal spaces. I will take
> recourse to the space of the New Friends Colony community center to clear
> my understanding of public/private space.
>
> Can one really define public and private as clear-cut categories of space
> and behaviour? How does one categorize private or deemed private behaviour
> in public spaces? For example, kissing ones boyfriend in the parking lot
> at CC or for that matter, public or deemed public behaviour in ones
> private space. For example, a film star giving an interview to a news
> channel while sitting in her drawing room would elicit a more formal
> performance of behaviour.
> I don’t think that I am in a position to give conclusive definitions of
> what is private and public.
>
> However, when I talk of public space with reference to the NFC Community
> Centre, I mean the sidewalks, pavements, verandas, parking lots, streets,
> subways, and squares etc. The inside of the shops, restaurants, bars,
> cinema halls are private spaces because the right of admission is reserved
> by the owner of the property or one is deterred by the presence of a
> security guard. The public space of the verandas are taken over by the
> restaurants and shops, the parking lot is leased out to private
> contractors and all other spaces are meant to be used, to quote Richard
> Sennet as `  areas to move through and not be in.’ So, one  will use the
> pavement, sidewalk, veranda, square to move  from the  general store to
> the  chemist to pizza hut to the cinema hall to the parking lot and vise-
> versa.
>
> The idea of sitting in front of Ego Thai [an upmarket restaurant] makes a
> particular kind of individual, a nuisance, a vagabond, a potential
> terrorist or an anti-social being.
> To get back to the question of private and public space, I don’t know what
> to call the space of the fountain in a small open area in the shape of a
> square typical to many Community Centres in Delhi. It is owned by DDA. It
> is not a private space owned by any of the surrounding shops and
> restaurants. It is not a public space because a private security guard
> controls movement of people. He will not allow certain kind of individual
> to sit around and that includes anyone who is not a patron/potential
> patron of the shop/ restaurant.  Public spaces, according to my
> understanding were supposed to be spaces, that were open to all across
> class, caste, race, religion and gender, hence the use of the term non-
> formal space.
>
> I agree that a public space such as a restaurant, cinema hall, etc needs
> economic transaction to survive. But, are spaces where one need not have
> coffee and sit or watch a film for free, totally out of `public’
> imagination?  I’m still grappling with this one though. Besides, there is
> Manisha.  She is eight years old and lives under the Okhla railway station
> flyover. The NFC Community Centre is work and play space for her. She
> collects garbage, begs and is a regular sight at CC.
>
> Will Mc Donald’s- the family restaurant allow her to enter their
> restaurant space if she wants to buy a seven-rupee ice cream cone? Does
> the security guard, who I see as a non- State player in this game of `cops
> and robbers’, not allow her to play in the veranda?
>
> However, this discussion was initiated not because I wanted to solve
> Manisha’s problem but because I was not allowed to sit in certain
> `sacrosanct’ spaces in CC on many occasions.
>
> Coming back to the idea of leisure and control, the popularity of games
> like football, rugby etc in Europe after the passing of the Bank Holiday
> Act 1871 indicates at the institutionalisation of certain kind of leisure
> acts. `Publics’ would go out in large numbers, congregate at a space full
> of `strangers’, watch/participate in `fun’ activities, eat, drink and head
> home. But through all of this entry/exit would be restricted/monitored and
> so would behaviour and announcements/advertisements would ask people to be
> wary of strangers.
>
> Appu Ghar, trade fairs, zoological gardens, resorts, parks, stadiums,
> cinema halls etc. become such public spaces and the spaces of the streets,
> roads, pavements, subways, and railway stations become carriers of people
> though not all publics to these public spaces.
>
> Some ideas that we are thinking about- Do we take leisure and the idea of
> leisure as given? What are the normal/ accepted forms of leisure and who
> defines them? Is leisure a performance of sorts?
>
> looking forward to more views,
>
> Cheers,
> Iram
>
>
>
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