[Reader-list] exploring hygiene in Mumbai

[lakshmi kutty]

Hello,

This is my first post for the Sarai Independent Fellowship 2005. And it’s mostly full of questions!

My project is titled ‘High-Rise Hygiene: Narrativising Mumbai’s New Urban Culture’, and I’m looking specifically at the question of hygiene/sanitation and how it permeates this city’s urban culture. I’m interested in the public discourse on hygiene, sanitation and cleanliness; how this is linked to notions of good health (not limited solely to medical criteria), wellness, comfort/satisfaction; how this is expressed in public spaces, events and interactions; how segregation is crucial to these narratives; how they signify exclusion on the basis of class, caste, cultural/social capital.

I’m looking at hoardings, billboards and other public place signages in the city, along with reviewing three newspapers, The Times of India, The Indian Express, Mid Day. Apart from unraveling news reports and features, I’m paying close attention to the editorials and readers’ comments/letters to the editor sections, seeing how these notions play out in this ‘public sphere’. I’ve also planned to speak to people in terms of how they view themselves within these discourses; how do they react to them, do they feel part of, interpellated by or on the margins of narratives that promise a hygienic and healthy Mumbai for all. I’m most interested in train commuters (though I don’t want to stay limited to them), because I feel advertisements on railway platforms speak a wholly different language from other hoardings when it comes to articulating consumerist desires and opportunities for mobility. 

The starting premise on which my project stands is that the promise of a good healthy life in Mumbai today is not measured in strictly medical terms anymore, it is premised on space and openness, it is marked by the absence of clutter and crowds, it is highlighted by the possibility of escaping the perils of the city while still enjoying the benefits it has to offer. And what is most interesting is that at the same time as the criteria for healthy/sanitized living are changing from medical to non-medical ones, one finds that these new criteria are getting increasingly medicalized. What I mean by ‘medicalization’ is that there is an urgency attached to acquiring these new lifestyles/products/services, without which it will be extremely hazardous to even think of living in this city. The dangers/risks of living unprotected are grave, and only those who don’t love themselves/their near-and-dear ones enough will take such stupid risks. 

Questions that occur when I read/hear/see/smell: What makes people feel healthy? What urges people to stay healthy? What are seen as threats to personal and public health and well-being? When does the person have to be protected from the public?
Is there a universal ethic of cleanliness? How has this become a universalizing, standardizing ethic? What are the material and extra-material tools through which expressions of cleanliness/hygiene/well-being are being normalized? 

These are some of the leads I’m working on: 
Residential complexes; architectural designs and planning; space, light and building materials
Public spaces and use/abuse
Celebrations and consequent disturbances
Environment-friendliness
Leisure, travel, holidays, getaways 
Rejuvenate, revitalize, keep fit/healthy; work, play, rest adequately
City infrastructure choking, heaving under its own weight, being stretched thoughtlessly beyond capacity

I’m curious to know, are there resistances to these discourses about how to live a better life? Of what nature and on what scale? Insofar as trends are being set and followed, of what nature and on what scale are these movements occurring? 

How does a certain outlook/attitude/way of living get labeled antithetical to health and hygiene? How does a certain way of occupying space become a threat to the maintenance of clean and sanitized environs? What does it mean to have a bathroom so glassy, shiny and clean that one can eat off its floor? What does it mean to sell that as the standard for a clean bathroom? How does it draw up the insecurities of families about their private spaces, and mark these as undesirable, un-cool, and un-healthy? And how does it expose this same ‘fear of being exposed’ as a main reason for these people living a not-quite-not-white kind of existence? 

Have been reading and looking around the cityscape, making preliminary notes this past month. Thinking about ways to structure the interview. This project is an exercise in training myself to critically engage with the practice of living in this city, as also the means and methods of ‘doing research’. I don’t know as yet how this will shape up by the end of June/July, and cannot predict the manner of its movement into a ‘wider public sphere’, a question the Sarai fellowship concept note exhorted us to consider. Looking forward to finding out


Lakshmi 


P.S. My training in cultural studies, and the social sciences broadly, has been in institutional frameworks so far, and I’m just beginning to find out what it means to be an ‘independent researcher’! Am currently based in Mumbai.

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