In media reports on a wall collapse in Mumbai, evidence that the lives of the poor don’t matter

Every monsoon, India’s richest city has its tales of horror: of submerged railway tracks, of flooded roads, of open manholes into which people fall, of trees that collapse, often on passersby, and of hillsides that give way.

This year has been no different. People living in Mumbai are more than familiar with the images we see in newspapers and on television.

But the story that mostly escapes attention is the impact this has on the poor, those who must work rain or shine, with no means to protect themselves or their temporary dwellings from being submerged or even washed away.

And when some of them die, when a wall collapses or they fall into an open drain, they appear the next day as a statistic in the media: 9 dead, two from tree fall; 6 dead including one in an open drain, etc.

Sometimes the dead have names. But just that. Names. We do not know anything more about them. Were they migrants? Did they have families in Mumbai? And who will be held responsible for what are routinely registered by the police as “accidental deaths”.

Worse still, even in death, there is no dignity of those mentioning their names bothering either to get the names right or their ages...

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