It Was Lockdown At Midnight

At the Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE), we try and reimagine inclusive development and incubate innovative solutions together with the communities.

- Dr Renu Khosla

Water and Sanitation for the Poor in Times of COVID

Lockdown at midnight. Like Cinderella at 12 O’clock, everything unraveled. While we all scrambled to hoard food, medicines, sanitizers, soaps, money…. even beyond basics, those who lived in slums didn’t have this luxury. Sukh Lal, a resident of Vivekanand Camp in Chanakya Puri, Delhi had no money, space or a refrigerator to stock vegetables. The morning after, the water tanker didn’t arrive and there was no drinking water. The newspapers reported that the tanker service was dispensed as it was hard to maintain social distance with people jostling for water. Who knew how long the Coronavirus (Covid-19) would live on the tanker surface. Next day, the community toilet attendant didn’t show up, too scared of being infected or because there were no buses on the roads. It could also be because detergents may not have been delivered to clean the toilet. Sukh Lal wondered how he would wash hands every few hours to protect himself, how he would stand 6 feet away from the person ahead of him in the queue while waiting to use the shared toilet. He wondered if his mother would be paid her monthly wage. He wondered if he would be able to set up his stall next morning. He had just Rs 500, would they last 21 Days? Would they have enough money to pay the rent at the end of the month?