New Delhi

New Delhi, the capital city of India, famous of its monuments, political life, developing each day, dynamic metropolis – it is spectacular but also a shocking place. Spectacular buildings established by Hindu and Muslims – such as Qutub Minar (the highest in the world minaret), the Red Fort, Humayun’s tomb… what is shocking the most – the streets… the streets on which dwell children, elderly, women and men – there are no exceptions. There is only one rule – the rule of streets, and one fate – the fate of poor people. The law of marginalization which makes them invisible to many eyes; invisible because they do not fit to the modern architecture of neo-liberal capitalism, nor they fit the statistics of the positive economical growth. Street dwellers have their own statistics and their own politics – of surviving from day to day. Although they are invisible to the politicians, they can be seen all over Delhi, laying on the lawns, benches, and the bus stops. They fill every empty spot of the city which has officially 12 million people; unofficially: No one knows! Because no one is willing to count people who live inside the cardboards. Poverty is not surprising, what is surprising is the indifference for poverty. The indifference also of those people who stubbornly claim that “everything is all right until we can note the positive economical growth,” moreover who say that “people who live in the poverty are only byproducts of development.” Yet, no one cares that the same people are thrown away from their homes just because ‘someone’ has its plan to build a dam or to establish Special Economic Zone.

 When after three weeks of being in India, I landed at my home-airport in Poznań, I understood that relative social equality – it is a real treasure, of course we are not the best in it, but the Bukowska Street for sure does not look as the streets of Delhi – and here appears our duty, to keep our streets like that, or even improve them, and to bring more equality to those in India, in addition to that we should try to bring more awareness to those streets all over the world where residue corporations and governments, and those who are luckier – who live in villas or in vast apartments, because the awareness is the first and the most important step towards the change. When the world will start the awareness campaign? For now, the colorful magazines talk exclusively about the charming monuments, TVs about the Bollywood stars, and we – we keep saying that “this is not our problem…”