When was the last time you saw a playground that seemed enticing enough for the little ones in your neighbourhood?
Stretching out into the horizon is a reality where safe spaces for children are restricted to luxury homes alone, and to residents of townships that grudgingly allocate a play area for those affluent enough to afford them. Representation pic/iStock
I have been worried about where children are supposed to play for a while now. This may have something to do with how I gallop towards old age and look at everything through the filter of nostalgia but is probably more in keeping with my usual dissatisfaction with the way things are managed by an uncaring government.
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I thought about this again a few months ago while I was stuck in a cab somewhere between Kandivli and Goregaon. It was a place I had always known, yet there was little that seemed familiar on that particular evening. After a while, I recognised that my unease stemmed from an absence: there were no visible signs of happiness around me. I couldn’t see anyone smiling. Surrounded by vehicles, inside which sat grim men and women, we all contemplated choices that had brought us to that grid-locked corner of New Link Road. The other thing that stood out was how there were almost no children to be seen, as the cab passed beauty salons and restaurants. There were no empty spaces or shaded areas.
As anyone who has been in the city long enough knows, it wasn’t always like this. Growing up in this part of Bombay was not such a dreary experience when I was young. It was even more pleasant during my mother’s time, because I remember her speaking of fruit trees, and of children climbing them all day long during summer vacations. What my ride impressed upon me was how sad it must be to be a child today and how starved they must be of opportunities to indulge in activities so many of us took for granted.
This isn’t an imaginary complaint. A decade and a half ago, when the city’s official population hovered around the 12.5 million mark, the reported ratio of open space to people was 0.03 acres for every 1000 people. New York City had four acres by comparison at the time, while Singapore had six. It doesn’t take more than a cab ride to figure out that those figures have changed for the worse. Given how hard it is even for adults to walk down any street, it’s a miracle that children have any space at all.
Urban planners have been warning us about this for years. They have listed grounds that are repeatedly encroached upon, questioned why commercial projects are prioritised over recreational areas and asked for transparency when it comes to how resources are allocated towards the fixing of playground equipment. None of this has translated into significant change, and the added lack of attention being paid to the Air Quality Index only shows how little the well-being of children matters. We are governed by people obsessed only with real estate and vehicular traffic.
Stretching out into the horizon is a reality where safe spaces for children are restricted to luxury homes alone, and to residents of townships that grudgingly allocate a play area for those affluent enough to afford them. The vast majority will be left to fend for themselves because spaces like Oval Maidan will continue to be an exception rather than the norm.
It sometimes feels as if we have given up and accepted that this is what our future generations are condemned to grow up with. I say this because it’s not as if parents are unaware of the benefits of play, or of the impact these activities have on the development of motor skills as well as on overall fitness of every child. It’s impossible not to draw a line between fewer opportunities for outdoor play and a rise in sedentary activities, followed by the domino effect of health issues that are entirely avoidable. No government in any state has bothered to calculate the cost.
In 2015, the Delhi High Court affirmed children’s right to play in parks. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has long recognised the ‘right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities’. These rights are being tramped in Bombay with impunity, as parks, playgrounds, and gardens continue to be swallowed up under the guise of development.
A weekend or so ago, I asked the parents of a three-year-old where their son played on most weekdays. The couple reside at Grant Road and told me that their building had no space. Taking their child to a playground meant driving him there. I couldn’t detect any frustration in their response, but the sadness
was palpable.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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