How separate lifts in Mumbai highrises sustain caste prejudice in the city
Hello,As Mumbai goes through a redevelopment boom, an egregious practice is becoming commonplace. That is: the barring of domestic workers and delivery persons from residential lifts in apartments, and segregating them into service lifts, or even forcing them to use stairs and roundabout pathways.While building societies offer various justifications for such rules, activists and experts note that they essentially constitute modern forms of casteism. Nolina Minj reported from Mumbai on how these practices lead to distress and inconvenience for workers, who lose immense time and energy as a result. Their protestations and arguments that they are being denied basic rights have thus far largely been ignored.“Dealing with pressing issues like low wages and job insecurity, at first workers didn’t consider separate elevators as a major issue,” Minj said. “However, as they began opening up about their experiences with elevators, the conversations soon revealed how their imposed use felt discriminatory and robbed them of their dignity as human beings.”She added, “I had assumed that within highrise buildings all elevators would be the same, but learning of how service elevators could be made of different materials was quite revealing of the caste-class dynamics in such building societies.”You can read the story here.
