Abhishek Bharadwaj is adressing the issue of Homelessness through a comprehensive, multi-sector approach, including coalition building, awareness-raising, and creative advocacy campaigns in India. After completing his Masters Degree with Social Welfare Administration, he did not look for a job; rather spent time with homeless people living on streets. Not long afterwards, he created Alternative Realities, as organization that works to raise awareness and address the needs of the city's more than 100,000 homeless people. A key to his approach is building coalitions among diverse sectors-NGOs, municipal authorities, law enforcement, hospitals, churches, and academic institutions-to address the issue of homelessness. As art of its advocacy efforts, he has formed groups of homeless youth who have written and enacted more than 300 street plays on issues related to their lives.
All activities of the organization are implemented with the help of active and passionate volunteers along with supporters of homeless citizens. The initial major challenge for Abhishek was to build rapport with the community and bring unity among homeless citizens. It took him 2 years of regular interactions to bring homeless citizens together in a group. Currently he is working on forming a federation of homeless citizens, which will be a group of homeless citizens advocating and replicating the current successful model at the state and national levels. Abhishek's efforts have been instrumental in developing a sense of dignity and togetherness among homeless citizens, which has built a great foundation for homeless people to advocate towards restoring the "Right to Live with Dignity". In addition to his aim to create a cohesive and active group of homeless people, he also aims to generate awareness among the public about the magnitude of the problem as well as trying to get the state organizations to formulate homeless friendly policies.
As a result of these efforts the issue of homelessness has become visible in the society and been acknowledged by the state administration. Besides sensitizing doctors, police authorities and state administration; with the help of his pubic education eforts, Abhishek Bharadwaj has also sensitized people to see homeless individuals as human beings.
Amidst the glittering nights of the city of Mumbai exists an Alternative Reality-something all of us witness but ignore. This reality is of our coolies, fruit vendors, construction workers, hand cart pullers, catering workers, all of them devoid of a basic need-SHELTER!! These are people without proper food, with lost hopes, victims of police atrocities, and children succumbing to juvenile delinquency.
Mumbai being the economic capital of India has been witnessing two kinds of lateral movements: the movement of poor people from other geographical areas into the city in search of livelihood and the movement of people within the city from meager income to destitution.
Without any support structure to fall back upon, these unskilled people to economize on their meager income, start living in places like open pavements, under bridges, dividers, small unhygienic makeshift hutments and so on. Instead of appreciating courageous efforts made by these stalwart poor people, they have been ostracized and are being labeled as criminals, ruthless and so on.
These homeless inidiviudals work so hard and contribute on all low end jobs, where no one elsewould like to work. In turn they are forced to live undignified life on the street of cities and being outcasted.
While the city needs the labor of the homeless for its growth, it is not willing to take the responsibility of their basic survival, namely the need of shelter. The dark cover of anonymity which surrounds the homeless makes them the most vulnerable among the urban poor and dehumanizes them by snatching away their basic rights. Even right to a dignified life is a distant dream for them. All low rung services, like distributing newspapers, putting up banners, preparing and serving food in catering business, loading & unloading goods from train, buses and the like are being done by homeless citizens. Mumbai city would come to a grinding halt if these individuals are not there for us. The broader societies need these services and homeless citizens require such jobs. This mutually benefit needs to be recognized and lead to mutual concern for each other’s welfare. City ecomony/policy and citizens must respect the contribution made by homeless people in building cities and treat homeless people with Dignity and Respect. City planning must include transit/night shelter for these hard-labours, who are invited by the city economy to work and contribute.
Abhishek Bharadwaj was born and brought up in a small village of North Bihar & completed his 12 years of school and junior college from a neighboring Block. The disadvantaged village ambience instilled in him the ambition to make a big career. He then was admitted into St. Xavier’s College (Ranchi) where he studied Economics and graduated with honors. However, the indelible images of women, youth & children in urban areas, searching for means of survival on the street of Ranchi made him realize the vulnerability of people who are on the edges of society, especially the urban poor. Soon after his graduation, in an effort to reach out to impoverished youth, children & women, he joined NGOs like Butterflies (Delhi), Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan (Delhi), Parivartan (Delhi) & Action-Aid (Delhi/Mumbai). His family never supported him in his venture and all through he had to support himself financially and emotionally. After a few years of work, he joined the 2-year Masters in Social Work program at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai to increase his skill set and knowledge. Subsequently, he started his initiative called Alternative Realities for working on the homeless issue. He is very passionate about creating a just and peaceful society.
During his 3 years of work on the “Right to Dignity” issue, Abhishek has received numerous formal awards as well as many acknowledgements for his exceptional work in the human rights field. He received a very prestigious & professional award called the “Ashoka Change Loom Award” in 2006, which is given annually to young & passionate Social Activist/Entrepreneurs. This award is a joint venture by Ashoka, Tata Trust and Pravah (NGO). He also received a prominent ‘Rotary Club Vocation of the Year Award’ in January 2007 for his contribution in Children Rights. Abhishek was also awarded with an Action-Aid Fellowship for initiating his work on the “Right to Housing” issue.
Recently he was awarded with Youth Action Net Global Award 2007 and National Award on Social Action & Justice 2007 for his innovative ideas on restoring dignity with homeless youth.
