How Do You Make People Care About What They Can’t See?

   

How Do You Make People Care About What They Can’t See?

Reflections from Yeh Bhi Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan 2025

Urban poverty is one of the world’s most persistent paradoxes: it shapes cities, drives their economies, and defines their daily rhythms, and yet it remains almost entirely invisible to the people who live alongside it.

Working in this space, we’ve learned that the challenge is not only solving the problem.
It’s helping people notice it– it is about building a movement. 

This year’s Yeh Bhi Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan (YBHMMJ) became a test of that question:
How do you make a city care about something it has learned to overlook?

What emerged were three lessons: personal, organisational, and deeply human.

If a problem is invisible, you must give it form: sound, movement, and emotion.

Data, reports, and presentations rarely shift public imagination.
People respond to what they can feel, not just what they can read.

At YBHMMJ, the goal was not to inform the audience about urban poverty —it was to make them experience its texture.

Art became the bridge.

Theatre turned structural gaps into human stories.

Rap turned data into pulse.

Humour softened entry into hard truths.

A drum circle made collective action feel physical, rhythmic, alive.

When something is invisible in daily life, you can’t rely on intellect alone.
You need to tap into emotion, because emotion opens the door to understanding.

Events like this look seamless on stage, but behind the curtain is an organisation choosing to show up for the city, together.

   

What most people didn’t see was the internal choreography required to make this happen.

Teams whose primary responsibilities lie in maternal health, youth engagement, disability inclusion, livelihoods, and civic action — all of them paused their packed calendars to pour energy into one shared goal: making the city show up, notice, and think.

The challenges were real:

• children managing nerves, conflicts, and rehearsals
• shifting schedules in high-pressure programme cycles
• budgets stretched with creativity and resourcefulness
• logistics that changed by the hour
• ten different departments aligning around a single narrative

And yet, everyone showed up.

Not because events are glamorous, they very rarely are.

But because visibility is part of justice.

Because telling the story of Mumbai’s invisible communities is as important as working with them every day.

This was teamwork in its truest sense: people stepping outside their silos, absorbing additional work, holding space for each other, and reminding themselves why collective purpose matters.

Children remain the most honest storytellers, and the most powerful teachers.

Rehearsals with children and youth turn into lessons you never plan for.

You see them negotiate disagreements, advocate for each other, hold space for shy peers, and step forward with courage they didn’t know they had.

You see how quickly they absorb responsibility when someone believes in them.

And when they step onto the stage, owning their voices, their identity, their reality, you realise that growth is not just a programmatic outcome, It is a lived process.

Their presence grounded every performance. They reminded us that empowerment grows in the moments when children and youth are trusted with agency.

So what does all this mean for a city like Mumbai? 

It means visibility is not optional.

It is a form of advocacy.

A form of accountability. 

A form of dignity.

When communities tell their own stories this way, the city pauses, and listens.
And when the city listens, change becomes possible.

Urban poverty may remain invisible on most days, but nights like YBHMMJ ensure it is never forgotten.

If you believe in a more inclusive, equitable Mumbai, there’s a place for you.

Whether through volunteering, collaboration, partnership, or simply engaging with the stories of the city- change begins with noticing.

And noticing begins when we decide to show up.

To connect or get involved, reach out to Apnalaya.