In the light of the callous actions of the BJP-led municipal corporation on North Delhi, where on the morning on April 20, seven bulldozers accompanied by more than 1000 policemen went on a destruction spree in Jahangirpuri in Delhi, I was reminded of similar events in my city of Mumbai.
In Delhi, under full media glare, the municipal bulldozers destroyed handcarts, shops, workshops, awnings, the gate to a Masjid and much more. Crucially, they destroyed the lives of poor people.
Despite the intervention of the Supreme Court ordering them to stop and maintain the status quo, they continued for well over an hour. The result was a tragic tale that is all too familiar to anyone living in a city in India: arbitrary demolition of homes, shops, sources of livelihood of the poor and often Muslims, with no notice and no chance to find a solution.
Living as I do, in Mumbai, I have followed and written about the lives of the urban poor for decades. Just to jog my own memory, I am pasting below some of the columns and articles I have written.
The first is from my colum The Other Half, that I wrote for over 30 years, first in Indian Express and thereafter in The Hindu. It was in response to a statement made by Shiv Sena supremo, the late Bal Thackeray, that Mumbai was not an "orphange" that could accommodate poor people from other parts of India. At that time, one of the main planks of the Sena was the anti-outsider campaign, singling out people from Bihar and UP, without acknowledging that many of these people had lived for decades in Mumbai, worked here, and that this was the only home they knew.
This was also the time the Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra had launched a scheme to rehouse some slumdwellers, only those considered "legal", that is those that had been documented in a survey conducted in 1976. The large numbers outside this list were "illegal", especially the pavement dwellers, and hence not entitled to an alternative if they were cleared off the pavements, as they were. In the course of time, the "cut-off" date for legality was extended from 1976, to 1980, 1985 and finally to 2000.
As a result, many of the women I write about did finally get a pucca house in a slum redevelopment building. They could negotiate with the authorities because they were organised. Others in similar circumstances did not fare as well. Over the last two decades or so, a large number of slums have been redeveloped and poor people have got housing. But the numbers of the homeless remain virtually unchanged, and pavement slums and so-called "illegal" settlements still exist, on side roads, on patches of low-lying lands, away from the view of visitors to the city. The stories of the people who continue to live like this even today are not very different from Sameena, Madina, Sakina or Kusum.
The difference between what happened in Jahangirpuri on April 20, and demolitions in Mumbai in the past is that here they were not used to selectively target one community. The poor were considered to be a problem because they came in the way of infrasturcture or use of land they were squatting on for some other purpose (like building a shopping mall!) A few times, the bogey of "illegal Bangladeshis" was used by the Shiv Sena to demolish slums where Bengali-speaking mostly Muslim migrants lived. But never so blatant as what happened in Delhi, and the weeks before this in Khargone, MP and even earlier in UP, during the first term of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adiyanath, otherwise known as "Bulldozer Baba".
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From the archives
The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 2, 1995
The Other Half
An open letter to Balasaheb
Dear Sir,
My name is Seema, or it could be Sakina, or Sameena or Madina or Kusum. My actual name is immaterial. I am not trying to hide my identity but as there are so many who are like me, and who feel the same way I do, my acual name is of no consequence.
I am writing this letter because I am told that you have declared that Bombay -- Mumbai -- is not an "orphanage" and that it cannot afford to hold out a welcome to other like me. Why, Sir, do you compare this city to an orphanage and people like us to orphans?
I came here 30 years ago from Madhubani in Bihar. We were a family of weavers but most of us had no work. We heard that Bombay was a city where the poorest of the poor could earn enough to survive. So, without ever having stepped outside my village, I caught a train to Bombay.
When we arrived here, we were overwhelmed. The city was huge -- I had never in my life seen such a big place. It was also frightening at first. But soon we found that we were not alone. There were many more like us who had come here for the first time.
Although we did not know a soul, we settled down on a patch of pavement and began looking for work. After some days, we were pleased to discover that there were many others from our district who had also come to Bombay. Gradually, some of us congregated in the same area. We have lived there ever since.
Every now and then, the municipality comes with its demolition squads to clear us out. But after extracting some money from us and stealing some our things, they leave us alone. So we rebuild our shelters and continue our lives.
I can think of many terms to use to describe this city, but an orphanage? No, Sir, Bombay is not an orphanage. In an orphanage, the children have a roof over their heads and are given food, free of charge, to eat. Some of them are even adopted by kind-hearted rich people.
We, who came here several decades ago, have still not got a roof over our heads and there is certainly no one who gives us free food. Nor has anyone adopted us. We pay for everything.
We have survived because we must, there is no other option. We sleep wherever we find a vacant space, on a pavement, on the railway platform, in a park, on a empty disused plot of land, along the railway tracks, anywhere. Today, this little space, where a grown person cannot stand upright, is our only home. We dream of better days to come but wonder if they will come within our lifetime, or even that of our children.
In this place which you call an orphanage, few people have bothered to find out how we survive. We live by our wits. Our men, even today, earn a daily wage pushing haathgadis (handcarts) or loading and unloading goods at the different bunders (docks). We women spend the first three hours of every day, from 4.30 a.m. hunting for water. Will we get it from the fire-hydrant today, or from a person living in a pucca chawl, or from a hand-drawn water tanker? After having begged for water, we get on with the day's work -- cleaning other people's houses, cooking food for them, washing their clothes (we usually do not have enough water to wash our own every day), taking care of their children, and whenever there is a moment to spare, doing piece rate work at home to earn a little more. Our day's work never ends.
With what we earn from these multitude of jobs, we have fed ourselves and our children. It is not a luxurious existence by any standards. But it is far better than the life we left behind. Now we hear that you will not permit our jaatwaalas from our village to join us if they are in trouble. Why?
Tell us, in what way are we a burden to the city? Have we demanded free houses? We pay for water. In fact, we are told that those of us who live on pavements pay up to 20 times as much as those who live in pucca buildings and get a running supply of filtered municipal water. We also pay each time we use a toilet. Nothing comes free to us.
We hear that you have promised that you will build 40 lakh houses and give them free to people living in slums. You are worried that such a scheme will lead to people "pouring in" from other states. You are quoted as having said, "Where will they live and eat and what about hygiene? It could trigger an epidemic. Life here will become miserable."
But life is already miserable for millions of people in Bombay, yet all of them live and eat and there are no major epidemics. It is not a way of life that we would recommend. But despite such promises, none of us who live like this seriously believe that we will ever be "given" decent houses, free of charge. Life in this city has taught us to listen to everyone but to believe only what experience has taught us. And if we have no such illusions, why should our brethren back in our home states? Rest assured, Sir, they will not come pouring in to Bombay even if you do succeed in building some houses and giving them free to a chosen few.
In fact, all we want is the right to live. We are constantly told, specially before elections, that every person living in this country, man or woman, rich or poor, has equal rights. Yet, now it appears that only the rich have rights. No one tells them not to move from one city to another in search of better opportunity. But if we do the same, we are compared to orphans and told we must stay where we are and starve rather than strive for a better life. Is this fair? Or are we not entitled to ask even that question?
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