[Reader-list] Report on Bhatti Mines

[ranita]

Report on Bhatti Mines
Ravi Agarwal and Anita Soni
February-March 03  posting to Sarai Reader-list

To see one's 'realistic' assumptions about inescapability of an officially 
decreed fate being undermined by the real-life stirrings at the grassroots is 
one of the delights of 'imaginative engagement with social experience'. In 
non-formalized, open-ended interaction between the researcher and the social 
reality under research there is place for surprises.

While drafting the proposal to document and photograph the predicament of 
marginalized communities in the Bhatti Mines area of Delhi, we assumed that 
their pending relocation on the Supreme Court orders could not be averted.  
Their being impleaded as petitioners in an Inter-locutory Application could 
at the most result in getting them decent terms of resettlement at nearby 
Jaunapur, instead of being dispatched as human garbage to currently available 
dumping sites in the North-Western peripheries of Delhi state. Documenting 
the traumatic event of relocation as and when it comes to pass, was to figure 
in our research project agenda.

Even later, reflecting on the in-depth problematics of our project already 
under way (January 03 posting), we stated that the village of Od Mandi, 
unique because of its archaic tribal content, was worth documenting while it 
still existed, before its people were forced to set on a journey to 
Destination Slum. But presently, it appears, other possibilities are taking 
shape.

By the first week of February, we had almost completed putting together a 
collection of photo graphs and textual data pertaining to village life at 
Bhatti Mines, including the Od community celebrations like the "mela" and 
traditional kirtan at the local temple of Baba Ram Deo (a sufi saint of 
Rajasthan venerated by the Od tribe for centuries), and the more exclusively 
tribal features such as ancestor worship and burial of the dead (whose tombs 
are known as 'samadhis') at the village cemetery, recently also serving as 
the cremation ground.

Our next task was to locate and document the various types of jobs engaged in 
by the majority of wage-earners who hire themselves as 'unskilled' labourers. 
Their work takes them miles away from their homesteads.

Many of them still find employment as old-style diggers, women alongside 
menfolk, with pack mules or donkeys to carry sackloads of earth at 
innumerable construction sites all over NCR (and also at illegal mineral 
trade sites, sprouting right within the NCT borders with open connivance of 
the police, months after the Supreme Court ban on mining in the entire 
Aravalli range across Haryana and Rajasthan). A few veterinary centres set up 
at Od Mandi by voluntary agencies cater to the needs of this group of 
workers.

As a separate theme for detailed documentation we have earmarked the 'modern' 
category of down-and-out workers in service of global capitalism : 
truck-borne gangs of mostly young, male labourers deployed by contractors 
onto constantly changing locations. And not just for digging and loading : 
the home-grown technicians from  the Od community of Bhatti Mines are 
invariably present at all places where the work of laying internet cables is 
in progress. At the top, a couple of giant companies take the lead and supply 
the optic fibre cables; further on, work gets subdivided among a host of 
petty contractors who in turn allot particular segments to labour-deploying 
contractors. At the ground level, it is all manual skill and diligence of 
self-trained 'mistris' who work with simplest tools, without any engineers to 
guide them. They are quite proud to do this job - often with surface traffic 
going on - and would like it being photographed. At Od Mandi, their 
boisterous return atop a truck after a day's work, and the rainbow hued ducts 
stacked in contractors' courtyards made for good pictures.

Due to new developments, absorbing attention of the village community and 
calling for our response, we had to go slow on exploration of the 'work' 
thematic in February and March.

The continuing refusal of Delhi government to review its stance before the 
Supreme Court with regard to 'encroachers' in Bhatti sanctuary prompted Mr 
Colin Gonsalves, the counsel for 'Gram Bachao Sangharsh Samiti", to plan a 
personal inspection of the officially approved re-settlement sites in Holambi 
Kalan and Bawana. A few acknowledged local leaders promised to accompany him
 on an agreed date (9.2.03), but backed out at the last moment. We did a 
follow-up of this issue, talking to and getting close-up portraits of the 
reluctant 'community representatives'. We could not escape the conclusion 
that village-level leadership was simply non-existent: the locally 
'prominent' individuals had all been dependent on outside political patronage 
(of either BJP or Congress bosses) and bent upon forwarding their own 
mercantile interests.

In the meantime, a meeting of all concerned secretaries of Delhi Government 
was convened at the Chief Ministers's office to discuss the Bhatti Mines 
issue, and an invitation was extended to the 'Secretary of Gram Bachao 
Sangharsh Samiti and others'. It turned out to be a hoax. As per the standard 
practice, the consultation took place behind closed doors while twenty-odd
 delegates from Bhatti Mines who came forward to hear and be heard, were kept 
waiting in the lounge. The insult triggered off a resentful reaction that 
went beyond the usual trading of politically motivated accusations and 
contr-accusations. In the eyes of villagers, factionalism itself took a 
beating. It was a sobered lot who proceeded from the Player's Building to 
Colin's office. 

The earlier proposed inspection by the legal counsel, along with photographic 
survey of the living conditions, civic amenities and livelihoods at the 
prospective destinations in Holambi and Bawana was finally executed on Feb 
20, with participation of a cross-section of Bhatti Mines residents. The many 
horrors of that 'promised land' make a separate story.
      
Subsequently, ground-level mobilization started taking place among members of 
the Od village community who now feel the need of a credible public platform 
to represent and uphold their traditional tribal ethos and work-culture. In a 
long series of meetings, the nucleus of a new organization has been formed. 
It is styled in a low-key manner as 'Od Samaaj Sewa Parishad'. Service to the 
community through constructive efforts is a traditional concept, closer to 
the rustic hearts than the imported gimmics (rally, slogan-shouting) of 
externally led agitation.

Unlike the already defunct 'Gram Bachao Sangharsh Samiti' which was a loose 
alliance of prominent village businessmen and political players temporarily 
sinking their rivalries, the emergent organization has a working-class 
leadership, and shuns political affilliations.
     
Once it becomes a legal entity as a registered trust, it will take up a number 
of steps towards social reconstruction and tribal self-governance, which may 
- in the election year - effect a change in the official perceptions about 
the denizens of Bhatti sanctuary, and get them a lease of the Ridge forest 
for proper regeneration by indigenous methods.

Whatever the outcome of this awakening, it will certainly lend a new angle to 
our research. It goes beyond a 'movement against eviction'. It spells 
re-assertion of culture-confidence. Our project, however haphazardly 
evolving, might be playing some role in it, simply because our attention is 
focussed on these vital apects of the people's lives which have no meaning 
for the urban elite of power : the ethnic memories, the codes of cultural 
expression, the proud collective self-image linked to a continuous history of 
indigenous craftsmanship.