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[diya at sarai.net]

Events at the Pushta

I wanted to write and tell people about events at that have been unfolding
at the Yamuna Pushta, near the Rajghat and opposite the Red Fort here in
Delhi. Pushta is/was the largest slum cluster in the city having
approximately 300,000 people.  After fifty years of people living here,
the Pushta is in the process of being demolished. The Delhi High Court has
ruled that all encroachments must be removed from the Yamuna, especially
those who are ‘polluting’. In the time that has followed, the Court has
refused to hear a single petition about the Pushta. As the language goes,
lawyers have been thrown out for bringing in cases. Other groups across
the city, including the Congress, the Inam Bukhari and V.P Singh have
tried to intervene but to no avail; and the Congress appeared to give up
pretty easily. The Election Commission at one point had a stay on the
demolition because it is right, of course, in the middle of election time.
However, that was changed, and the Commission then decided to issue the
forms to those who are getting alternative plots (the one/sixteenth) so
that they can come back to the Pushta and vote.

The demolitions started in the first week of March and have been
continuing since.

When I returned this morning after a month of the demolitions had started,
the place looked as close to a war zone as I, personally can imagine. 
With everything flattened, one could see how really large it was. The
first part is a thin strip along the river. Houses had circulating and
circumvented the other apparatus that can be found on the city’s
waterfront. Fly ash pools, giant rusted power plants, and then that ditch
of a river.

That part had been demolished first and so was the flattest. As we went
northwards, the demolitions were ‘fresher’ – the mounds of rubble higher
and the number of people still living there greater. They were cooking –
still neighbors but with no walls between them now. By the time one
reached the broadest part, people are breaking down their own houses,
salvaging what they can – pieces of households – bricks, beams, tarpulin.
I think this is technically called voluntary departure. You get to break
down your own house.

Some have made other arrangements, some will get plots from the
government, and others will join the waves of out migration that the city
has seen over the last six or seven years. Over a 60,000 people have been
displaced it is estimated so far. One sixteenth are to get plots perhaps
in the resettlement. The others are effectively homeless and invisibilised
without the requisite papers.

There have been pockets of ‘resistance, increasingly organized under the
very nose of the state, multiplying like the man in the Matrix, with the
passing days. Any one showing signs of netagiri (politicking) is picked up
and policemen walk around at night telling people to quietly leave. The
residents said the fire recently to standing jhuggies was caused by a
policeman who openly dropped a match and was then lynched; the DDA says
that a disgruntled resident set the place alight. In the violence of
either version of the story, is a plan to ‘modernize’ the city built on
‘best feudal practices’ that the government currently espouses.

The resonance of the Emergency, the last time Delhi saw mass evictions
under a different government, with Mr Jagmohan  at the helm are strong.
However, the number of people who will be displaced at the Pushtas far
exceed that.  And does the showing up of bulldozers every few days to
clear jhuggies, moving in further and further, cluster by cluster. The
metaphor for all this has often been the generalized pollution of the
river belt; yet the bulldozing operation reminds me of the cutting down of
a forest.

The riverbed is to be channelised, a temple complex built, a stadium. This
part of the story is not over yet. There are great unknowns – for all but
the ruling party assured of its strength through the predicted election
win. What attitude will the government take now to the issue of the urban
poor?

It appears I am writing an obituary. However, I hope that does not have to
be the case although the now familiar conspiracy of silence is once again
difficult to break.

Different groups in the city are working on different responses. There are
interventions underway by the Jan Chetna Manch for the remaining
demolitions to support the presence of other groups in surveys and
distribution. Relief efforts are being organized. I will keep people
posted on this as well as with efforts at the National Human Rights
Commission.

There will be a press conference held by the Visthaapan Virodhi Abhiyaan
at the Indian Women’s Press Club on Friday the 16th  (today) at 3 pm on
state intimidation and the current situation of housing. The police
brutality has to stop and so does this eviction.

If people would like to write about the Pushta, that would be great.
Please do come out.

You can contact me for any information at diya at sarai.net or

Hazards Centre: haz_cen at vsnl.net
Ankur ankureducation at vsnl.net