[Reader-list] Fw: [Aid-awareness] Nangla Machi and Narmada

[P M Ravindran]

And should we forget the alacrity with which the apex court stayed all demolitions in Gujarat? 

Regards and best wishes

P M Ravindran

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Ashima Sood 
To: aid-awareness at aidindia.org 
Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 10:55 AM
Subject: [Aid-awareness] Nangla Machi and Narmada


Thank you to all those who wrote back in response to this issue. 

I would like to point out that there  is a direct and organic relationship between the demolition of Nangla Machi and the displacement caused by the Sardar Sarovar Project. In both cases, the executive organ of the state reserves the right to take away the shelters and livelihoods of the disadvantaged. And the judiciary holds the right to uphold the executive's  powers of coercion. 

Where do the displaced go? The logic of cash compensation for land leads the  "project-affected  persons"  (PAPs) of the Narmada valley directly into the heart of the urban cash economy. Yet even here, the SC judgment on Nangla Machi tells us, there is no place for them. The slums and jhuggi jhopdi clusters they have built over many years of hard work 
are deemed eyesores and encroachments on state land. Never mind the encroachments the state and its corporate allies continue to make on ancestral lands. In both cases, the law has ruled against the dispossessed's right to shelter. 

Shuddhabrata Sengupta of CSDS Sarai posted the following riposte to the judgment on Sarai's Reader List and Common Law List. Amusing and provocative:

----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Nangla/SC Proceedings/Notes/9th May 2006 
To: Shveta <shveta at sarai.net> 
Cc: reader-list at sarai.net, commons-law at sarai.net 
Message-ID: <446194EA.2000103 at sarai.net> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed 

...I find the remarks made by the honourable bench of Justice Ruma Pal and 
Justice Markhande Katju extremely illuminating. They have opened doors 
in my understanding of the Indian Constitution and the rule of law, and 
flooded my being with insight and clarity. I hope that the government 
recognizes the sagacity of the hon'ble bench and awards them with the 
highest civilian honours at the earliest for acting with such alacrity 
to save our city and protect the spirit if not the letter of our 
constitution. 

Three things stand out, which as a lay, legally illiterate person, I 
think are quite remarkable in the way they elucidate the working of the 
best intelligences of the judiciary. 

1. One, their wisdom on matters of the weather, (that it is "never 
comfortable to live out", that there will always be intense heat, or 
cold, or rainfall in the city). In fact, this is of the utmost 
importance, because given the nature of our city, those who cannot 
afford air conditioners, central heaters, generators and uninterrupted 
power supply should all be asked to leave our fair city. This will 
leave all of Lutyens Delhi and some pockets straddling the ring road 
intact. The rest of the city in fact should be destroyed. 
Systematically. 

Something like this was done in 1857, next year is the 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that time, and there is no better 
way to commemorate the sacrifices of the Indian rebel martyrs and the 
forward thinking nature of the East India Company's military urban 
planning division than to repeat that exercise that in demolition on a grand scale, so as to ensure that only those who deserve to live in Delhi may do so. 

2. Following from the above, we should do the utmost to ensure that the 
hon'ble benches wise suggestion that, 'If you cannot afford to live in 
Delhi, you need not come here' be implemented at the earliest. This 
suggestion needs to be recognized for the great innovation that it 
represents, implying that the retrograde step of de-linking property 
from citizenship and civic/civil rights, which all democratic movements 
and revolutions (even of a thoroughly formal nature) had sought to 
advance, has now been finally jettisoned by the Supreme Court of India 
as a foundational legal principle. Before this, we all suffered under 
the terrible delusion that regardless of whether you were rich or poor, 
we all had a human right to make a decent living in the city. Now the 
matter is clear. And the poor must be put away where they belong, so 
that the rest of us can be equal before the law. 

Some of us have been anticipating this for some time now, after all, one 
applies for a credit card, or a club membership, and one's chances of 
having one's application accepted do depend on income, ownership of 
property, vehicle (preferably four wheeler) etc. Now, this ruling 
suggests that the same convenient and efficient principle be applied to 
habitation in the city, in fact to citizenship itself. The hundreds of 
years wasted in democratic efforts, which have only brought slums and 
ruination on all good nations, can now be finally reverses, thanks to 
this epoch making judgement. I am speechless in admiration for the 
hon'ble benches hon'ble sagacity. 

3. The hon'ble bench goes on to observe, as per your report, that 'The 
right to shelter did not mean that everyone will have to get shelter'. 
This is yet another stroke of sheer judicial (and judicious) genius. 
Taken to its logical conclusion, this statement, implies that the right 
to life does not mean that everyone has to live, the right to liberty 
and freedom of expression does not mean that everyone has to be at 
liberty to say what they want, and so on. By one stroke, the honourable 
bench has emptied the word 'right' of its inconvenient associations, and 
filled it with the content of the word 'privilege'. This has far 
reaching implications for our polity, which any right thinking person 
will welcome. It means for instance, that a campaign should now be 
undertaken, inspired by the examples set by the Honourable Justices Pal 
& Katju for amending the Indian constitution such that we have what is 
only right and proper, meaning, a body of fundamental restrictions, and 
a few reasonable rights, instead of the other way round. This would be more in keeping with the manner in which our society seems to work. 
Once this is done, judicial efficiency will increase, the back log of cases will diminish, and all manner of uncouth, poor, dirty, ganda log can be locked away in labour camps to grow organic zuccini, while the true inheritors and custodians of the Indian Republic Raj get down to real business. 

Rise and Shine India ! All hail our glorious Supreme Court. 

best 

Shuddha 



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