Showing posts with label Nagpur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nagpur. Show all posts

Saturday 2 April 2011

The Traffic Jam That Was Not

After walking hundreds of kilometres, an Adivasi rally arrives in Mumbai. PRIYANKA BORPUJARI tells their story — of a historic victory and a brush with urban callousness

ON 14 MARCH, about 20,000 Adivasi women and men from all over Maharashtra walked hundreds of kilometres, across the state, to Shivaji Park in Mumbai. The next day, they began their march to Azad Maidan. They had been walking for two weeks. And now, finally, they were in the capital: 20,000 tired but determined protestors of the Jungle Haq Sangharsh Yatra.

For urban spectators, the rally would have been remarkable for its size and spectacle; but mostly all they saw was jammed traffic and delayed transit. Few seemed to care what the march was really about. Even a prominent news daily saw it fit to report on the traffic jams and inconvenience to urban Mumbaikars without looking wider or deeper. The truth is, this massive rally of Adivasi people, far from being beaten into dispersal, as is often the case with protest marches, was escorted by non-aggressive police. And surprisingly, in the searing 38-degree heat, several MLAs in immaculate white accompanied the marathon walkers into Azad Maidan. Was this a rare moment of people’s power peacefully gaining a firm handle on a government ready to run for cover?

It was the Maharashtra government’s neglectful and callous attitude towards the implementation of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, which had seeded this strong and spectacular protest. The Act had promised to rectify decades of injustice, and validate the right of Adivasis over the land and forest that they have lived in for generations. However, negligible justice has been delivered since. Of the 2.88 lakh forest land claims that had reached the Sub-Divisional Level Committees, 1.7 lakh had been rejected. Further, the average area of approved claims (0.63 hectares) was not even 50 per cent of an economic holding. Many of the “approved” cases bear closer examination; an Adivasi may be in possession of 3 acres of land, have half an acre ‘approved’ and still face eviction from the remaining 2.5 acres.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had apparently earlier requested that the rally should not enter Mumbai. This may have pleased harassed urbanites complaining “protests must happen without inconveniencing the common man”; it seemed no matter that the protesting common man — the Adivasis, rooted to their land for generations — had been indefinitely deprived of their very right to life and livelihood.

However, the Chief Minister had offered to meet the protestors twice and subsequently the Yatra’s representatives were invited to a long meeting with the Chief Minister, Deputy CM, six other ministers and several senior bureaucrats. This high-level political engagement was finally recognition of the determination of the Adivasi protest. The Chief Minister and Chief Secretary agreed that there was injustice in the large-scale rejection of the Adivasi claims to their land and that a review process was required. The Chief Secretary pointed out that there was no procedure for reviewing rejected claims. The political contingent tried to persuade the rally to withdraw their protest, vowing action would be taken. But this proved too vague a promise. The rally would continue in its journey for justice. In Thane on 11 March, the Minister of State for Tribal Development Rajendra Gavit arrived to address the tribals — and also persuaded them to return home. But no one was ready to stop walking. Not until they had been heard. Ulka Mahajan of Sarvahara Jan Andolan, a participating group, said, “Tribals have been on these so-called forest lands for more than a century, long before the government came into existence. But still the lands are not in their name. Sixty years after independence, this is historical injustice. The Act was brought about to undo this injustice. However, it is not being implemented due to several interests involved. Now we hope that there will be the political will to right the wrongs.”

IT WAS in this mood of mountain-moving focus that the rally arrived in Mumbai to assert ‘Adivasi asmita’ or tribal identity in a gargantuan system that barely accounted for their existence. Although jaded and jolted by the city, the tribals persistently coloured Mumbai’s streets with their caps and flags. Led by women holding a banner, the Bhute dancers from Nandurbar and Mawchi tribesmen followed. In the spectacle of painted bodies, turbans with feathers, waists decorated with strings of dried gourd and ghungroos, a sea of banners from participating organisations surged across the urban landscape; slogans emanated from a loudspeaker on a truck. This procession was followed by about 10,000 women rallyists.

Disciplined, the walkers did not veer off their files. When people attempted to cross the road, the women chased them down. “We have been walking for 14 days to talk to the government. Why can’t you respect our wishes?” yelled Raju. However, the walkers did not disconnect from their innate integrity; they waited for a funeral procession to pass. “We are walking for our lives; they are walking for the dead. We cannot be disrespectful,” said Kalawati from Dahanu. Raju stopped the men he was leading to allow school children to cross the road. Many watched from their balconies — a tide of people, some barefoot, braving the burning asphalt of the JJ Flyover.

Sunni from Nandurbar, whose land claim had been rejected, asked with bemusement, “Why do they say you get everything in Mumbai?” Sunni’s sojourn in Mumbai convinced her that it was a place without clean water. The drinking water tanker in Shivaji Park had emanated a strong stench. With the crush for bathrooms, very few could bathe before heading out for the rally. “Walking from our villages, we passed small rivers where we bathed. Along the way villagers offered us water to drink and freshen ourselves. But there is no water facility in Mumbai,” said Anitabai, an old woman wearing thick spectacles.

But it was not just the lack of common resources or generosity in the city that struck the Adivasi protestors. It was the general lack of human engagement. Humabai Gavit, who had been leading the rally, wiped her face as photographers obstructed the walkers near CST station, at 2 pm. One journalist asked rather inanely, “Isn’t it tough to walk in this hot sun?” Humabai smiled, “We work in the sun everyday. We don’t enjoy it, but how will we survive otherwise?” She was too dignified to jeer at the journalist. Is that all they could question, the discomfort of the sun?

This massive yet peaceful assertion of people’s power had effectively pitched a marginalised issue into high-level political discourse; it had urged the police and security infrastructure to allow a large and sensitive protest like this march across a metropolis; an entire community valiantly fights an uneven battle… and the question is about the inconvenience of walking in the sun?

The rally being allowed to wend its way across Mumbai was in itself a rare concession. The Congress-NCP government still carries the acrid hangover of the 1994 Gowari stampede: 120 people from the Gowari tribe had lost their lives while walking towards the Nagpur Vidhan Bhavan, which led to the collapse of the Sharad Pawar-led Congress government. Yet, this rally was not only allowed, but dignified with political engagement. The Opposition moved an adjournment motion in the Budget Session of the Assembly on the morning of 15 March. At 3 pm, a delegation of 50 Adivasis were invited to meet the Chief Minister. After hectic negotiations, it was agreed the Tribal Welfare Ministry would draft exhaustive guidelines to ensure that the rejection of claims was not speedy, furtive or without due process. More importantly, through these guidelines, rejected claims can now be reviewed several times — a historic first, anywhere in India.

By the evening, the resolute journeyers — exhausted but victorious — began to make their way home, back into the green forests. Mumbai looked on from cars and balconies; untouched, but perhaps not unmoved.

Sunday 23 January 2011

Not One to Wage War


On 24 December, Dr Binayak Sen was sentenced to a life term on charges of waging war against the State, sedition, and for colluding with Maoists. I saw a very different man on my last visit to his house

I had called him a day in advance to check if anyone from his family would be in Raipur the next day. I knew his younger daughter Aparajita would be in Mumbai till the Christmas college vacation. “We three are in Raipur. We would love to see you,” Dr Binayak Sen had said, with a certain higher-pitch emphasis on ‘love’. I arrived in Raipur the next morning at 7 am, and hesitated to go to the Sens’ residence at such an early hour while the sun was still struggling to make itself visible through the fog. But the cold winds had attacked my spine through the night on the bus from Jashpur, and I desperately needed some warmth. On my way to the Sens’ on a cycle rickshaw, watching the capital city of Chhattisgarh straining to usher in the new day, I found myself cutting back and forth to memories of my acquaintance with the Sen family. I had first met Dr Sen’s elder daughter Pranhita—a 25-year-old budding filmmaker—in May 2009 to interview her. The interview was published, and my relationship with the Sens had dropped root. It had strengthened in the past 18 months.

I rang the bell and waited. A minute later, there stood the man at the door, in his vest and pyjamas, looking confused. Soon realising it wasn’t the milkman, he hurried to unlock the bolts. He waited for me to drop the bag off my shoulders, and then wrapped his arms around me in a long embrace. After the cold night, I was home and warm.

Dr Sen’s wife Ilina walked into the room and the warmth was superfluous. I apologised for arriving at such an early hour. “I was up at 5.30 am, and made tea for Ilina,” Dr Sen said, while Ilina looked at him lovingly. “Tea or coffee?” Dr Sen asked. I said anything would do. “But give me some indication which of the anything you want,” he requested.

Sipping coffee, we began to talk of the government’s undue attention on the family—Ilina had been called an ISI agent in the Raipur sessions court the previous week, during the course of Dr Sen’s trial. The family had been through much in the past three years; controversies seemed to litter their path like glass marbles. I joked only Rajinikanth could intervene, given his unusual powers to sway opinion. “Isn’t he the Tamil actor?” asked Ilina. Dr Sen and I exchanged a look of disbelief and laughed aloud.

Pranhita was up by now and soon we got into a girly banter. She wanted to see how much my hair had grown. I loosened my bun, exclaiming, “Now, there I look like a woman!” Dr Sen, who was making breakfast next door, peeped in as I let my hair dance. Pranhita and I screeched like adolescent schoolgirls caught talking about boys.

Sometime later, I spoke to Ilina about getting my bus ticket to Nagpur. Dr Sen, meanwhile, was dressed in his jeans and kurta, ready to go to court. The good doctor’s relationship with the courts and cops began in 2007, when he was arrested on charges of being a Maoist sympathiser. Now, as he paced about the house, he looked confused: “Who will buy the ticket? How will Ashwin buy it if he has to be with me in court? But he can’t buy it later at noon; tickets might not be available then, and it is already 10.30.” Ilina interjected to allay his doubts. He turned to me, “Won’t it be cold on the bus?” I assured him I would be fine. It was finally decided that Ashwin, a law student who has been helping the family with minute details of the case, would buy the ticket on the way to court.

We had a lunch of Bengali fish curry and rice grown on their own farm on the outskirts of the city, while watching an animation film on TV. The discussion among us women (with their dogs Safia and Dottle playing earnest listeners) veered to reality shows on TV, and the palpable surge in India of a generation devoid of soul.

Dr Sen returned from the court and got into a discussion with Ilina and another guest about the case. Meanwhile, I poked around the many bookshelves that house everything from Victorian to Bengali literature, to medical journals, to all manner of human rights reports. I remembered what Pranhita had told me when we first met in 2009, a few days before her father would be released on bail: “The Chhattisgarh police took my sister’s algebra notebook; they suspected it might contain Maoist code!”

The sun had set and the dogs were trying to find a comfortable warm corner. I prepared tea for Dr Sen and Ilina, while they began to arrange the papers for the court the next day. “You are staying tonight, right?” Dr Sen asked me suddenly. I managed a smile and shook my head. Ilina was on the internet, looking for citations to be used from a decades-old case. Fifteen minutes and a few phone calls later, she’d found what was needed. Dr Sen left the TV remote—he was trying to fight sleep while watching news updates on the latest developments in the 2G scam—and ran to see what Ilina had found. As I stood over and watched, Dr Sen put his hand on Ilina’s shoulder and said with a proud beam on his face, “Among other nice things, my wife is also an internet expert.”

Dinner followed, and I began to gather my stuff to catch the night bus. Ilina noticed I was sticking my nose into a book whenever I could, and asked me to just take it with me. Mother and daughter decided to drop me to the bus stand. “Bye, Baba. Take care of yourself,” I said, and he embraced me in a ring of safety and love, for one long moment. “When do I see you next?” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Come back soon or I will fall asleep and won’t be able to open the door,” he shouted out to Ilina as she descended the staircase. I looked back to see him one last time, not knowing that ten days later, he would be made to walk into jail once again. “They will be back in just ten minutes. Please don’t fall asleep,” I said. “I was just joking,” he chuckled.I hugged Ilina Ma and Pranhita as I walked towards the bus. The gush of cold wind was unbearable.