Sitting amid home debris, slum dwellers hope for assurance
NO ROOF OVER HEAD Administration razed 81 structures at Indra Nagar Kachchi Basti in Jhalana on July 25
Mehrun’s 10-day-old baby sleeps wrapped in a red blanket on a cot under a tarpaulin tied to wooden poles. The only thing visible is his tiny hand. The baby was only three-day-old when the civic authorities on July 25 razed down 80 other home, along with his, at Indra Nagar Kachchi Basti in Jhalana.
A week later, amid heavy rains, the 400 affected residents are still struggling to piece back their lives.
The baby’s grandmother sits next to the cot emptying the contents of a polyethene bag – a small milk bottle, small medicine bottles and some papers. “The baby has fallen ill due to the weather. I took him to a hospital, the tests alone cost Rs 550,” she said, in the semblance of a room reeking of dampness.
She said that she pleaded with the authorities to leave their house as the baby was small but they didn’t listen. A week later, the place is covered in the debris of bricks, metal, broken tin and stones.
Most of the residents of the locality are labourers – some of them rag pickers – and were out for work when the JCB machines of Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) demolished the houses.
A dozen men, sit under a temporarily erected tin shade, with a banner demanding rehabilitation, compensation for the demolished houses and implementation of the central government’s 2015 rehabilitation policy in the state.
One of them, Mangal Ram, a labourer, said, “They called it Kachcha Basti ‘Kachra Basti’ (garbage settlement) and razed it down.” A lot of them claim that they have been living there for over two decades and furnish ID cards, electricity bills, other documents as proof.
The government authorities said that the slum dwellers were encroaching on government land and had to be removed.
“We gave them a notice two months ago and the process was carried out under due legal provisions,” says Ashok Yogi, deputy commissioner of JMC, Moti Doongri Zone.
Prem Krishan Sharma, lawyer and former president of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, said that the state government’s own slum development policy of 2012 said that the government will either regularize the slums or rehabilitate them, either at the same place or relocate them to another appropriate site.
He also cited a Supreme Court ruling of 1985 wherein the court had said that where the slums have to be removed for development purposes, the authorities are bound to provide alternate accommodation.
Gopal Gujarati, the convener of Rajasthan Kachchi Basti Mahasangh, said that the people are registered voters and are in possession of the land for a long time.
“If the government has no place for them, then it might as well make arrangements to send them to some other country,” he added.
Meanwhile, the men sit behind the banner, hoping that someone will come and give some assurance.