By Sushil Kutty
The fiery ‘Mr Kejriwal’ was seen in Delhi after a gap of months. On June 29, Sunday, the AAP convener addressed a crowd of AAP workers at Delhi’s given protest venue Jantar Mantar. A few hundred slum dwellers whose “jhuggi-jhopri” have faced bulldozer-action under the vigil of the Delhi Police attended. Many of the slums stand on railway land and others are properties of the Delhi Development Authority.
The Railways and DDA now want their lands back. The slum dwellers are shouting Cain, claiming they’re “owners” and have been for decades – “for 50-60 years” and that if “this Sarkar” owned this land why didn’t the government stop our parents and grandparents from occupying the land? Logic died and there’s no place for irony. Besides, who is going to argue with vote-banks? Ask Delhi’s slum dwellers and they say “Indira Gandhi and VP Singh settled our parents along railway lines and ‘nullahs’ and sewers, who is Modi and Rekha Gupta to demolish our homes?”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta are heartless villains. It’s been nearly a month of “bulldozer action” in the national capital and patience is wearing thin. Kejriwal on Sunday threatened Prime Minister Modi with gherao by “40 lakh slum dwellers” if “Modi doesn’t behave and stop the jhuggi-jhopri” demolitions.
Gopal Rai warned Modi that “people will enter his 7, Lok Kalyan Marg ‘ghar’ and throw him out.” Jantar Mantar cheered. The crowd was mostly AAP workers. The slum-dwellers were guarding “items salvaged from the remains of their slums” in the scores of debris. Among them Shreya who says she has to sit for NEET on July 15 and doesn’t know how? Shreya’s mother works three houses for sustenance and now she doesn’t know?
There are scores of such “human interest stories” and a tear each for each story will bring a deluge. The onus is on “Modi and Rekha Gupta” to find alternative accommodation for these “displaced slum dwellers”. Gopal Rai wants it done and Kejriwal also insists. But ask Kejriwal why he built “Sheeshmahal” and didn’t care to build even 1 lakh dwellings for 1 lakh slum families?” and he has no answer.
The slums are full of stories. For example, who knew these slums are “business ventures” for lots of men and women; that there are “jhuggi owners” and that there are “jhuggi tenants”; that at least one quarter of “alternative accommodation” provided by the Delhi government have been cornered by “government employees”; that the so-called slum dwellers have built two, three, four and five floors to the “Original jhuggi” and rented them out?
How many “city dwellers” know that thousands of “jhuggi dwellers” own houses in authorized colonies of Delhi? “Why can’t we live in AC-comfort in our slums?” ask the slum-dwellers but then press the point home by talking of bulldozer action and “garib jhuggi parivar”.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta is evil and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a good-for-nothing. “The railways only remember now”, after all these years that this land belongs to the railways? “We have Aadhaar Card, Ration Card, Electoral Card, we have electricity bill. I have five sons and their five families, all my sons should be given a flat each!”
These are the stories of the slum-dwellers of Delhi, people who claim to be from “Bihar and Uttar Pradesh” but a quarter of them speaking Bengali-accented Hindi and sporting Muslim names. The majority of Delhi’s slum-dwellers are, in fact, from the minority community including those living in the well-off “Batla House slums”, many of which face “bulldozer action”!
Now, Kejriwal is back and the slum-dwellers want Chief Minister Rekha Gupta to abdicate for lying to them to corner their votes. And why did Prime Minister Narendra Modi not keep his promise of “Jahan Jhuggi, Wahan Makaan”?
Thousands of government servants, “DDA and MCD babus”, have cornered flats built for the displaced slum-dwellers and it’s a big mess out there! The homeless erstwhile slum-dwellers want Kejriwal to return, forgetting that the BJP government will be around for another four and a half years and that there is a big constituency of voters who want the “eradication of slums”.
Kejriwal faces an uphill task. His slum-dwelling vote-bank is scattered and will be gone. Where will AAP find a “city” for them? Even otherwise, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress want Arvind Kejriwal gone to his Waterloo in Punjab. Contrary to belief, the “garib jhuggi-jhopriwalas” are not the silent majority of Delhi. The majority of Delhi is looking for a slum-free Delhi. Kejriwal’s Achilles heel is that he wasted 11 years doing nothing to address the “sins of the slums”. (IPA Service)
