Introduction – Tree on evictions, Viveknagar

The demolition of the EWS quarters in Ejipura in January 2013, although not the first ever demolition of houses of people belonging to the poor, was the first ever demolition in South India based on the notorious land sharing model. Thus, when the residents were living here for more than 20 years, had voter ID cards, ration cards, property documents given by the local authority, they toiled for the city, scrubbed the vessels of the high rise apartments in the vicinity, fixed homes of the “posh” residents living around Ejipura, only to be driven away from their homes with utmost brutality and violence.

People who gathered around the tree in Viveknagar, many who were evictees of Ejipura asked:

Do the lives of 1500 families mean nothing compared to the business prospects of a shopping mall? Is this the much touted “development” of cities and making cities “slum free”? What is the price that people have to pay for the whims of the rich and a state (with a constitutional obligation to protect the vulnerable and oppressed) that joins hands with the land grabbers to fill its coffers?

What happens when land and the lives attached to a piece of land is valued only by the cases of money it is worth?

Most importantly, how did the women of the EWS quarters figure in this entire process of ruthlessness and injustice? What were their experiences of being literally thrown out of their homes, their belongings accumulated over many many years of hard work bulldozed, letting the sun and the dust dry their state sponsored injuries, seeing the familiar writing of their children lying in tatters, too numbed to even register that they had to build their lives all over again. The EWS episode makes us want to question what democracy means to the poor, whether the hallowed “rights of a citizen” mean anything at all in a system that is pushing its neo liberal agenda down the throat of those very people who build the cities.

This Marmara was brought together by Janasahayog and its partner organization.
 

Introduction >> Photos of the Marmara >>