Joyful results amidst some drama
Posted in Blog
Mallika at Gota Housing on 20 May 2009
Mallika at Gota Housing on 20 May 2009
On 21.05.2009
The meeting with the Municipal Commissioner brought some results. The Gota Housing Society got a new pump, though they still get water only for an hour. The Visad Mata Society at D Cabin rang ecstatically the next morning to say engineers were doing their job. And this morning nine engineers were at Srinand Nagar Society.
Yesterday, CM Modi launched his Rs 15000 crore “Khedut Rath”. If past years are anything to go by, they will spend a lot of money distributing genetically modified seeds and chemical fertilizers to a few farmers and will not attend to the 21 lakh farmers who are in desperate circumstances. We, in turn, launched our Rights Circuit with a charter of demands for justice and economic opportunity. We visited Rama Pir No Tekro, had three meetings there to a huge welcome and have decided to set up a series of work units–a widow’s group; one for the rag pickers; one for young out of work men; one for the women masons.
The idea is to strengthen a people’s movement and create leadership and rights demands. So many women spoke of the wreckage of the public distribution system and the huge scale of corruption and coercion on the part of the owners of fair price shops, mostly Corporators! I came away with some some foul looking wheat and have promised to go to a fair price shop with them over the next couple of days to try and figure out all the different ways in which the poor are hoodwinked.
Next we went to Gota Housing Society. The erstwhile Sarpanch, Bipin Patel, a friend of the Home Minister Amit Shah (who physically tried to man-handle me during the 2002 Gandhi Ashram Peace Meeting) who has been holding the entire complex to ransom for twenty years, started sending out goons to threaten the women and young men gathering to greet us. We started getting desperate calls from our main three workers at the Housing complex saying that the Sarpanch’s men were shooing and bullying women gathering at the water tank to meet me, and were threatening stones hurled at us.
I called the Superintendent of Police, Ahmedabad Rural, Mr Trivedi, who at once assured me that he would send someone. We were delayed getting there and by the time we did, had received calls every three minutes. There were about 200 people waiting for me on the road, who seemed jubilant that we had come - Bipinbhai had also spread the canard that I would not dare to go - and I was kumkum-ed and garlanded. We then started walking the half kilometre to the water tank with the group cheering and shouting slogans. As we approached the water tank where several hundred people started coalescing as soon as they saw us, a phalanx of grim and angry looking thug types started menacingly walking towards us from the opposite direction. It was straight out of a Hindi movie! THey looked MEAN. And comic.
I walked up to them and smiled and did a namaskar and introduced myself. The leader said he was Bipin Patel. I said how nice it was that he had come. “I have come because of you”.
I suggested we address the crowd, by now over 1000 strong. I spoke, about what I wished to do with them, and then he spoke to a very restive and sniggering crowd talking of all he had done for them over twenty years, and smilingly informing me that I knew nothing of the history. He was not allowed to speak for long as the crowd got noisier. Then my colleague Bharat Sinh Jhala spoke and then I, again.
I spoke of finding a new, non corrupt and participatory way of getting our rights; of not wanting threats or intimidation, nor corruption and thuggery. The crowd cheered. I smiled a thank you and went off with about 200 people to another decrepit part of the colony where two children had died after falling into an open sewer. I was indundated by stories of how Bipinbhai had taken over over 500 acres of village land meant for cattle, gauchar land, had forced the residents to sign saying they were willing to let him have it for Rs 1 per acre, and of how he he had then resold it for a fortune.
I had invited the press and there were good photos in both TOI and DNA today leading to much jubilation amongst the residents.
On Sunday, 24 May 2009, we have planned a meeting cum workshop with fifty youths and twenty men to form working committees for the colony, to start savings groups and have residents look at what they want done in the colony. It would be wonderful to have them empowered enough to start a development committee within the colony that met regularly and took democratic decisions on how to improve things.
