Maharashtra has the largest population of slum dwellers (1.1 crore, with over 2.1 lakh homeless people) and a massive informal workforce which contributes more than 80 per cent to the economy. However, past governments have failed to safeguard the interest of the urban poor, thereby necessitating the demand for such a manifesto.

Civil society members, collectives, networks across Maharashtra and others gathered at the Marathi Patrakar Sangh, Mumbai and took the oath to push these demands for the Maharashtra Assembly elections 2019.

Evita, a member of the National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization, told TwoCircles.net that all major political parties including Shiv Sena, Aam Aadmi Party, Vanchit Bahujan Agaadi, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Republican Party of India had endorsed the manifesto. “This is a collective of 40+ organisation working on inclusive and just cities. The focus of urban cant be only building flyovers, bullet trains and cut down thousands of trees and evict people, take away their livelihood and push them to corners of the city – where they will probably have no access to the city, no claim to the city,” she said.

“This manifesto looks at the larger image of sustainable and just cities. The manifesto captures many lenses of urban issues but centring around urban poor, Dalits, Adivasis and their demand and right to the city to be ensured,” she added. 

Evita mentioned that the collective went across building momentum in the political discourse, discussing and explaining to them why do we need this. “All the parties have shown agreement to the demands mentioned and provided assurance. However, a lot would depend on when they publish their manifesto,” she added. 

The manifesto address issues under various categories and enlists solutions to the same. Here are some of the suggestions which are mentioned in the manifesto:

Financial Powers to be given to Urban Local Governments (ULG): Ensuring Re-municipalisation and devolution of 8 functions and functionaries. Affordable, adequate, and timely supply of potable water must be made available in all workers’ colonies irrespective of their domicile status.

Housing rights: Affordable housing in different forms like working women’s hostel, student hostels, affordable housing and rental housing must be adequately constructed in the city. Provision of facility centres (for example Aadhaar Kendra in Mumbai) must be ensured.

Transgender rights: Implementation of the Nalsa Judgement, sensitisation programs, housing facilities as well as pension policies, Transgender Welfare Board.

Youth rights: Effective implementation of the Maharashtra Youth Policy along by spreading awareness among the youth. An independent ministry for youth affairs must be set up.

Rights of the homeless: Housing rights under government housing policy. Need for state-level homeless shelter be built following NULM guidelines and Supreme Court guidelines.

Rights of informal sector workers: Payment of minimum wages must be guaranteed with minimum wages to be not less than Rs 18, 000 per month which is to be set as the floor wage per month with additional provisions of indexation. State Social Security Fund [SSSF] must be immediately constituted for providing social security benefits under the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2008 [UWSSA 2008] and at least 5% of State GDP to be allocated for creating a contingency fund to ensure effective implementation of UWSSA. 

Rights of the waste pickers: Urgent need to change the planning norms as per the directions in the SWM 2016 and amend the master plans in the cities for securing places of work, solid waste management of the waste pickers.

Civil societies have released similar manifestos in the past including one manifesto just before national elections. Speaking on the impact, Evita said, “The Delhi government has initiated and asked us to conduct studies on the migrant working hostel. Also, the initial stage of conducting a land study and understanding the possibilities of providing land pattas has been initiated in Delhi by the state government. These things take place with the advocacy efforts initiated and the conversations with Delhi government shows that there is some sort of movement happening.”

Courtesy: Two Circle

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Kadam Ali (left) holds his school transfer certificate issued in Bandherdubi in 1960 while Mohammed Nizamuddin shows his land deeds
 

A man in his early 70s, Kadam Ali was until September 2016, a proud resident of Bandherdubi village under the Kuthori Panchayat of Nagaon district and equally proud to live on the border of the Kaziranga National Park, Assam In a conversation with TwoCircles.net at his ‘new’ home, he is eager to show his Transfer Certificate issued at the Bandherdubi School. “See, it says I left school in 1960,” he says softly. “I was born in Bandherdubi and today, I cannot even visit it anymore,” he says.

The-road-to-the-new-settlement-of-farmers-ousted-from-Bandherdubi-village

The story of Kadam Ali, and hundreds other families belonging to Bandherdubi, is the side of conservation that you rarely see. The very mention of Kaziranga, for many, brings to mind a conservation effort that has led to the one-horned Indian Rhinoceros going from ‘nearly extinct’ a century ago to ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN red list, a marked improvement. But amidst all the success, a high price has been paid by people who always inhabited the region around the National Park, and in the context of Assam, it is not only their homes that were threatened but also their regional and national credentials. Because Kadam Ali, like his fellow residents of Bandherdubi, is a Bengali-speaking Muslim.

One of the promises made by the BJP en route to winning Assam elections in 2016 was that it would rid all national parks and sanctuaries of ‘encroachers’, with our Prime Minister even announcing that all Bangladeshis must pack up from Assam once their government came to power. While Modi’s statement is in line with his parties outlook towards all Bengali-speaking Muslims of Assam, the fact remains that if government papers and land deeds are anything to go by, most of the families in Bandherdubi have all the necessary documents. As Kadam Ali says, “About 200 families lived in our village of which at least 50 owned their land while the rest worked on government land. If it was encroachment as declared by the High Court, then how did we have schools, roads, a mosque and a big market?”

The Gauhati High Court ruling declared in its 2015 judgment, “It is irresistible inference that the habitants in KNP (Kaziranga National Park) area would fall in suspect group and they would be well-acquainted with the areas and animal movements, therefore they would alone be in a position to do poaching successfully or abet poaching by others.” Yet, as locals point out, the villages were not an ‘encroachment’ in the National Park, rather they became a part of the larger ‘buffer’ zone of the Park in its sixth expansion. Mohammed Nizamuddin, a friend of Kadam Ali and a fellow resident of Bandherdubi, explains. “We were on the outskirts of the Park…it was not uncommon to see rhinos, deers, wild boar and even elephants venture into our fields during harvest season. I do agree that some of the constructions in our village may have been illegal but why not remove those? Why ask everyone to vacate?” Nizamuddin asks. On September 20, 2016, as the news of the eviction came, many people went out to protest which led to the death of two people and injuries to several others. Nizamuddin, who suffered a major burn on his left leg, remembers that day. “We were told that we would be compensated and rehabilitated. But far from that, we were shot at. Is this how you treat the citizens of this country?”

Congress, BJP and the great conservation debate
The timing of the High Court order (September 2015) was also a critical time in Assam politics. At that time, the Congress was in power and despite the HC refusing to put a stay on the eviction orders, the Congress government did not carry out the orders, possibly keeping the upcoming elections in mind. However, the landslide victory for the BJP in April 2016 in Assam meant that it had no issues in carrying the orders of the High Court. The residents of Bandherdubi are also aware of the same. As Mohammed Ashraf, another resident points out, “The issue was never eviction but the way it was carried out that and what happened after that. Of course, we did not want to leave our village but who can argue against a court order? All we wanted was to able to farm again and be rehabilitated in a respectful manner…but since most of us are Bengalis (only 7 homes in Bandherdubi village belonged to Hindu families) it was easy for the BJP to throw us out.”

Post eviction, a search for livelihood
After the eviction, some of the families continued to live around the National Highway as squatters while a number of other families moved to other places in search of work. As Kadam Ali says, “we were transformed into daily labourers within weeks of eviction…families left never to return.” But for some families who continued to live as squatters around the National Highway, there was some reprieve available. Jamshed Ali, the President of the Kuthuri Gram Panchayat, had bought land in a village on the other side of the Bandherdubi village near the National Highway a decade ago. A member of the Congress Party, he relocated about 60 families on his land, around farms owned by Assamese Hindus. In a conversation with TwoCircles.net, Ali defends his decision. “These people were rightful citizens of Bandherdubi…I cannot speak against an HC ruling, but I have tried my best to rehabilitate some of the families.” The locals who were resettled on Jamshed Ali’s land thank for his efforts. Nizamuddin said, “Had it not been for him (Jamshed) we do not know where we would have gone. But even he can’’t help us become farmers again.” It was a feeling echoed by several members of the new village. In a matter of days, they went from being farmers to daily wage labourers. “Today, you will not find a single farmer in this village. The entire land (full of paddy and other crops) belongs to Assamese people, not us. Earlier, even though the income from farming was low, it helped us survive since we could grow a lot of vegetables,” says Noorjehan Khatun, the wife of Kadam Ali. “Now, I yearn to grow something but have no land,” she says. “From farmers, the men here now have become used to working in stone quarries or other manual labour as and when they get some work,” she adds.

I-have-settled-them-on-my-land-but-there-is-no-way-I-can-help-them-own-that-land-says-Jamshed-Ali-President-Kuthori-Gram-Pan

“We are almost sure we will be branded Bangladeshis”
As we had shown in an earlier Twocircles.net series, being branded Bangladeshi in Assam is something that every Bengali-speaking Muslim fears. And more often than not, no matter what proof of residence you have it doesn’t matter. Kadam Ali and Nizamuddin are well aware of this factor. “In 2015, when the process for National Registry of Citizenship started, we were all residents of Bandherdubi and participated in the exercise. But today, that village is gone…now who will believe us if we say we are not Bangladeshis?” Nizamuddin asks. “All our ID proofs: election ID, ration card, Aadhar Card were on the basis of Bandherdubi as our residence. And in the absence of these IDs, we are scared.” It is a question that Jamshed Ali prefers to answer indirectly, given his position as the President of Gram Panchayat. “Yes, there is that fear but so far nothing like that has happened. I hope that remains the same in future,” was all he would say. Kadam Ali says that since they are still close to their old village and within the same Gram Panchayat (Kuthori) they may escape the trauma of being branded Bangladeshis. “But we know what can happen, of course. They threw us out of our old village, what will stop them from officially labelling us as Bangladeshis?” Nizamuddin adds, “This (the BJP government) has no heart…I live in fear but what other option do we have?” he says. As the afternoon clock ticks to 1 pm, both Kadam Ali and Nizamuddin make way for the mosque. “The mosque in our village (Bandherdubi) was nice…we miss our village. We cannot even go and see it again,” says Khatun as we bid goodbye.

““I am no longer a farmer. I wish I could become one again,” Kadam Ali says before leaving.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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On Thursday, August 10, 10 men were acquitted of involvement in the 2005 Hyderabad suicide bomb blasts that killed one home guard by the Namapally Metropolitan Sessions Court.  While this news has been already circulated on various news outlets, it again acts as a stark reminder of how countless Muslim youth continue to languish in jail over charges of terrorism, waiting to see a trial. This particular case went on for almost 12 years; ruining the lives of all the 10. As defence counsel Mohammed Abdul Azeem pointed out, there were 20 accused in the charge sheet, of which three were reported dead, 10 were arrested and seven are absconding. But here, let us focus on the ordeal of the ones who are still alive.

When we called Azeem, he was of course, busy and slightly tired after a long and eventful day. But he did spare some time to explain the entire 12-year saga that has unfolded in front of his eyes. “The 10 were arrested between 2005 and 2006. Not one of them comes from a financially strong family; in fact, while some families can sustain themselves, others can’t even do that. Of the 10, five were from Hyderabad, three from Karnataka and two from North Bengal,” he told TwoCircles.net. Giving examples, Azeem says, “One of the accused from Hyderabad, Shakeel, used to work as a mechanic while another, Kareem, used to work as a welder. None came from a well-to-do family.”

As is often the case ( Shabbir Gangauli, Yahya Kammukutty, Hanif Pakitwala and several others) the police filed the chargesheet and the case went into cold storage. It was not until 2008 that the trial began. So in essence, the 10 had already spent three years in jail for a crime that was not proven. But even after the trial began, the police tried every trick to delay the proceedings. Talking about the trial, Azeem said, “Initially they (the accused) were charged under IPC and Explosives Act and 40 witnesses were produced in this regard. Then, when all the witnesses had testified, the police decided to include the UAPA (Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act) clauses too. We tried to get the UAPA clauses quashed but the Honourable High Court dismissed our petition. So, we were back to square one.”

Then, there was the issue of the defendants being produced in court during the trial. The accused, as Azeem informs us, were regularly transferred to various jails during the trial so a lot of time, they wouldn’t even be present during the proceedings. Then, in 2012 the case got stalled for two years after the investigating officer M. Diwakar left the country for some work and resumed only after he got back.

It is important to also point out that during this entire period, all but one managed to get bail for any reason. The one that got bail, Azeem pointed out, was because his health condition had deteriorated to a point that made any recovery impossible. “Take the example of Shakeel. He had to be hospitalised time and again and had two surgeries. But even after that, he would be sent back to prison. For 12 years, they were denied bail,” said Azeem.

The charges itself were so weak, and seem such a stretch of imagination that one can only wonder what took the court so long to announce them as innocents. “Shakeel, for example, was accused of having a gun and some ammunition. What does that have to do with a suicide blast? Kareem, for example, was arrested because some chemicals were found close to his house. Did that match the chemicals recovered from the blast spot? No. Then what was his crime,” says Azeem. He added that others too were booked on the most trivial charges, yet their lives have been destroyed.

According to agency reports, the police will look into the court order and decided their next course of action. But the question remains, who will give these Muslim youths their lost years? Or should they just be happy for the fact that unlike thousands of others, at least they saw the light of justice? What one can be absolutely sure of, is that this news will not hog any primetime coverage. The answer to this question is not something that the Nation wants to know, it seems.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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But far from acting in this regard, the government continues to ask: was he even a Dalit? Was he not an anti-national? The ‘debate’ is on.

In November 2012, junior civil judge S Rama Krishna was allegedly assaulted by CV Nagarjuna Reddy and his brother, Pawan Kumar Reddy after he refused to remove the name of Reddy’s brother from a dying declaration. The said declaration was of a servant employed with Pawan Reddy, who had accused him of setting the servant on fire “for not agreeing to sign on a blank paper.”

The Dalit judge was subsequently suspended, and for the past three years, he has been running from pillar to post with the hope of getting justice. A week ago, 61 members of the Rajya Sabha submitted a petition to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari for initiating the impeachment process of Justice C V Nagarjuna Reddy of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High court for alleged victimisation of the Dalit judge, along with amassing assets disproportionate to his income.
But while the senior judge remains scot free, the Dalit judge has had to go into hiding, and fears for his life.

But both these issues have already been written about. So why do we bring it up here?

Read on.

On Monday, the Namapally Criminal Court, Hyderabad, found five Dalit students guilty of ‘defaming’ English Foreign Language University (EFLU) professor Meenakshi Reddy, Dean of the School of Germanic Studies.

The court ordered six months’ imprisonment against the five, but all the accused are out on bail and have been given time till January 10 to appeal against the judgement.

Reddy is the daughter of Obul Reddy, who served as the chief justice of of Andhra and Gujarat High Courts and the former governor of Andhra Pradesh, and in fact, the judge takes notes of this, remarking, “she hails from a good family”. It is also not a mere coincidence that the same lawyer, Prabhakar Sripada, who is representing CV Nagarjuna Reddy, was also here to defend Meenakshi Reddy.

What lead to the professor being defamed?
According to Praveen (name changed) one of the defendants who spoke with Twocircles.net, the verdict is another case of Dalits being targeted for raising their voice. Also, it is important to point out cases of caste discrimination are not new to the campus, and neither is it a case of Hindu right vs the ‘liberals’. “The professor, and other officials who have colluded with her are the members of the left liberal spaces but are happy to ignore cases that can potentially damage their reputation,” said Praveen.

As early as 2009, a girl from the department tried to commit suicide; in 2011, the Osmania University (OU) police questioned two university professors including Meenakshi Reddy after the NHRC took notice of R Jayamurugan, a Dalit student pursuing German, who claimed that he was being failed consistently in his semester examinations, which forced him to discontinue the course.

In 2012, one more Dalit student, Kush Kumar, from the same department tried to commit suicide by consuming pills after he ‘failed’ his exams.

According to the defendant, these are not mere unfortunate incidents of students failing to cope up with the pressure. “In all these cases, the department’s attitude has come under scrutiny, but let alone take action, the University has not even bothered to investigate the matter. What does this show, if not an absolute disregard to the problems that we are facing,” Praveen added.

It is important to point out that of the five defendants-R Bathran, M Sriramulu, Upendra, Satish and Mohan–only Sriramulu was a student of the German department, and had alleged discrimination at the hands of Reddy since 2011. “She was very casteist, and would tell Dalit students to quit studies and go back to the villages they came from,” Praveen added.

Apart from Sriramulu, the other students, who were also members of various Dalit and Ambedkarite organisations in the university, took note of the harassment that Sriramulu was facing. One of them interviewed Sriramulu in a series of interviews that were then uploaded on YouTube, which can be watched here, here and here. These videos were all uploaded in 2012 and 2013.

According to Praveen, for the judiciary, the use of the term ‘Reddy harasses’, ‘Feudal Reddy’ is defaming. “We never knew these words are defaming. The case did not have much to prove defamation, but all through this we students were defamed and at the end the Judge says we are convicted because we defamed!”

“It is the rarest of the rare case, where students have been convicted where defamation case conviction was given for students,” he added.

What was said in the interviews?
In one of the interviews which Sriramulu gave while hospitalised he said, “For the past 8 months (nearly a whole year), I was struggling to get permission to sit in the class. But they made two committees (to enquire into the matter), one is the SC/ST committee and the other is Meenakshi Reddy committee (to enquire into the complaints of the discriminatory behaviour of Meenakshi Reddy prevailing towards the students). But even after 8 months, no results have surfaced. They have been delaying the whole process and spoiled my whole academic year (2012-2013).” The struggle for justice had taken its toll on Sriramulu and he had been hospitalised for a lengthy period during the year.

Praveen added that this case picked up heat in 2013, when Mudasir Kamran, a PhD student in the ELE (English Language Education) Department, committed suicide after insensitive and high-handedness of administration on the night of March 2, 2013.

A member of the administration, Proctor Harish Vijra, responded to a scuffle between Mudasir and his friend by handing him over to the police. An internal matter which could have been dealt with in a sensitive manner within the university was instead dragged to a police station. Following Mudassir’s death, the students increased their protests and against the Proctor, and at the same time the protests against Reddy also increased.

What was even more surprising was the fact that when faced with accusations, Reddy decided to approach the court directly and filed a private complaint, including against one of the defendants for merely recording the interview which was uploaded on YouTube. The fact that the University did not object to this action of Reddy also shows that it seemed only too happy to side with one of its faculties than to look into the issues faced by the Dalit students.

What happened to the case filed by the students?
The students had not limited themselves to merely shouting slogans against Reddy; instead, as early as 2012 itself they had filed a case against her under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. But of course, there has been no action taken by the authorities in this regard. In fact, even the judge in the defamation case took cognizance of this point, and remarked, “Admittedly, the A1 (Sriramulu) has lodged a report against Pw1 (Reddy) which was recognised as C.R. no 359/2012 of P.S.O.U., u/Sec 3 1(x), of SC/ST (PoA) Act, 1989. Admittedly, no charge sheet is appeared to have been filed in that case as its copy is not placed by any of the parties herein. As per the Pw1, the said case was closed after finding its content as false.

“However, the Pw1 could not file the copy of the final report said to have filed by the Police in the said case. As per the A1, he has not received any notice from the police in that case referring his report as false, and thus the said crime has not attained finality.”

So, while the case filed by the student has not even reached the stage of a charge sheet, the complaint filed by Reddy was deemed good enough for defamation.

Still wondering why Dalits have such hardships in getting justice?

Courtesy: TwoCircles.net
 

The post In EFLU, five Dalit students ‘defamed’ a professor. How? By speaking against oppression appeared first on SabrangIndia.