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P R I S I N G

Anticlockwise:Slum dwellers rebuilding their tent for agitation aft er fi rst shower of monssoon, demanding housing in Mandala. Mumbai | Movistar Telephone company’s technician workers occupy their employer headquarter in Barcelona, Spain| Love Activists occupy a bank in Liverpool , UK and demand rights for the homeless.

Occupied, by the people for the people.

The 55 acres of land reclaimed by 3200 households in Mankhurd by the slum dwellers, Telephone compa-ny’s headquarter occupied by spainish workers and the squatted bank of UK by love activists for the homeless citizens represents the same oppression.

The oppression of Unfree Mind.

With denial of basic housing rights to social protection to work with dignity, all the drains fl ow to the pipeline of surplus for few. Where from company CEO’s, build-ers and even the municipal corporation of the city are hand in hand working to SHIFT+ DELETE the urban poor by making them occupied with chores of daily survival.

The daily fi ght for water, sanitation and basic shelter to make ends meet keep the majority of the city’s pop-ulation, urban poor in deep political apathy, which is sponsored by state.

The occupation of free mind in the globalised world has resulted in the resistance by the communites in diff erent ways where “direct action through occupation is one of them.”

The occupation of building of the banks bailed out by taxpayer’s money, the occupation of the peripherial city land by the most marginalised are few of the examples of these direct actions.

Love activists who occupied Liverpool bank for few weeks demanded basic human rights for the homeless.

In Spain, Movistar telephone technicians took matters in their own hands — and occupied their employer’s headquarters after their trade unions turned deaf ear to them, and the organization didn’t bother to hear them out.

The demands of the union include eight-hour day, for-ty-hour week, employer payment of working gear and protection, and for a dignifi ed ‘social’ salary which can support their families, together with four weeks’ holi-days to enjoy the time away from work.

Eleven years of struggle of Mandala community when turned to the deaf ear of the administration, people themselves occupied the land and are still claiming their rights since last 22 days in the economic capital city of India.

Just a week before the reclaimation of urban land, a

group of landless farmers also occupied 100 acres of land in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra.

The anger and frustration in the rural fi eld to urban streets are changing into a expression of revolt, of pop-ular collective power. At the same time the student movements are gaining strength from University occu-pation in Amsterdam, London to the Premier institutes of India against the state control of institutions and market penetration into the structures of freedom.

Are these voices like Maggie, which can be made in two minutes and can be qurantined and banned when con-taminated in another two. Or, these expression can be turned into a permanent form, to a durable political base. Are students going to support the movement of workers ? Or the workers will support the struggles of students ? The way Swedish giant Maggie can pene-trate the urban and rural with its masala noodles in-tertwined, can the humanitarian ground bring both on the same platform.

Atleast it did for Lalit Modi and Sushma Swaraj !

Mumbai | English Fortnightly

Price : Rs 5 | 16-30 June 2015

RNI : MAHENG/2014/59661

A geographical narrative Issue: 4 | Year : 1

EDIT www.thesabha.org 2

Ideaofa

City

The peasants of the country and the govern-ment authorities of Mumbai wait for one thing, which has eventually arrived: Mon-soon.

On one hand it is the hope of production and on the other its about destruction, dem-olition.

There has been history of demolition and monsoon in Mumbai. The authorities wait for the appropriate time when the bamboo is weakest in the slum unlike theirs which is oiled with legal power.

A series of demolitions were carried out in the last decade in Mumbai in the working colonies where there is shit everywhere, except a place to shit. Basic amenties in the colonies were denied. Even water.

These colonies are the places where the urban poor reside who come to work as a driver, milkman, vendor, hawker and safai karamcharis for people residing in decent living conditions. They are the people who run the city inspite of city running over them, everyday minute by minute.

The urban of the city such as Mumbai con-

stitutes a space, where the possibility of generation of new space exist. This space is filled with anonymity and diversity which produces and reproduces networks, social networks of many a kind, which is difficult for tinder to match.

These spaces destroy the old conservative ideas such as caste and recreates it in anoth-er form. This constant creation and destruc-tion with inflow of migrants is dependent on the geography and the space availablity of the city. Because it allows and disallows things and events to happen.

The housing policies of the city all over the world from Mumbai in India to Baltimore of USA has been witnessing breeding ground of spaces of ghettoisation. Where the urban poor are sanitised and are put in a closed space, so that they do not interfere in the asthetics of the rich or pushed away to the peiphery where the resources of the city are difficult to avail.

These policies always strikes the minorities and the marginilised. It can be biased in the form of caste, color, race or religion. It de-stroys the idea of mixed neighbourhood.

The neoliberal forces and market defined growth of the city shapes these policies hand in hand with the state building a nexus of politician-builder-police.

But the idea of the city is too big to be damned by these forces. It makes all the ur-ban poor live in a close proximity that they are dependent on each other and they rely on these social networks for their survival.

On one hand city is the place where all the money is deployed, taken indirectly from the rural area and natural resources of the coun-try making it the result of neoliberal devel-opment, and on the other hand it also keeps alive the potential and the biggest threat of this development, all oppressed together in their closed social network.

In the globalised world of today, the cities are facing the similar issues from third world to first world countries.

Can they be joined with their similar prob-lems and questions ? Can a urban poor pro-testing at Mumbai express solidarity with worker in Delhi and with London ? Does the idea of city to survive lies in the networking between urban poor of the city ?

The situation of around 75,000 homes of urban poor were demolished in 2004-05 in Mumbai is still in our minds.

Not only food and kitchen were thrown on the road but chil-dren too. Forget about elder and sick, people at that time used to sleep near the dirty drains like dogs.

Seeing this condition of around 44 working colonies in Mumbai and the need of right to housing, social protection and equal share in the development and its benefits to urban poor of the country, we had to choose the way of struggle and resistance.

The mobilised strength of Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan have stood on this context and has been succesful in delay-ing the demolition and getting the homes for the working colonies.

Thousands of poor got together not to beg but demand and even met the torch bearer of government policy body Mar-garet Alwa and Sonia Gandhi at their home with the rise of new urban question during Congress rule.

In every place and in each conversation we got assurance. Still we had to take our struggles on the road and found that two and half months of struggle and getting beaten up by bamboos of the state was nothing but inevitable.

The death of a child during the struggle was like martyrdom for the movement.

We made home in Azad maidan , stood on the walls of Man-tralaya and then did fast two times in Golibar raising the questions during the movement against inequality.

Issues were rigid: Government did not take away the avail-

able land at Rs 30000 according to urban land cieling act of corruption in Slum Rehabilatation while they gave Hiranan-dani builder land at 40 paise per acre ignoring the urban poor, Why ?

People who are not asking for free home, who earns from their work , who can not buy one or two yard of land , but can exist as a collective unit and are ready to rehabilitate themselves as unit does not find support from the govern-ment. Why ?

Building home and policies were being only profitable for builders, then why the government does not allow urban poor to build their own home where they can live by them-selves?

Apart from all the questions, movement also gave alterna-tives and kept on the dialogue with the governement. Not only with the state government but also with the central government.

In the dream of Slum free city and the process to achieve it, we gave our suggestions and raised our issues with the government.

Crores of people could be given home in Mumbai, but it should be need based. The foundation of the arguement was that land of cieling should be used in the process and the fund should be raised from the land given for free in lease.

We accepted lot of issues in Rajjev Awaas Yojana. Central gov-ernment, State government, Politicians and developers all sat together for it. We presented the first proposal. Officers came to survey the land. We gave the database and social assesment report. MHADA, BMC head advised us to be pa-tient. Mettings took place again and again ..we gave Mandala

Plan as a site for the pilot project.

We argued on the plan.....don’t need forest mangrooves land.. don’t want to cut a a single tree, neither do we want to damage them.. Will take land only for the home.

Till now 3200 households of Mandala did not get home. During the lok sabha election again Rajeev Awas yojana was taken up by candidates and everyone promised to give home to poor. Government changed and the yojana got dumped. We requested with all the legal paper to central ministers, chief minister and various related departments to accept at-least this one pilot project.

Our one question is why not RAY in Mumbai ? 2009 was set up as cut off date for Delhi’s working colony and the yojana was implemented, why not for us ? The new governement has no clear policy !

Before 2022 there is no housing for urban poor !

We need right to housing. Poor, Old, Children, Women work-ers should get the roof over their head. This is a constitu-tional right. India is signatory to many UN policy declaration. Many citizens of Mandala are Dalit, Tribal ,minorities and most of them are workers..

So, on 26 May we will reclaim the land which is infront of our eyes by making a shelter of 10*15 sq.feet for 3200 household.We hope that the police who always stood by the goons and the government will too support the urban poor this time.

We invite the government, social workers, students and all common citizens of this country for the struggle ahead.

AWAS SATYAGRAHA of MANDALAOp-ed

- Medha Patkar, Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, NAPM

Translated from hindi

16-30 June 2015

Maagdenhuis occupation, Amsterdam, February 27,2015: The occupation of the Bungehuis, one of the main

buildings of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) revealed the breadth of the grassroots movement for a New University exposing the problems of Dutch higher education. The stu-dents and teachers making up this movement were opposed to the opacity and authoritarianism at the helm of Dutch universities, to the hierarchies that the drive to privatization inevitably creates, and to the recent cuts in the humanities that threaten to destroy institutional structures of research and teaching that it took decades to create

Students protest against fee hike in London School of Economics (LSE ), March 19th2015: Several hundred

students protested at one of Britain’s top universities, the London School of Economics, where a group of activists oc-cupied an administration room for two days. Chanting “LSE should be free” and “free education now” slogans, some 300 students held an unauthorised protest organised by a stu-dent group calling itself Occupy LSE. They maintained that the occupation is an attempt to change the “profit-driven and bureaucratic business model of higher education” that has locked students into debt and perverted the purpose of university. The movement demanded “an education that is liberating - which does not have a price tag” and calling for tuition fees to be scrapped alongwith a range of demands about privatisation, tuition fees and diversity. “We demand an education that is liberating – which does not have a price

tag. We want a university run by students, lecturers and work-ers,” the students wrote. The universities have precisely bought into light the rapid pri-vatization of universities and the loosening democratic space for students. Privatization of university leads to a degrada-tion of university education in general, and an evisceration of the humanities in particular while democratization leads to a more egalitarian and more efficient public university. Increasing student/staff ratios, chronic underfunding, creeping micromanagement of research and teaching, and growing authoritarianism from university management seem to turn universities into a bureaucratic version .The university bureaucracies and top management have gradually come to substitute themselves for the univer-sity’s demos under the guise of ‘indirect representation’. At the same time, students were insidiously being transformed into consumers--with some needs attended to by the bureau-cracy without any corresponding political empowerment, through the twin process of inter-university competition and the widespread introduction of market-inspired benchmarks. The structural similarities are striking for some other uni-

versities as well, where,students are questioning the ambi-guities within universities. Recently, Berlin saw a plunge in students coming out against a professor stating “racist, sexist and militarized” remarks in classrooms. The student groups in other parts of the country have outspokenly opposed the idea of scrapping “Marxist “studies from the study courses of economics/ political economics in MBA.

The movements have highlighted the opacity and authori-tarianism at the helm of universities, to the hierarchies that the drive to privatization inevitably creates, and to the recent cuts in the humanities that threaten to destroy institution-al structures of research and teaching that take decades to create.

CIRCUS www.thesabha.org 3

IIT Bombay: In support of Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle Ambedkar Periyar Phule Student Circle, IIT Bombay had called for a demonstration on Sunday, 31st May, to convey its solidarity with APSC, IITM . Our protest against the attack on APSC in IIT Madras brought us face to face with the re-pressive and undemocratic forces on our own campus.

The demonstration at IITB started at around 5.45 pm. We held posters condemning the fascist assault on democrat-ic and progressive thought and expressing our support to Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, IIT Madras. Pamphlets were distributed. Several students and other residents of campus were interested to know about the issue. Some even joined us. The demonstration attracted the attention of the visitors to the SPICMACAY International convention being held in the institute’s’ convocation hall. A pamphlet was also handed over to IITB Director and he was requested to take steps to send a message that IITB will not curtail freedom of speech on the campus and to use his offices to per shapessuade oth-er IIT directors to do the same.

An hour into our peaceful protest, the chief security officer (CSO) of IIT Bombay came over to us and demanded that we wind up. According to him, no permission had been taken for the demonstration. Secondly, the demonstration was an eyesore to the dignitaries (there were governors, bureaucrat-ic and army/navy officials attending the SPICMACAY pro-gramme). We refused to move. Then he asked us to postpone the protest after due permission was taken. We continued to stand. He asked us to shift the protest elsewhere and not continue in front of the convocation hall where the SPIC-MACAY programme was going on. We tried to make him understand that our peaceful demonstration was in no way a disruption to the international event and so we saw no rea-son why the location of the demonstration had to be shifted.

The Chief Security Officer then called the Dean of Student Affairs. The Dean had similar complaints to list about the

demonstration, but he particularly asked us to make changes in our posters. One of our posters read “Condemn the Fas-cist Assault of MHRD and IITM Admin_In Solidarity with AP-SC-IITM.” We were asked to strike out the acronym MHRD from it. We tried to reason with him as to why we would not censor ourselves. As the Chief Security officer and The Dean continued to admonish us, we were gradually surrounded by a dozen police guards. While we were trying to reasonably present our views to the authorities, they were threatening to discontinue our demonstration.

More disturbing was the detention by IITB security of an artist from Delhi who was a SPICMACAY delegate. The art-ist had walked out of the inauguration programme of the convention in opposition to the brahmanical views regarding Indian culture and tradition rendered inside the hall by the state functionaries. He instead chose to join us in support.

. While we were being issued threats by the authorities to discontinue the programme, the delegate volunteered to record the interaction on a mobile phone. But he was seen video record-ing the conversation between the stu-dents and the Dean by the CSO. The

CSO along with several policemen detained the delegate in a police van and threatened to have him arrested. His phone was confiscated. Even after it became clear that the video clip had not been saved, he was detained for almost an hour and a half.

A chief coordinator of SPICMACAY event was approached by the CSO and asked to deregister the artist’s association with the convention.

We have been warned that if any footage of the incident is re-leased bringing bad publicity to the authorities involved the artist will be arrested. The Dean of Student Affairs asked us our names and warned us that in case of release of any video recording, strict action will be taken against us.

The attempt to repress our peaceful demonstration has once again exposed the heavy police deployment in campuses to suppress student voices and the censorship enforced by in-stitute/university administration.We stand with APSC, IIT Madras as well as with scores of student groups that are re-sisting the brahmanical, fascist, undemocratic character of our universities and campuses

FREE UNIVERCITY

Student against LSE administration while occupying the University

APPPSC, IITB

16-30 June 2015

Pyjama Narey www.thesabha.org 4

The two sabha took place in M ward Mumbai recently. One was in Library Conference hall, TISS, with release of M-ward report and another at Mandala, Mankhurd with occupation of land.

The M-ward report of TISS, highlighted the overall spatial in-equality and focused on the administrative areas of the ward and its social groups. Using four main indicators- educaiion, livelihood, health and habitat the report ultimately points to the basic need of the housing for improving the humand de-velopment index. According to the report Mankhurd has the highest proportion of households with inadequate housing conditions.

The state housing policy has always been based on the Legal Kaun soap opera. Where the duration of the stay in Mumbai tends to give one more basic amenties, according to the cut off dates set for each.

The report also points towards measures that can redress gross inequality and stresses on the need for collective ac-tion.

The release of report did take place with members from community, state and ngos. Shockingly, the entire report was preesented in english which the local community members could not understand. Fortunately, the members from state

and the ngos spoke in local languages.

The meeting ended with mutual agreement among academic and non academic participation with TISS, NGOs and BMC cooperating with each other in future. The agenda of the next meeting and discussion did not come up till the end.

The community members present in the meeting expressed their dissatisfaction over the whole proceedings. They asked if it takes more than three year to come up with a report with spending crores on the whole research and M-ward team, then something concrete and tangible should come out. At-least ek toilet to banta hai, one toilet.

While there is limited area to intervene without state, the money coming in for academic and advocacy is penetrating very slowly to the bottom, with most of it going for the salary of the higly educated social protection workers.

With growth of city in neoliberal terms and the government withdrawing from social welfare front, the environment was set for NGOs and research institution to treat M/E ward as their laboratory since last decade.

A laboratory with lakhs of urban poor.

The two recent experiments in the laboratory were the youth

mela organized by M-ward project of TISS and the reclaima-tion of land in Mandala by the local community.

The mela was organised on 30 May at the cost of Rs 25000 with participating organization sharing their skills and expe-riences with youth of M/E ward. The programme included Urban gardening, Rugby, Film screening, Awareness regard-ing T.B and many more. Around 300 youths participated in the event. The agenda was to organise the youth of the M ward and give them space to learn from each other.

While the intervention by the social movement in Mandala was directly to make state concede to their rights to housing. Around 3200 households are involved in the process. The community does not get fund from any external source and are surviving on their mutual cooperation in the last twenty days.

M-ward is foaming with youth, ngos and pollution at every corner with nothing but survival of the weakest among the capital and some hope.

With the violent rain pouring in for the slums and sweet monsson for the academic session, the intervention in this ward is yet to see the change which comes out in a timeline with tha state and without, non-violently.

TRANSFOAMING

M/E

WARD

Protest at the collector office demanding housing rights after demolition in another slum Malwani. Pic by Javed Iqbal

Awareness against TB by Path organisation in Youth Mela.

Children being taught skill in Rugbee by Ace foundation.Child watching land marked for each household 10*15 sq.ft

First day of reclaimation of Mandala land in M/E ward Registration for Youth mela on 30 May 2015 at TISS.

16-30 June 2015

Media Analysis www.thesabha.org 5

And lo! The carnival begins. What do you say…?!

An opportunity for the inquisitive, gener-ally concerned upper/middle class mind to encounter an Ota Benga (a Congolese man displayed within the monkey house of an American human zoo in the early 20th cen-tury) or a Sarah Baartman (a South African Khoisan woman displayed in Western Eu-rope around early 19th century for her “large buttocks”) from within the plush comforts of once own four cornered space one calls home? Oh, that is double bonanza; that too without having to purchase a ticket! The spectacle of endless human self flagellation in the recent re-spurt of agrarian suicides beginning with the utmost shocking and dis-appointing suicide of a farmer named Gajen-dra Singh amidst the din of a protest march – packaged in auto-looped media bites and emotion heavy WhatsApp messages – is the modern avatar of the spectacle of the human zoo/museum, which in erstwhile times was marked for those who had fallen off the evo-lutionary “forward march”.

After all, the farmer (as well as the adivasi) is the new age “pygmy in the zoo” or the “hot-tentot venus”. He or sometimes she (that is, if she is worthy enough to be considered a farmer doing productive labour although she spends an equal amount of time on the field as her male counterpart) is the speci-men frozen in time – having lacked the abil-ity to hop into the development bandwagon propelling the ever “developing” national imagination. He or sometimes she is the fos-silized “past” that the urban media can only but unduly glorify or slyly dismiss.

The usual frenzy of what Gramsci aptly typ-ified as the bourgeoisie media or what many Dalit intellectuals rightfully designate as the

Brahminical media (or one that postmodern scholarship might do well to term as a ‘per-formative automaton’) around the farmer’s public act of suicide – characterized by the obvious clamour by politicians for immedi-ate investigations, the customary condolenc-es, the magnanimous compensations, the shameless political blame-games and now additionally the prompt tweets expressing “deep pain” or oddly timed (read blatantly hypocritical) promises of a collective “better tomorrow” – that should have by now been chastised as being a gruesome insult to the dead person is instead repeated endlessly as a self-evident truth – the veracity of which is so embedded in the majoritarian psyche that it passes every single time unquestioningly as “news”.

Renowned feminist philosopher Professor Judith Butler, who has for over a decade es-poused a political project of trying to forge “new ways for bodies to matter”, in her now famed 2004 book titled Precarious Life: the powers of mourning and violence (written in the context of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent American invasion of Iraq – as a response to popular media represen-tations of the war) and a later 2009 work titled Frames of War: When is life grievable highlights, among many other things, the particular framing acts of mainstream me-dia that renders some deaths ‘ungrievable’. She delineates the inherent violence in media portrayals that fudge the sense of precari-ousness (or the sense of a life being in dan-ger) and therefore the ‘humanness’ (which she links with this precariousness) that fur-ther lead to a fudging of ‘loss’ such that it cannot then support public grieving.

This differential media framing of grievabili-ty and recognizabilty has politically import-ant effects on differential affective disposi-

tions felt by public at large – ranging from horror and guilt to indifference. Grievability according to her is the premise for “lives that matter” or are worthy of protection. The un-grievable lives therefore are “losable” since the frames deem them already lost or sur-rendered.

This philosophical exploration of image and news production in situations of war or conflict and state aggression might also be extended to the logic of the state and pop-ular Indian media’s relation with the abject bodies of the Indian farmers.

The mainstream media’s framing of the tragic farmer suicide (as well as the subse-quent portrayals) riddled with allusions to compensation, unavoidability and inevitabil-ity – masks, hides and dismisses the inter-dependencies between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the intricate inter-relations and the angst related with the lost life; thus preventing the use of public grief as a resource for a different kind of politics; a politics of remembrance and mourning.

The farmers do not fit into the paradig-matic principles of humanity of the urban media – which are inextricably linked to a West-styled modernizing human agent. That is why they perhaps have to resort to such tragic exaggerated strategies such as taking one’s lives in the middle of a gawking pub-lic or staging equally physically torturous stunts such as the water protest in Khand-wa in Madhya Pradesh against raising of water levels in Omkareshwar dam (which continues still, without much media atten-tion). Moreover the images of their repeated suicides divorced from the contexts of their various movements, protests and petitions (the latest being against the proposed “re-vamped” land acquisition bill) reduces them

to the one minute blurb that they are on the moving panorama of 24*7 news blitz which overall numbs most people towards death – especially that of ‘obscure’ characters such as farmers.

The critically acclaimed 2014 released histor-ical drama film titled Selma that was based on the 1965 march for voting rights of Afri-can-American citizens from Selma to Mont-gomery in Alabama state led by Rev. Mar-tin Luther King Jr. in the peak of the 1960s American civil rights movement emphasizes the role that media played in the portrayal of state sanctioned police aggression towards the marching protestors by showing up the precariousness and thus the humanness of ordinary people asking for their rights, in-stead of hinting of it as an mpractical/im-probable/helpless attempt of the less evolved to immaturely achieve something that they could not or should not.

This media portrayal was able to arouse a sense of grief in the general American public of all hues, even moving people into collec-tive action of solidarity and thus soliciting the power of public mourning into a politics of resistance.

It is therefore a plea to the mainstream 24*7 urban media channels that if they lack the capability to engage fruitfully and creative-ly with issues relating to farmer suicides including the multiple effects of large-scale development projects such as big dams and nuclear reactors or the possible effects of the desperate attempts at re-jigging of the land acquisition bill – both physical and mental, then to atleast refrain from turning the trag-ic loss of a life into a pointless media circus.

Carnival of Death

Qissa: A Tale of Lonely GhostQissa is a fable that centres on the human dimension of the drawing of borders. The film is a lingering view on the disruptive consequences of the change of borders and on the reciprocal side of identity.

‘Qissa’ refers to a tradition of Punjabi sto-ry-telling and can be translated with “sto-ry” or “legend“– a tale you hear and want to share with others. This holds true for the film that was released in February 2015 in Indian theatres, in Punjabi with English subtitles. The quiet and nuanced Indo-Eu-ropean collaboration comes alive with the performance of a strong cast (Irfan Khan, Tisca Chopra, Tillotama Schome, a.o.) and trenchant cinematography by Sebastian Ed-schmid.

Directed by Anup Singh (The Name of a River), the story is set during Partition. In 1947, Umber Singh, his wife Mehar and their three daughters have to leave their

home that became Pakistani territory. They flee to Punjab, India. There, they start anew but the past stays present. Umber laments the loss of his home and the lack of a male heir. When Mehar gives birth to their fourth daughter, Umber sees in the child the son he has hoped for, the continuation of his fami-

ly’s history. He gives her the name Kanwar (“young prince”) and raises Kanwar to be his son. However, Kanwar’s later marriage to Neeli causes a challenge to the identities construed.

The unfolding plot, hereafter, confronts the

audience with the power of concepts of pa-triarchy, masculinity, femininity and love and their respective influence on the body and mind. Until then, their ideological power had forcefully kept the characters’ identities in place.

Qissa’s narrative voice loses its clear-cut identity in the course of the film. Thereby, it counters male master narratives that have framed the look at nation formation. It cre-ates space for stories of trauma and abduc-tion.

The magical side to the film adds another level to the story, a tale that is openly influ-enced by the one who speaks and the one who listens. The film sheds light on past and present, on religious, caste and social struc-tures in India. At its core, Qissa shows how much it takes to break with the categories into which we are placed, that we cannot do this alone but only in relation to others.

- Vera HalbigExchange student Munster University-TISS

-Maggie Paul TISS M.Phil student

16-30 June 2015

GROWTH www.thesabha.org 6

Mumbai and Shanghai- A tale of two cities10 years ago, the Maharashtra Government promised to make Mumbai like Shanghai. From a slum ridden, poor city in 1990, by 2005, it had become the epitome for trans-formation. The Mumbai to Shanghai phrase caught on like fire, generating huge amounts of excitement among the citizens. The old Shanghai reminded them of Aamchi Mum-bai, It could be transformed by 2020 too!

There is no doubt that Mumbai needs to change. With 62% of it’s population living in extremely unhygienic slums, quality housing for them is the need of the hour. The slums have to go; not because they were ugly, but because their inhabitants deserved better.People often (read ‘always’) compare India to China and Mumbai to Shanghai. Shang-hai grew from a moderate town to one of the most vibrant economies, it grew from a dilapidated, dirty city to a swanky, modern city. Its seen as what Mumbai would grow to become. Even though we know that Shang-hai turned over a new leaf in 20 years, the circumstances are completely different. And though the end result may seem good, in the process, homes are demolished along with humanity.

The Chinese till 2000, followed a system

called the Hukou. “Simply stated, under Hukou, rural migrants are allowed to work in the city. The city, however, is not respon-sible for providing social benefits for them. For example, migrant children typically were not allowed to attend local public schools. In addition, opportunities for migrants to change their rural Hukou status and perma-nently settle in the city are quite slim. For example, despite employing millions of rural migrants, Shanghai has only granted urban Hukou to 43 of them so far.”

The Hukou system created numerous prob-lems for rural migrants who had to keep travelling between their home villages and cities where informal housing is their only option. For many, this endless trip has lasted for decades and spanned generations. Even though there have been hundreds of millions of them, migrants in the cities were highly atomized and marginalized. This is the ma-jor reason why there are no expanding slums seen in the Chinese cities. For the govern-ment, however, the benefit of implementing Hukou is obvious. The system has enabled Chinese cities to obtained necessary laborers for economic growth and a busy, large and clean-looking city. At the same time, it lets cities avoid the costs of providing housing and other social service to rural migrants.

It is the Hukou system that, for better or worse, has created China’s slum-free cities.From around 1953 to 1976, police periodi-cally rounded up those who were without valid residence permits, placed them in detention centers, and expelled them from cities.Administration regulations issued in 1982 known as “custody and repatriation” authorized police to detain people, and “re-patriate” them to their permanent residency location.

There is no doubt that the Hukou system could never be imposed in India. As a dicta-torship and it’s citizens having a completely different value systems, Mumbai can never take the same path as Shanghai, Though this system has not been enforced since 2000, the Chinese had it easy when they wanted to redevelop their cities.

The other thing the Chinese government has successfully been able to do, is provide al-ternate housing in a time bound manner of much better quality.

“1991-2000 witnessed a brand new develop-ment. The Shanghai Government promised in 1991 to demolish and reconstruct 3.6 million m2 of ramshackle housing and huts in the next 10 years. By 2000, more than 5

million m2 of shacks and huts had been re-moved, benefiting more than 650,000 fam-ilies. Newly built housing had a total floor space of more than 100 million m2. Living space per person increased from 6.7 m2 in 1991 to 11.8 m2 in 2000”-The case of Shanghai, China - by ZHU Linchu and QIAN Zhi

Comparing it with the situation in Mandala in Mumbai, citizens have been fighting for 10 years demanding alternate housing for their forcibly demolished slums, but all these cries fall to deaf years. Numerous policies by var-ious governments have promised the people of hope umpteen number of times, yet, the benefits of these have passed through the residents untouched. This is just one of the numerous cases from around the city- Goli-baar, Malwani, Indira nagar…

Mumbai is not Shanghai. Each city needs to build its own road to success. Copying the model of one city to another is illogical, impractical and simply trying to take the easy way out. Serious planning and thinking needs to go into this. And everything needs to be done keeping in mind the rights of the poor who sustain this city.

Tale of two cities : Mumbai & Shanghai-Sanjana Krishnan

Physics Graduate of St. Xavier’s College,Mumbai

Quick. Fast. Effective. These are becoming core values in the fast-paced race to fulfill necessities of people all around the planet to reach the zenith of wellbeing. But these fu-ture plans are crumbling in many ways, what is the hope for resistance?

Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Center said this month that bearing in mind this rapid growth, if we want to survive “we’re going to need three more planets.”

We live to consume, and we have made it very difficult to live without consuming, A LOT. Our goods in the developed coun-tries are being manufactured in poorer nations, where people are exploited and nature resources whipped out under the hands of big multinationals. And there endless examples of this:

Indonesia’s forest are disappearing to keep up the demand for palm oil, as half of the world’s palm oil comes from there. In 2008 Indonesia was named as the country with the fastest rate of deforestation by the Guin-ness Book of Records. This puts in danger the lives of animals such as the Sumatran tiger or the orangutan.

In the Ivory coast, where 40% of cacao is extracted to make our delicious chocolate, children are being employed in child labour, as was shown by a BBC documentary.

NGO’s all around the globe have condemned the infra-humane working conditions of peo-ple working non stop in factories in China, India and Bangladesh to cater for the fashion industry.

In an article by Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva tittled ‘ How economic growth has be-come anti-life’, she describes the most crude downsides of this steep growth hill. “when Coca-Cola sets up a plant, mines the water and fills plastic bottles with it, the economy grows. But this growth is based on creating poverty – both for nature and local commu-nities,” she writes.It is a grim picture but there are measures one can take to put a foot on the break to this wild consumerism under the concept

of de-growth. The Slow Food movement for instance, which was founded in 1986, offers and alternative to eat local and consume within frontiers, promote local business and encourage community networks. The move-

ment has now over 100,000 members in 150 countries.

Sharing this information and making people conscious about the fact that consuming can be a political act, can indeed have an impact. For this, there is a need to get together and initiate projects with others, connecting through the same desire to help build up a sustainable future.

A case in point in the town of Marinaleda, in the South of Spain. Whilst Spain is still im-

mersed in the crisis Marinaleda is run under the principles of mutual support and direct action. There is a mayor in the town but decisions are taken collectively, even con-cerning minor crimes. They run fields that

feed them and have strong community bonds. They are an auto-sufficient par-adise living amongst a capitalist night-mare.

When I traveled to Mumbai, I was com-pelled by the poverty I saw around me, but breath-taken by the huge electronic gadgets people carried on trains. Im-mersed inside their own worlds, people all over the world stare at their screens, creating a world of their own, leaving aside face to face communication, un-aware of the struggles around them.

Technology is a powerful weapon which, if used in excess, can lead to isolation and prevent bonding from real life experi-ences that make community projects pros-per. And let us not forget about those who are left behind, unable to keep up. There is a obvious need for de-growth because it’s at the basis where we can all relate as equals and move together, merging with the nature that surrounds us.

De Growing for Survival-Almudena Serpis

A Spainish activist

16-30 June 2015

DISSENT www.thesabha.org 7

Being an adivasi, a woman and being born in a region desired by greedy multi national companies does not serve one well. That is the story of Hidme and many more like her in the regions of Bastar, Chattisgarh. Kawasi Hidme was a young girl, full of energy from Borguda village in Sukma, Bastar region. She helped her widowed aunt till a small piece of land. The rice grown was just enough for them and Hidme would, during the season, sell Mahua in the local market. Like every girl of her age, she would be excited about the occasional fairs from where she can buy co-lourful bangles and other items which were otherwise not available in the local market.

In January 2008 just after harvest, as in pre-vious years, a fair was organised in Ramram, the nearby village. Kawasi accompanied her aunt and her other cousin sisters to the fair and to buy ribbons andchoodis. There she joined a group of other tribals who were dancing and singing. Having danced vig-orously, she soon became thirsty and ap-proached the nearby hand-pump for water. But as soon as she held the pump, someone very forcefully grabbed her. She looked up angrily and was shocked to see Police per-sonnel. They had surrounded her and began dragging her by her hair towards their vehi-cle parked outside the fair. With hands and feet tied, she was thrown on the floor of the truck and driven to the Police station.

This was just the beginning- the start of the atrocities that were to be perpetrated on Kawasi Hidme for the subsequent seven years or so. As the staff at one police sta-tion would satisfy themselves, she would be sent to another. Repeated torture resulted in a death like situation for her. The police-men however, got apprehensive that she might die in the station itself. That would be a major problem. Her detention had to be formalised and she had to be sent to prison. This was not something uncommon for this area- adivasi girls like Hidme were detained and tortured for months on end and would ultimately be falsely charged under draconi-an laws such as the Chattisgarh Public Secu-rity Act, UAPA, etc.

However before sending her to the prison, the formality of producing her before the court remained. Kawasi’s condition was such that she had to be admitted to the hospital. It was only after a few days that she was pro-duced before the local Magistrate. The Police had conveniently accused her of an offence that related to the murder of 23 CRPF per-sonnel and the Magistrate remanded her to the Jagdalpur prison. On reaching the pris-on, the excessive physical and possibly sex-ual torture ultimately paid its toll and her body suddenly ejected her uterus. She bled profously. Horribly scared, she somehow at-tempted and suceeded in putting her flesh back into her body.

Till then, she couldn’t share her experience with anyone, but now in prison she would be comfortable to talk to the other Gondi speaking women inmates. The next day as her uterus was again thrown out of her body, Kawasi decided to cut it off. She asked an in-mate for a blade and when all the girls had gone out of the barrack, she sought to oper-

ate herself so as to end the pain. As she was about to act, a girl entered the barrack and screamed on seeing the bleeding Hidme. The other women inmates gathered. The blade was taken away from her and the jailor was called, who sent her to the city civil hospital for treatment. After a surgical operation at the hospital she was brought back into jail.

In court, the fabricated case against Kawasi was not progressing. The Police had men-tioned two women and two policemen as witnesses. The two women never came to depose before the court and the two po-licemen denied having any information about her involvement. The evidence put up was itself suspicious at face value. The offence in which Kawasi was alleged to be involved, took place on the 9th September 2007. Statements of police personnels (with ‘remarkable memories’) were recorded on 5thDecember 2007, mentioning names

of around 50 Naxalites supposedly calling out to each other. This list did not contain Kawasi Hidme’s name. However after 15th December 2007 when the police personnels added a few more names, her name suddenly appeared in newly recorded statements. And finally in court they denied her involvemnet.

Soni Sori, an adivasi teacher, was also in prison during this period and could inter-act with Kawasi. Soni Sori had undergone

a similar treatment in police custody. She was administered electric shocks and stones were inserted in her private parts. After her release Soni Sori had informed human rights activists about Hidme’s condition who in turn, with sympathetic lawyers, started raising their voices for Kawasi. One such lawyer argued before the Court that as all the witnesses were complete, orders to re-

lease Hidme should be given. The judge re-plied that since she had already spent seven years in jail, there should not be a problem in spending a couple of months more! So Hid-me stayed incarcerated for many more sub-sequent months. Finally in late March 2015, as none of the charges against her could be proved the Court ordered her release.On the date of her release, Soni Sori and her nephew, Linga Kodopi went to receive her from Jagdalpur jail. When Linga took her back to her village, her friends failed to iden-tify her and as she called out to each one of

them, they started weeping. Though she was now free, her body was almost completely wasted. She had undergone multiple oper-ations for gallstones. And each operation resulted in further exhaution. The mental injury is almost beyond repair. She regularly faces depression and sudden mood swings. On the other hand, the IG of Bastar, Kalloori has planned to fabricate Kawasi in a further case as she continues to speak of her viola-tions and join Soni Sori in their fight against

these injusticesThis is not just the story of Kawasi Hidme, but rather the story of thousands of Adiva-si women and men incarcerated for longest years of youth and vitality.The hard question we need to ask here is, who is going to com-pensate for their lost years? In the absence of legal aid, the torture these young women and men have undergone are never proved . The even more shocking part is that we do not hear such stories in the mainstream media. Soni Sori was one of the few women whose voice did reach mainstream media, the rea-sons being her own courage and the extent of gruesome torture she underwent. Though among aware citizens, it is not unknown that the Police frame adivasis and vulnerable people in regions like Bastar in false cases by branding them as naxals, but serious docu-mentation on it especially when it comes to women still remains minimalistic. But all this fades in the midst of the footage that main-stream media devotes to coverage of the IPL, paid-news reports or events that do not con-cern us. This has created an illusion in the minds of our youth that a good life means a good job and abundant money with no con-cern for society at large. The few courageous women who decide to stand up against the mighty and powerful state apparatus face hostility at every step of their work. Recently when Soni tried to help Bhima Madkam, a local injured in a police firing, from Madenar village in Bastar to file a complaint, the police started harassing and threatening her saying that they will send her back to the jail by getting her bail order cancelled by the Court on grounds that she is ‘instigating people against the State’.

Apart from investigatng the case and ar-resting people, the police in these areas also assume the role of delivering justice. The growing impunity they enjoy is disturbing. The power that comes from holding the gun with absolutely no accountability is indulg-ing. They assume the role of the overarching patriarchal figure who under the pretext of ‘protecting’ society, extracts ‘small’ (sexual or otherwise) favours, ‘teaches’ the accused a lesson and gets away easily unnoticed. Un-less we broaden the discourse and dialogue on these issues, there is faint hope that any-thing is going to change for the better.

Hidme’s question keeps haunting us: “I was never involved in any Maoist activity… What was my fault?” We, as concerned citizens, have to decide if we are prepared for more such questions or are we going to stand up and challenge these injustices?

(Note : Support for the facts related to Kawasi Hidme’s case has been taken from Jagdalpur Legal Aid group’s lawyer, also a large part has been translated from informa-tion available in Hindi on activist Himanshu Kumar’s facebook page. The relevance of Kawasi’s story in our lives is becoming more important than ever before, hence I chose to talk about her story. All views expressed are mine)

Disclaimer: The above post is the opinion of the researcher and does not necccessarily of the Sabha publica-tion.

On reaching the prison, the excessive physical and possibly sexual torture ultimately

paid its toll and her body suddenly ejected her uterus...

Horribly scared, she somehow attempted and suceeded in putting her flesh back into her

body... The next day as her uterus was again thrown out of

her body, Kawasi decided to cut it off. She asked an inmate for a blade and when all the

girls had gone out of the barrack, she sought to operate herself

so as to end the pain.

This is not just the story of Kawasi Hidme,

but rather the story of thousands of Adivasi women and men incarcerated for longest years of youth and vitality.

...who is going to compensate for their lost years? In the

absence of legal aid, the torture these young women and men have

undergone are never proved

LEGAL AIDS : Kawasi Hidme’s unheard storySushmita Verma

16-30 June 2015

It is the 22nd day of the Awas Haq Satyagrah, where the evicted families of the Mandala are asserting for their housing right under continuous rain on the vacant lying land where their houses were demolished. There is a high risk of Malaria and other diseases due to water logging in the pits on the land. The BMC is continuously being reached for providing toilet facility but it has turned a deaf ear to this demand, allowing agitators for defecating in open. In the absence of re-sponse from BMC, five makeshift toilets were built for women by newly organized Manda-la Yuva Manch (Mandala Youth Front), the

previous day. The present demand of the evictees of Mandala is that they should be allowed to construct kuchha houses until any policy for housing is formulated by the govern-ment. Housing Minister of Maharashtra, Mr. Prakash Mehta in the dialogue with the agi-tators assured them to give them houses by 2022 but that was immediately rejected by the Satyagrahis as they cannot afford to live with assurances anymore. They feel betrayed by the assurance given to them in these 11 years of their struggle for their housing right.

KHICHDI www.thesabha.org 8

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Contact: 8454073328; abhishek@thesabha.org ; Website: http://www.thesabha.org

A feminine voice echoes through the Man-dala-Mankhurd village. The scorching heat pierces through her skin but she stands as strong and determined as ever. Her eyes gleaming of despair and hope at the same time. Fondly known as aapa, Nasreen has been associated with the ‘Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan’ since the past 11 years. She is one of the most active campaigners at the ‘Awas haq satyagraha’, which was launched by the people of Mandala along with GBGBA activists on 26th May, this year. She was also one of those people whose house was pulled down during the massive 2004/5 demolition drive in Mumbai. Close to 5000 families were evicted in Indi-ra nagar and Janta nagar area of Mandala. Reminiscing her olden days, still gives her cold shivers and leave a lump in her throat. “I came to Mandala before the year 2000 and bought a Kholi (room) for Rs. 7000. There was puddle and bushes all around Manda-la and we used to get cement and clay and then fill the land to make it strong enough to build a structure”. Nasreen was also one of the many people who went to Jantar Mantar, Delhi along with Medha Patkar to protest against massive and violent exploitation of slum dwellers by the State and Police. “We got arrested and stayed at Tihar jail for al-

most a week. We chanted slogans all day long in the cells, it was then I realised how much power a common man holds”.According to Nasreen, Police would come and demolish their house but they would again build it after some time. But in 2006, police along with BMC (Bombay Municipal Corporation) officials arrived and demol-ished their houses, in what she remembers as the most brutal and violent form of exer-tion of power by the Police. “The authorities put up a notice one night before the demo-lition at around 8 or 9 pm and that too on the backside of a building and next day at 10 in the morning police arrived along with a bulldozer and huge force. We stood in front of the community to stop their entry but some policemen entered from the backside and put fire to our houses”. “We ran for our lives with our children leaving all our belong-ings behind only to be consumed by the fire”. Nasreen since then has been living on rent. “For 11 years the authorities dodged us with false promises but this time we are not go-ing to end the satyagraha till they don’t give us our land back”. With this, Nasreen takes a leave to address hundreds of ‘satyagrahis’ at the pandal. And in unison they say, “Hum sab ek hain”.

“Awaaz do, Hum ek hain”Inakshi Walia

Student At Delhi School of Social Work

GHAR BACHAO GHAR BANAO ANDOLAN : 55 acres of land in Mumbai, Mandala reclaimed by Slum Dwellers

Top to Bottom: Around 3200 household gathered in Mandala ,

Khichdi preparation for the community with help of small donation of rice, dal and potatoes,Reconstruction of tent for the protestors after first shower of monsoon.

Mandala Youth Front

Invitation to Students, Social workers and Citizens

Bilal Khan

The struggle of housing in Mandala

is a constitutional right

Along with research and debate come and participate.

We are waiting !

16-30 June 2015