AID News, Sat Feb 5

Sat Feb 5 20:05:38 PST 2005

Today's Headlines

    1) Tribal families dumped in open sans land, houses in Narmada valley
    2) News reports on India's biggest slum demolition in Mumbai
    3) Speech given by Dr.Brij Mohan in AID Baton Rouge Tsunami relief concert
    4) Miscellaneous news items
        * Mahasweta Devi wins prestigious Italian award
        * Rich India despises its daughters

Today's News

1) News from Narmada valley: Tribal Families Dumped in Open Sans Land, Houses at
Javda

Still Maharashtra Govt. Claims 'Resettlement Complete'

All the claims about just rehabilitation of the Sardar Sarovar affected families
in the Narmada valley were once again exposed when the Nandurbar district
administration dumped eleven tribal families displaced from Bharad village
under open sky without even the sheds in the resettlement site of Javda, in
Maharashtra. These families were affected when the dam height went upto 80
meters in 1994 and are yet to be provided cultivable land, houseplots and
resettlement village, despite the series of protests and subsequent assurances
by the concerned Ministers, resolutions by the state Cabinet.

The families are there in open facing the extreme cold and vagaries of Nature,
along with their children, clothes, foodgrains, utensils, cots and other
material. We demand that the state government should immediately act to provide
land and houses and take strict action against the guilty officials.

Even after the repeated Supreme Court directions, protest darns and fasts s in
Nashik, Mumbai, Shashada and the formal cabinet decisions and GRs by the state
government, the Nandurbar district authorities have been delaying the just
rehabilitation process - i.e. the purchasing of cultivable land and building
the resettlement village - for some inexplicable reasons. In 2004, the people
resorted to Land-Right Satyagraha in April-May and in the monsoon of 2004 the
people resorted to dharna in Shahada. Subsequently the affected families and
officials jointly surveyed the land and had selected the Javda land. However,
the Nandurbar officials did not purchase the land, despite the fact that many
farmers were ready to sell their land and despite repeated demands by the
affected people- perhaps due to the coruption and delaying tactics. Only in
October 2004, after the Bharad and other villages on the banks of Narmada were
again submerged in the monsoon of 2004, the land was purchased. But despite the
two full agricultural seasons have gone, there is still no sign of transferring
that land to the families or preparing resettlement village, complete with the
houses and amenities. The Nandurbar administration did not build even the
temporary sheds in the Javda land, and now dumped 11 families from Bharad, to
fend for themselves.

The Narmada Control Authority had claimed on its website that all the
resettlement in the SSP was complete. It had to pull out the announcement after
the NBA had exposed the false claims. However, the Maharashtra administration
claims that it had 'completed the resettlement of all Maharashtra oustees'. But
about 2500 families in Maharashtra are in still the original villages on the
Narmada banks in the submergence zone and remain to be resettled with
cultivable land, houses and resettlement village with all amenities, as per the
stipulations of the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal and the Supreme Court
directions. Even hundreds of the 'resettled' families from 1994-2000, in the
resettlement sites in Maharashtra, remain without land and houseplots.

This is the state of the resettlement and all the state governments are bent on
trampling upon the rights of the affected people to raise the height of the dam
further than the present 110.64 meters. The people and the organiation - Narmada
Bachao Andolan - would resist firmly any attempt to destroy life, violate the
rights and law by the dam-builders and their cohorts.

Noorji Padvi Geetanjali Yogini Khanaolkar Philip Mattew

2) India's 'biggest slum demolitions'

The unbearable lightness of seeing By P. Sainath
How agonized we are about how people die. How untroubled we are by how they
live. NUMBER OF homes damaged by the tsunami in Nagapattinam: 30,300. Number of
homes destroyed by the Congress-NCP Government in Mumbai: 84,000.
http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/05/stories/2005020500611000.htm

Mumbai's tragedy By Kalpana Sharma
The poor have filled up marshland, resurfaced uneven land, all with their own
labour, and built their homes. "People should get the right to shelter," says
Kadvi Wagri, another one of the growing stream of homeless. These voices should
not be silenced, says  Kalpana Sharma.
http://indiatogether.org/2005/jan/ksh-homeless.htm

** India's 'biggest slum demolitions' **
The BBC's Soutik Biswas in Mumbai writes on whether the demolition of slums in
India's richest city will work.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4222525.stm
    -- Contributed by Hema

Aamchi Soweto? by SMRUTI KOPPIKAR
72,000 slums razed; 3.5 lakh homeless. In short, some Mumbaikars are outcastes
in their own city.
The coldly doled out statistics missed out on a crucial piece of data: close to
3.5 lakh people--porters, drivers, hawkers, domestic help, cooks, tailors,
kulfi-vendors and such, along with their families--are now without a roof over
their heads. That's not all. The bulldozers flattened their bamboo poles and
wood, ripped apart their makeshift chulhas and earthenware, broke their plates
and TV sets. There's more--children lost their toys, schoolbooks were torn,
precious uniforms became part of the debris the demolition squads left behind.
Most families managed to save a couple of sheets and vessels, if that, and that
vital kitschy plastic bag of papers full of ration cards, birth certificates,
bills, slum photo-identification passes proving their validity as citizens
serviced by the same civic body.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fname=Mumbai%20(F)&fodname=20050131&sid=1

    -- Contributed by Hema Swaminathan and Karuna Muthaiah

3) Speech given by Dr.Brij Mohan in AID Baton Rouge Tsunami relief concert

Here is the speech given by Dr. Brij Mohan in AID-BatonRouge Tsunami Dance
concert. It is truly inspiring!

###############################################
Ladies and gentlemen:

I am honored to speak to you on behalf of A.I.D., i.e. Association of India's
Development. I wish to say a few words about the power of our consciousness in
support of mankind's strife for dignity and freedom in face of challenges that
both nature and human nature present before us .

Difficult as it may seem, it's relatively easy to marshal resources to meet the
challenges of a natural disaster. It's difficult to deal with problems that
human beings create for themselves and their fellow beings.

As we have seen lately, the Tsunami disaster symbolizes the fury of Mother
Nature which can be monstrous. The problems that are perpetual-- call them
social problems, universal and seemingly insurmountable--are real challenges
for us. It is our common destiny that glues us together as a human family.
Unfortunately, it takes a catastrophe to make us realize this wisdom.

As members of this fragile global-human family, it's upon us to see how best we
can serve each other.

A few years ago, as I was concluding my last seminar at Coffee Call, yes, the CC
on College Drive, some students asked what they could do to me as a returning
favor for my guidance as a professor. I told them, "You owe me nothing, but...

"Do some thing to an oppressed person to alleviate her or his suffering without
letting this person know what you have actually done for her. And then, feel
the fire inside you that this small unnoticed act of yours has kindled inside
you." Build upon this inner power and you will feel that you have morphed into
an engine of social change!

A few years later, a young man knocked at my office and he introduced himself as
one of my students in a class that I had taught on human diversity and
oppression. He told me that he was going to commit suicide that day... However,
after listening to me, he said, he changed his mind. Instead, he went straight
to South Africa. As a photographer he used his camera, and kept on talking
pictures of people, who were suffering under the abominable Apartheid.
Subsequently he published an award winning book of these photographs! He tells
me vividly how his camera helped him to survive and help others.

I can enumerate several examples how words -simple and honest--can make a
difference in real life. I can go on...but due to constrain of time, I will
only summarize a few salient points of significance which have relevance to the
occasion:

Never underestimate your strength as an agent of change. The little you can do
will have a butterfly effect to change the world you live in. Existential
philosophers whom I read and emulate call this Praxis.

If you know me and my work, I have almost single handedly launched a revolt in
my profession: Social Work and its present culture has to be transformed into a
new discipline which I have named as Social Praxiology! True Social work is not
what you do for a living; social work is what you do to transform this wretched
world!

I honestly believe: Most of our social problems are our own creations. I mean,
social problems are social constructs. Social constructs can be changed and
should be changed. If our knowledge, science and technology can't help us
resolve the problems created by world poverty and hunger, there is no point in
getting these college degrees.

Alas, our material education only equips us to get jobs to become consumerists
in a hedonist culture. Generation X has morphed into TWIXTERS who simply "won't
grow up" (Time, Jan 24, 2005). In a way our whole warrior culture is made of
"permanent adolescents" who seek peace through war; virginity through sex.

If we could relate to each other on human level as human beings without racial,
ethnic, gender, and class differences, and work together to resolve the
problems that these hierarchies create, the world would be a better place.
There will be no war; there will be ethnic cleaning; there will no communal
riot; there will be no caste lynching.

If people are dying in sub-Saharan Africa, due to massive violence and
starvation, it's not because they are underdeveloped. The evil lies in the
centuries old colonial-imperial exploitation that perpetuates war and hunger in
togetherness. And these evil forces are still at work every where.

Ladies and gentleman don't be fooled by the glossy picture of our glittering
advancements here and India. Poverty, homelessness, disease and squalor
continue the plague this humanity which we are a part of.

There are no white and black and yellow races. These are our social concepts
which we have imposed on our development. There is only one race: Human race.
If you want to save it from itself, first identify yourself as a member of this
global family.

Then do what Suresh, Anand, Areendam and thousands other Jeevan Sathis are doing
with and through organizations like AID.

Your small efforts will boomerang; the colossus of corruption, ignorance and
suffering is a hydra-headed evil. Only your consciousness, unselfish dedication
and concerted efforts can overcome this danger.

In closing, as you will notice, AID's three pillars include: 1) Selfless service
("Seva"); 2) constrctive meaningful development ("Niraman"); and 3) nonviolent
struggle ("Ahimsa") for human rights. Theses noble measures will involve
Universal education, social justice, employment, mutual tolerance, and respect
for sustainable global development and world peace.

Jean Paul Sartre one said, "Success is NOT progress." What we need is progress
which helps us stand together with our diversity.

The moment you realize this noble truth, you have already transformed the world!

Thank you for your patience and time.
##########################################################################

    -- Contributed by Priya Ranjan

4) Miscellaneous news reports

According to Italian television reports, Mahasweta Devi, whose literature
champions the poorest dalit communities of eastern India, has won a prestigious
award in Italy. On Sunday, January 30, she received the 2005 Premio Nonino
(Nonino Prize), a cultural award instituted by an old grappa-brewing family in
Friuli, Italy. Previous years’ winners have included Chinua Achebe, Rigoberta
Menchu, V. S. Naipaul, Edward Said, and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. http://www.nonino.it
(This is not a plug for their product, which I have never drunk. The whole
website is Flash, so I don't know how to link just the Premio Nonino, which
anyway is yet to be updated.)
    -- From the AID News forum, contributed by Uma Asher

Rich India despises its daughters
If you thought it was the poverty-stricken who silenced their little girl in the
womb or strangled, poisoned and crushed her to death as soon as she was born,
then you were wrong. The rich despise their daughters with equal passion. In
some cases, more passionately.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1219723,0008.htm?headline=Rich~India~despises~its~daughters
[Commentary from Priya Ranjan: "Amma, mujhe mati ki gudiya dila do...(Mom, I
want a doll of clay..)"
Dear Friends:
    Here is an article which clearly points out a very sad and disturbing
attitude towards girl children. Call it an evil of dowry or just plain
disrespect towards human life, even some of the richest societies of  India
need to correct it immediately so that we can control the vicious population
imbalance spirals within time. Population dynamics involves very large time
scales and once out of synch can create serious damages to societies. It points
to a rot in the social, cultural fabric of these societies which needs to be
addressed rather than just powering the economy as statistics shows that money
is certainly not equal to gender equality."

Please read it carefully and let us know your thoughts.
    -- Priya Ranjan]

==
That's it for the day
Arun

___Just Another Quote____
He who has a 'why' to live for can bear almost any 'how'.

--
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