Dalits again forcibly displaced in Gujarat: Families of a Porbandar village "coerced" to migrate out

In a fresh incident of forced migration, Dalit families of Bhodadhar village of Ranavav taluka, Porbandar district, were coerced to leave their place of living, following upper caste persons destroying their houses. Bringing the incident to the notice of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who is also chairman of the SC-ST monitoring committee of the state government, senior activist of the Navsarjan Trust, Kantilal Parmar, has alleged the house were destroyed with the “malicious intention to force the Dalits out of the village.” He added, “The houses were destroyed with by using JCB machines, and the reason was -- the Dalits had refused to take back their police complaint under the anti-atrocities law.”
The Dalits’ houses were destroyed under the pretext that these houses were constructed on government land, and it was “part of the effort to remove encroachments on the common village land.” The collector made this clear in a letter by AM Gandhi, district collector, to the village panchayat, who warned that the anti-encroachment drive resolution, passed by the village panchayat in April 2013, would lead to “serious law and order problems” in the village. Hence, he asked the panchayat to stop the drive forthwith. Yet, apparently, the upper caste persons continued with their so-called anti-encroachment drive.

Interestingly, an official document, signed by the taluka development officer, contradicts the claim of the village panchayat resolution. The document, dated January 1, 2002, says that the Dalits were being handed over 20 sq metres land to construct the houses under the Indira Awas Yojna, for which the government would provide sufficient subsidy to each of the families. The document specifically says that the houses were being allowed to be built because the Dalits’ houses were destroyed during the earthquake on January 26, 2001.
Parmar, who was in Porbandar to make an on-the-spot persons of the assessment of the situation, said, “In all, 14 Dalits who lived in four houses were forced to move out of the village following destruction of the houses on December 18, 2013, fearing for their life. Saying that this was a “clear violation of different sections of the Indian constitution”, including Article 14 (equality before the law), Article 15 (prohibition of caste based discrimination), Article 21 (right to live as dignified citizens), the anti-atrocities Act and its different rules, and several sections of the Indian Penal Code, Parmar has put up several demands.

Calling it a “serious violation of human rights”, Parmar said, each of these families should be given 10 acres of land to cultivate and make a living, even as asking the CM to ensure that deputy sarpanch Lakha Rajshi Bheda and panchayat member Kamlesh Meraman be “removed from their post” for taking part in the atrocity. At the same time, he suggested, the state government must take steps against the local police officials who did nothing to ensure that the situation did not go out of hand. “The police officials must immediately act by registering a case against those responsible for the atrocity”, he added.
Making a general demand, Parmar said, “The Gujarat government must come up with a contingency plan to ensure that the Dalits are not forced to migrate from their village in the state’s rural areas.” In all, so far, Navsarjan Trust – which is a Dalit rights organization -- has recorded nearly 75 cases of forced migration of Dalits in Gujarat, for which it has held at least two hearings. Wanting the state government to immediately ensure that the internally displaced Dalits are “properly rehabilitated, Parmar said, “Those who commit atrocities of this kind should be severely dealt with, even if they are forced to out of their districts.”

While the Dalit families from Porbandar were forced to leave their village on December 30, 2013, this was the second incident of imposed migration in less than then days in Gujarat. On December 22, 2013, as many as seven families of Morzam village of Nakhatrana taluka, Kutch district, were forced to migrate out and began living in makeshift tents in Makhana village. “At that time also we had demanded from the state government to come up with a contingency plan for the Dalit internally displaced persons. However, the officials have not taken any heed to this”, Parmar has pointed out.

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog