'Don't have solution to rehabilitate 30,000 "living" in Mumbai's toxic hell, Mahul'

By Our Representative
The impression has gone strong: The Government of Maharashtra’s housing minister has "denied" 30,000 lives’ freedom from the #Mumbai's toxic hell, Mahul. Talking with the residents of Mahul, Prakash Mehta, Maharashtra’s Cabinet minister for housing, declared, “I don’t have a solution for the rehabilitation of Mahul residents; the ‘government’ will take care of it.”
Mehta was addressing the residents on phone on Thursday, which happened to be the fifth day of the Jeevan Bachao Andolan, organized by the civil society organization, Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan (GBGBA).
Thousands of citizens who were ‘rehabilitated’ to Mahul, a highly polluted area declared unfit for human habitation by two courts after the government demolished their homes at the Tansa Pipeline stretch last year, initiated the Jeevan Bachao Andolan on October 28, 2018. On the sixth day, they are yet to get any positive response to their grievances from the government or any minister.
Protesting at Ambedkar Nagar, Vidyavihar (East), residents of Mahul waited till 5 pm on Thursday to get an appointment from Housing Minister Prakash Mehta. The minister was intimated a day before about their plan to occupy the compound in front of his office, in case he failed to listen. Finally, they occupied his office.
Hundreds of affected women and children waited to meet the minister. Mehta’s BJP workers who were present in the office at the time tried to escape from the back door of the occupied office. However, protesters, sitting outside the office five hours, caught them and gheraoed them until they agreed to call the minister.
Mehta finally spoke to the residents on a mobile phone of one of the local BJP workers, who were trying to run away. The conversation between him and GBGBA’s representative continued for 10 minutes. All that the housing minister had to say to people was that he couldn't do anything to save 30,000 lives. The gathering decided to continue the protest.
Meanwhile, a pollution-affected six-year-old girl sitting at the protest had a mild paralytic attack. However, Mahul residents say, they have no other option than taking their sick children to the protest site and demanding justice from the insensitive government.
Mahul, located in Trombay, is one of the most polluted areas of Mumbai. It has been rightly called the ‘Toxic hell of Mumbai’, as it has seen more than 100 deaths due to the pollution in last one-and-a-half years. Many people reportedly suffer from diseases like cancer and tuberculosis here. Skin allergy is common in every household. They remain under constant threat of explosion in chemical factories.
Around 30,000 citizens had been moved from Tansa to Mahul when a pipeline was to be constructed in the region in 2017, and since the very beginning, these citizens had been opposing their site of rehabilitation. They had been appealing to the government for a better place without the toxic level of pollution of Mahul.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) declared Mahul to be an ‘inhabitable’ place in 2015, yet the Maharashtra government decided rehabilitate 30,000 people here, one reason why they call the rehabilitation a ‘planned genocide of the urban poor.’
Reports from various NGO as well as from the KEM hospital have proved that Mahul is critically polluted and its pollution has led to the death of over 100 residents in the last two years. Also, a large number of residents are suffering from various health issues.
In August this year, the Bombay High Court ordered the Government of Maharashtra to either relocate the Tansa Pipeline affected citizens to a better place or compensate them enough so as to enable them to rent a house in Mumbai. However, the government does not seem keen to act. According to the directions of the Bombay High Court, the government was supposed to decide on one of the two options suggested before October 1. But the affected citizens of Mahul have not received any decision or intimation from the government.
The government says that it does not have the place to rehabilitate Mahul residents. However, information received from RTI suggests that there are 70,000 empty flats available in the city, those which are especially built for rehabilitation.
The government, meanwhile, is split into two fractions regarding Mahul. While the BJP maintains an adamant stance, its coalition partner Shiv Sena says it wants to help.
On the third day of protest, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) promised a proposal after Mahul residents had talks with Adityaa Thackeray, Yuva Sena President (Shiv Sena youth wing). However, Uday Samant, Shiv Sena MLA and President of MHADA, promised tenements to just about 300 out of the 5,500 affected families.

Comments

World Bank clarifies: Its 26th rank to India not for universal access to power but for ease of doing business

By Our Representative
In a major embarrassment to the Government of India, the World Bank has reportedly clarified that it has not ranked India 26th out of 130 countries for providing power to its population. The top international banker’s clarification comes following Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal’s claim that India has “improved to 26 position from 99” in access to electricity in just one year.

"Misleading" satellite images being shared on Balakot surgical strike on Jaish camp

By Dr Vinay Kate*
With every passing day more questions are being raised about the surgical strike India did in Balakot as a response to Pulwama attacks. So far the Indian media has claimed mass casulaty of 300+ terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad in this surgical strike, but there is hardly any report from foreign media about the same.

Extreme repression, corporate loot, cultural genocide "characterise" India's tribal belt

Counterview Desk
As Lok Sabha polls approach, there is considerable ferment in one section of the population -- India's Adivasis, forming about 8.6 per cent of India's population. Things became particularly critical following the February 14, 2019 Supreme Court order, allegedly seeking to evict lakhs of tribals from their forest lands.

Industry in India "barely growing", export growth 0%, whither moral anchors?

Counterview Desk
In a sharp critique of the Modi government, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), one of world renowned economist Prof Kaushik Basu, who is Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, has told students at the IIM-A’s 54th Annual Convocation on March 16, 2019 that they have a “special responsibility” on their shoulders, “the responsibility to reject narrow sectarianism, uphold scientific thinking, openness to new ideas, and freedom of speech.”

Gujarat model? Industrial effluents "invade" borewells, discharge coloured water in farms

By Rajiv Shah
In a major embarrassment for Gujarat model, of the 21 samples taken by officials of the state government's environmental watchdog Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) in two villages of Vadodara district and analyzed by its laboratory in Gandhinagar, the state capital, to find out pollution level in groundwater, 16 were assessed as highly contaminated – these were, in fact, found to be discharging reddish, brownish, reddish, or yellowish water.

Refugees as criminals? US govt report blames Amit Shah for calling Bangladeshis termites

Counterview Desk
The chapter “Freedom of Movement” of the US State Department’s “India 2018 Human Rights Report”, released recently, has criticized BJP chief Amit Shah for terming alleged Bangladeshis who may be in Assam as “termites”, because their names were struck down from the list of National Register of Citizens, under preparation in the state.
Pointing out that four million residents were excluded from Assam’s final draft list, leading to “uncertainty over the status of these individuals, many of whose families had lived in the state for several generations”, the report regrets, the Indian law does not even contain the term “refugee,” treating refugees like Rohingiyas as “any other foreigners.”
“Undocumented physical presence in the country is a criminal offense. Persons without documentation were vulnerable to forced returns and abuse”, the report says.
Text of the Freedom of Movement chapter: The law provides for freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration, a…

Congress would win just 9 of 26 Lok Sabha seats: Gujarat Assembly segment-wise analysis

By Rajiv Shah
Even as the Congress plans its first working committee meet in Gujarat on February 28 after an almost 58 year gap, there is reason to wonder what is in store for India’s grand old party in a state which has been long been a BJP bastion – in fact ever since mid-1990s. Ahead of the then assembly polls in late 2012, talking with me, a senior Gujarat Congress leader, currently Rajya Sabha MP, frankly said he saw no reason why Congress would win.

"Pro-corporate" Supreme Court order on FRA would further marginalize Adivasis

By VS Roy David, JP Raju*
For millions of Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers February 13, 2019 will go down in history as the day of apocalypse. This is like the proverbial Black Friday where millions of most marginalized people of India were ordered by malicious anti-people draconian Supreme Court order depriving them the life and livelihood by evicting them from their habitats.

Financial inclusion? Not micro-loans; India's poor "need" investment in health, education

By Moin Qazi*
India has grown into a global powerhouse. Its economy is soaring but the picture on the ground is still quite arid. The green shoots that you see are only a patch of its landscape. Most Indians are hapless victims of inequity. India is one country where intense poverty abounds in the shadow of immense wealth.

India, Pakistan told to eliminate nuclear weapons: N-war "would kill" 2 billion

Counterview Desk
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a non-partisan federation of national medical organizations in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens, claiming to share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation, has warned that “an unprecedented global catastrophe” awaits the globe against the backdrop of warmongering in India and Pakistan.

Counterview

Search This Blog