“We were given our allotment letters a night before our homes were demolished on May 13. We requested the officials time and again to allot us a house on the ground floor as it is difficult to carry him around whenever we have to take him to the hospital. But in the absence of any response from them, we have no choice but to confine my brother to the house,” said his elder brother Lakhan Yadav.
On paper, the resettlement and rehabilitation policy for the World Bank funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) is known to be one of the finest such policies. However, the clinical manner of implementation as seen in Vinod’s case is not an isolated one. A recent report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) on resettlement of 9,000 Project Affected People (PAP) under the MUTP describes the whole process as a recycling of poverty’ for several families.
The report has already been submitted to the World Bank and is expected to be made public within a fortnight. The study involved a sample survey of 20 per cent of the PAPs resettled at three of the rehabilitation sites at Majas in Jogeshwari, Anik in Chembur and Lallubhai Compound at Mankhurd.
The report states that liabilities have increased with people having to shell out more for house maintenance, transport, electricity and health. At the same time, dis placement has led to loss of supplementary jobs like hawking or house help due to the lack of easy accessibility at the sites.
It says: ” Public amenities are not well developed leading to a dependence on pre-resettlement sites for educational facilities, and even for accessing the Public Distribution System. The lack of adequate and affordable health services comes into sharp focus at all the resettlement sites.”
A typical case is evident at Lallubhai Compound in Mankhurd that has about 70 buildings. Sangeeta Mohite, who was shifted from Lower Parel to Mankhurd four months ago, hopes that her two children will be able to continue their education in a public school that is coming up in the complex; a remote possibility as the school in question is under construction.
“The nearest school is about 1.5 km away.
If the school doesn’t become functional soon, it will be difficult to save money to send my children to a private school nearby,” she says.
Sangeeta like most other women at the rehabilitation site has had to give up her job as a sweeper in offices close to her shanty.
A study by NGO Ghar Banao Ghar Bachao found that most project-affected families have turned more patriarchal postrehabilitation. From being someone who contributed equally to the family income, the woman is seen as a dependent leading to imbalance in power equations, it said.
According to Amita Bhide, associate professor at TISS: “Unless their means of livelihood are maintained they would not be able to retain their homes and this will lead to the creation of a whole new category of homeless people. What is now needed is tremendous co-ordination between the BMC, MMRDA and elected representatives so that these rehabilitation centres are not isolated townships but are provided with connectivity, health centres, schools and means of employment.”
Additional Metropolitan Commissioner Milind Mhaiskar said: “One should always look at it from the perspective that they have been moved for carrying out infrastructure projects, from conditions that were extremely unlivable. No where in the world has such kind of relocation taken place and the difficulties faced in the transition period have to be allowed for.”
He added that as compared to before, now the rehabilitation sites have assured drinking water, streetlights and roads. “We have also handed over tenements at each site to the BMC for the purpose of starting schools and will do the same for hospitals. As for jobs, we have started holding job fests to find them employment,” he said.
On the brighter side, the TISS report points out that most of the respondents approve of living in multi-storeyed buildings. It reads: “The allotment of a good, pucca’ house and better living environment were perceived as the important plus points of the resettlement.”
“In our shanty, we had everything including financial security but at the end of the day we were jhopadpatti walas. Now, we can’t even afford to burn the chulha (gas stove) in our homes but we can say with dignity that we live in a building’,” says Manyamma Butrachi who had to give up her job as a construction worker.