I wish to quote an example of our own lane where many illegal
hawkers were operating for a considerable time with huge monthly
income and all of them have been removed and our lane has become
clean and place worth living and enjoyable.
Here are the details:
I stay at Kashibai Navarange Marg, Near August Kranti Maidan,
Gamdevi, Grant road, Mumbai 400007.
Five years ago all the residents of the lane thought of getting to together
mainly because of various civic and social problems faced by the
local residents from various sources.
In various meetings which members attended in large number we listed
the problems and decided to solve one by one through non voilence
and adopting gandhian ways. First we assessed the truth in it
whether it was with us or are we on the wrong side. Having acertain
that it developed a confidence in us. Most of the residents are
educated and the followers of peace and social justice, abiding by
the law. So no one thought of taking law in their hand. I wish to
quote few of them to show the approach we adopted.
We had a parking problem in the lane as many of the school buses used
to occupy the lane leaving no space for the residents to park their cars.
so the residents have no option but to park the cars on the foot path which
used to be towed away by the RTO penalising the residents’ for no
fault of theirs. After assesing the situation we noticed as many as
eleven school buses are parked in our lane under the name of the
school though the buses were not belonging to school but owned by
the private contractors.
We registed a complained with the school and with the RTO and convinced
them how wrong it is for them to deprive us of our right. well things
were not the easy so in the evening when the school buses went away
we parked our cars on the side of the road and did not remove it for
three days which created a problem for them.
On second part we moved the education department representing our case
before them which interalia asked the school authorities to look into the
atter or be ready to face the situation this being the government aided school.
All this took about three years for us to get the things set right. SO we shall not
surrender to the situation when we are right, patience and
persuation for three years helped us to over come this situation.
The another issue which I wish to quote is that of removal of
illegal hawkers from our lane.
At the junction of Krishna Sanghi Path and Kashibai Navarange Marg,
at the entrance gate of August Kranti Maidan we had many illegal
hawkers(our is non hawking zone) operating on our footpaths for few
years and were not willing to listen to any suggestions. When a
peaceful and friendly talk ended we decided to adopt the gandhian
way of “Satyagraha” representing for our rights through non voilence.
we build up a huge correspondance with the departments involved like
police, bmc etc showing how illegal activiity was in full force and
not willing to submit to any authority of the government,may be
because some people interested in them for the reasons best known to
them. The operation was done through three methods.
Firstly building of the correspondance with the government on one part and on the
other part having a peaceful morcha by our women wing with the
police intimation showing how wrong is being done to us by
enchroaching upon our civic rights. thirdly through news papers and
TV coverage we tried to highlight this civic issue and lastly to
prepare for the legal battle if need be with the sufficient evidence
of their eviction from time to time by bmc and police. In the
meantime our residents used to meet the people who used to eat at
their carts shwoing how unhygenic the food is and how socially it is
bad to support such activity in a person to person converation.
Fortunately the mass pressure was so much on the police and the bmc
with the support of supreme court order one day all these hawkers
were evicted from our footpaths.
I think there are many of such example in a real life situation
which would tell anyone that if one follows the path of truth with
patience and persuation with firm motive come what may will win the
event always. Even masses will start participating in that goal in
course of time.I think this is a part of Gandhigiri though the
gandhian priciples and tools are many.
The idea is to share the real life experience for encourangement to
others.As such there are many small events and situation which one
can solve through Gandhigiri with full self honesty and introspection with
willingness to admit mistakes and rectifiy it without self ego.
Dr Jayant Sathe