August 2007 Edition
Rakesh Agrawal
Hyderabad
MUSANAGAR is a shanty town conveniently located in the middle of Hyderabad city. Consisting of dilapidated homes along the Musi river, Musanagar became an eyesore for the city’s elite who would have preferred a fancy mall or plaza in their midst. Eviction was bound to happen. Sure enough residents of Musanagar were issued a notice in March 1997 by the then government asking them to vacate. The notice claimed the slum was ‘harming’ farms located downstream. Musanagar’s residents knew something like this would happen, but they hadn’t prepared themselves. Nevertheless they decided to put up a fight. Residents understood that the real intention of the notice was to ‘beautify’ the area with an upmarket project called Nandanvana. Each of the 17 settlements in Musanagar has a committee. Residents came together and formed the Musanagar Welfare Association (MWA). “A rally was held in June 1997 against the notice, ’’says Pyari Bi, 41, secretary, Padmanagar Welfare Association.
The MWA also moved the Andhra Pradesh High Court and got a stay order. But the following year when the Musi river flooded its banks the government quickly displaced 1,300 households and put them in temporary hutments. “There was a fire a year after this displacement. It was fuelled by the authorities as they removed the fire brigade from the site just a day before the incident,” said Mohd. Ashfaq, co-convenor of the Campaign for Housing and Tenurial Rights (Chatri). In 1999 residents began the Musi Bachao Andolan. They started looking around for similar associations they could join hands with. In 2000 associations fighting for housing rights in Hyderabad all came together and formed Chatri. Thirty-nine organisations merged with Chatri and a common platform called the Nandanvana Sanrakshan Samiti (Nandanvana Conservation Committee) was formed. Today Chatri works in 100 slum areas of the city. “But we give autonomy to local groups and there are committees in 60 settlements,” says Ashfaq. Chatri is also a part of the National Alliance of Peoples’ Movement (NAPM) and has participated in activities all over the country for peoples’ housing and tenurial rights.
In May 2000, the municipal authorities in Hyderabad arrived with bulldozers to dismantle Musanagar’s shanties in the dead of the night. Chatri went to the police station armed with the stay order. It contacted politicians and at their behest the eviction drive was stopped. “In February 2001, we held a massive rally of more than 10,000 people. This led to the cancellation of the Nandanvana project,” says Ashfaq. Inspired by its success Chatri started branching out into other areas in and around Hyderabad. “The first issue that needed our immediate attention was the new international airport coming up in the city,” says Ashfaq. The government, which was dreaming of converting Hyderabad into Cyberabad, planned a swank new international airport. A notice was issued to the people of nine villages at Shamashabad, the site of the new airport. They were offered Rs 80,000 per acre as compensation. But after Chatri organised a protest, the government raised this amount to Rs 4 lakh per acre. Chatri not only fights against displacement, it also gives practical suggestions to the authorities.
For instance, the city authorities wanted to demolish houses around the Hussain Sagar Lake and erect a wall around it to ‘beautify’ it. “We suggested they deepen the lake and erect the wall after this. We also requested the people not to dump garbage in the lake,” says Ashfaq. Both sides agreed and there has been no displacement so far. In other places, Chatri organised protests and demonstrations. In June 2003, the authorities wanted to demolish homes in the Gandhinagar Asylum area. Finally, they gave up after Chatri held protests. Instead the authorities agreed to build a gate so that the area could become an enclosure. In July 2005, 285 households around Shivaji Bridge near the Salarjung Museum got a displacement notice. The purpose once again was beautification of the city. “We planned our move immediately,” says Jivan Kumar Shah, 53, a Chatri member. They got a stay order for 64 households. The authorities allotted land to 260 households in Kukur Palli, a village 22 km away, after a massive protest. Thirty-one households are being resettled at Nandanvana Colony near the Musi river. About 25 km away, in Rangareddy district too, Chatri successfully protested against the displacement of 6,000 households from Gabbilal Ped village.
These people had been given notices in April 2006. “The Congress government allotted the land to a private builder, cancelling the land lease given to the people by the earlier TDP government,” said Ashfaq. People held a fast unto death. Finally, the forest department’s officers came to the site, issued a stay order and said there would be no displacement till an alternative site had been found. In October 2006, in district Medak, 175 households living in and around a dry pond found their area had been allotted to a public sector unit. They got notices for displacement. After protests a memorandum was submitted to the tehsildar who eventually stopped the demolition. Recently, on March 12, a dhobighat located on the edge of Hussain Sagar Lake was on the verge of being demolished. ‘‘The demolition was stopped through protests, and the development commissioner agreed to look for an alternative plan,” said Nagaiah, basti president, Nehru Nagar. Chatri’s success shows that it is possible to stop evictions and find workable solutions.
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