'We Get so Tired That Sometimes We Can't Even Move'

Nick Cheesman 

"Some of us were very severely beaten," recalls Tara Murti Hela. "Some tried to flee by taking shelter in a pool of human shit, but the police beat them there too. It was so brutal, you can't imagine. If I think of these things, my heart is in pain. I just can't do it."

But it is not easy for Tara, 53, to forget. Her life has not been the same since the events she recalls, when she was among some 7,000 people evicted from their houses in Bellilious Park in Howrah City on February 2 last year. Their houses were bulldozed, possessions looted, and the
occupants told to move to the Belgachhia dump, a few kilometres away, if they had nowhere else to go. More than 1,000 have been there since.

The Dalit community accused of encroaching and polluting Bellilious Park was ousted by the authorities without compensation or resettlement.

The road to the Belgachhia dump winds through the declining industrial area of Howrah. Dead and dying factories line the thoroughfares of this city, across the Ganges River from Calcutta. Once these streets were crowded by workers brought to service the industrial heart of a foreign empire, pumping life into its administrative capital across the water. Now they are crowded with the jobless, some going by bicycle or on foot in the
hope of a day's work here or there, others lingering at tea shops, liquor stalls and street corners. They sit below walls thick with hammer and sickle insignia; an election is coming, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that has ruled West Bengal for nearly three decades is again filling every available public space with its logo and slogans.

Reaching the end of the bitumen, the high walls of old factories give way to low built settlements, a hillside to the rear. Hundreds of crows circle over the hill. It is a hill of rubbish, the main depository for the city. A number of dark green trucks emblazoned "Howrah Municipal Corporation" wind past, up the incline, and disappear over the crest in a cloud of dust and fumes. Accompanying the trucks, a stream of people moves back and forth-children, women, men-carrying plastic and hessian bags, baskets and hoes, a high wind whipping at their hair and clothes, scraps of debris flying past their eyes and mouths.

"Over 150 families are at this place out of the original number, which we estimate to have been more than 700," says human rights campaigner Kirity Roy, following a couple of people returning from the dump through a gap between two shop stalls on the left.

"In the first part of the 20th century, the municipality brought the grandparents of these people to clean the streets and drains. It was responsible for locating them at Bellilious Park, and even built ccommodation for them there; now it has demolished those very same buildings and forced the people to move here," says Roy, a member of Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), a local human rights organisation. Since the eviction, MASUM has been deeply involved in the fight for rehabilitation and compensation of the victims.

"It is important to remember that all the people here are Dalits," Roy says. "They are segregated from the caste groups. Nobody will rent accommodation to these people. If your name is Balmiki or Hela [Dalit names], other groups will not allow you to stay with them."

Reaching the middle of the settlement at the dump, residents gather and sit in the shade of their houses, while others queue to collect water from a pump located adjacent to buildings set to be demolished. Here, conditions have the appearance of a refugee camp on the edge of a civil war. But there has been no war here, only one-sided violence. Casualties, too: apart from the injuries and destruction caused on the day of the eviction itself, at least six people at this site have died of starvation and other diseases since they were forced from their houses.

On Sunday, MASUM organises for a doctor and some orderlies from the nearby Sramajibi Hospital to visit the settlement. Sramajibi is itself a local initiative, staffed by volunteers, and run entirely on the support of the local population. Sramajibi has little resources to help those at the Belgachhia dump. The absence of any other agencies at the site leaves the workers of Sramajibi feeling obliged to do something. If this were in fact a refugee
camp, the residents' health needs would at least attract the attention of some outside agencies; here, they attract no one other than the staff of Sramajibi. And so, surrounded by a crowd, the doctor has no time or place to properly diagnose anyone; she consults under the awning of a house,
and quickly dispenses medicines for numerous coughs, fevers and rashes. 

'God Knows What will Happen'

Hunger, starvation. Here, not more than 10 kilometres from where the chief minister and members of parliament preside over the government of West Bengal, people are starving to death. E. M. Parvati knows this better than most: her son died for want of food just a few months ago.

Parvati lives in a dwelling that consists of little more than some wood and bamboo pressed hard against a wall at the far end of the settlement. Gusts of wind lift the plastic roof, which during heavy rain protects the family little more than were they in the open.

Parvati, 32, is carrying a new child. She speaks with exhaustion, three daughters sitting alongside: "My son Shiva died just three months back, because of malnutrition. He had no medicine, no proper place to live. He was in the hospital for two months, and died when he was three years old."
"My husband is here, but he is also very sick, with TB [tuberculosis]. Usually he cleans the toilets in private houses, but now he cannot work, so we have no income. I also was working like that, but cannot now because I am pregnant," she says.

Parvati says her children have to collect wood at the dumping ground during the daytime for cooking and boiling water. "We cannot send them to school. It is quite impossible for us to give them an education. I have no hope for their future. We have done everything we can for our children, but we haven't been able to change our situation," she says while looking at her children. 

Parvati's mother, E. M. Bhupati Lachmi, has to earn a living for the family by cleaning toilets in people's houses and the roads and drains outside. "I am the only earner in the family, and can get perhaps 50, perhaps 70 rupees per day (US$ 1- .40). I also get some rice and other things from neighbours. Another daughter of mine helps too, by giving some of her earnings from cleaning houses," she says.

"Today a neighbour gave some rice and wheat, with which we have prepared our meal," she says, opening pots by the earthen stove to show rice, flat bread and some thin curry. "As for tomorrow, God knows what will happen. I go to work in the morning and find out after that. If I go to work, I will definitely earn something with which we can buy food to eat." 

So Many Things Taken

Back outside, the road is busier as the cool of evening approaches. Among those out at this time of the day is Rajinder Balmiki, who took over the job as a cleaner for the municipality from his father when he died in 1996. Although Rajinder is a permanent employee, he has received no assistance
to find new housing after his employer destroyed his house last year, and like everyone else, he is struggling for his family to survive at the dump. 

Rajinder and some of his friends explain that after coming to the Belgachhia dump, the residents from Bellilious Park cleared the area of bushes and slept on the open ground for about a month, expecting to be relocated somewhere better. It was cold season, and people spent the nights sitting huddled together under plastic sheets. Everybody suffered some kind of illness, and the children suffered most. When no one had come after a month, they cleared the ground more, and built their dwellings. Since then, they have been provided no government services or facilities. The municipality has promised nothing, and given nothing. 

Gopal Balmiki, joining Rajinder, recalls how the eviction was managed. "On the day of the eviction we were not given any notice. Some police came on January 28 and made an announcement with a loudspeaker that the place would be demolished and that we should go, saying, 'On February 2 this place will be vacated; remove your structures and leave. ' After that there were no more warnings until they came with bulldozers at about 6 am that Sunday. Then we were scattered here and there." The municipality evicted the people on Sunday, leaving the residents no recourse to an injunction through the court. 

"They took so many of our things, but to where, we do not know," says Gopal. "All our possessions were taken on the backs of trucks, like our TVs, radios and refrigerators. There were at least 10 trucks and hundreds of labourers employed by the corporation to take stuff away. When
we tried to take our things for ourselves, the commandos beat us with their batons."

Rajesh Balmiki, after listening to Gopal's description of events, tells how he was beaten: "They had cordoned off the entire area of the park. To go and get something from my house, first I had to get permission from the police. I was granted access, but when I got to my house and tried to carry some things out, the police nearby there started to beat me with batons. Then I left the things and fled back outside. All I could do was watch as they took away or wrecked everything." 

"The temples were also destroyed, and when we tried to take things from them too we were beaten; even the women," says Rajesh. "We begged them, 'You may be destroying our houses, but please don't destroy our temples. ' But the police said, 'No one will be staying here; you don't
need them. ' The idols were brought out, and the police took or broke everything else."

The looting and devastation were absolute. The community had built and run its own school, and this too was demolished, along with the three buildings that had been constructed by the municipality to house the workers. Wells were filled in, pipelines and electricity supplies destroyed. The place was flattened. "We were told that we were all illegal occupants and this was the reason for the eviction, but it is our feeling that it happened because we are Dalits, and our social position is weakest," says Gopal. There is a chorus of agreement from others nearby. "We don't have a say in
anything. That is why we were targeted." 

The Howrah administration, offering no help to the ousted residents despite their demonstrations, maintained that the eviction was legal and the municipality had no money to rehabilitate the people. 

"Our only hope is to be able to educate our children and give them a better life than we have. When we stayed in Bellilious Park, we had a chance, but now these hopes have faded," Gopal says. "Now we are having to forego meals to save enough money with which to send our children to
school. Where we once ate three times a day, now it is only twice."

Bad smells everywhere

Rajjo Devi is struggling to send her eight children to school, and she worries for their welfare. Now they are living next to the Belgachhia dump. Her small and neatly kept dwelling has whitewash on the earthen walls, and clay tiles on the roof. All of the materials to make the house, she explains, were bought with money borrowed from lenders. Her family came with only the clothes on their backs, not even able to finish their breakfast that
Sunday. Clean new aluminium plates are lined up in a bamboo shelf on the wall, but they are rarely filled.

"I can't give my children proper food," says Rajjo, a slender 32-year-old whose headscarf covers her face as she talks. "All we have is rice and some vegetables, but the amounts are not sufficient. We don't have milk or bread to give them." Rajjo and her husband both clean private houses. Her husband also sometimes works as a rickshaw puller or as a day labourer at a factory, if he gets the chance. Together with a neighbour, Rajjo cleans apartment buildings near Bellilious Park. In the past, they could reach there on foot. Now they have to leave much earlier and pay a fare to get to their workplaces by bus each day. 

"We have to take out the rubbish, clean the toilets, and once per week have to clean the staircases and other common areas thoroughly," Tara Balmiki, Rajjo's neighbour, says of her work. "If we just take out the rubbish, we can get 300 rupees per building each month, but if we clean
the toilets, it is around 750. We have to clean the stairwells and public spaces for no extra charge. Sometimes people dump dead animals in the
stairwells, like rats, cats and dogs. By the time we find them they are covered with flies and maggots."

"All we get are bad smells everywhere. We go to work cleaning toilets, and all we get are bad smells, we come back home and live next to this
dump, and all we get are bad smells." Tara says as she points to the lake of septic fluid at the rear of the house, next to the mountain of rubbish: "We are falling sick because we are living next to a pond that is full of human shit and hospital waste. This water even contains amputated body parts."

Body parts? "Yes, we have seen dogs chewing on human body parts that they have pulled from that water," she says. Rajjo has seen them too. "Because we stay in a place like this, it is natural that we fall sick. If we had some electricity, we could at least buy a fan to reduce the bad
smell, and feel some small physical comfort after our hard work each day. But we don't have even that." 

"Bellilious Park was not a good place to live, but it was better than here," she continues. "At least there we had electricity, and no stink like here. The
location also was convenient, close to our workplaces, markets and schools. Now, look at these miserable conditions: these mosquitoes and flies. We are all human beings. How can we tolerate this? We get so tired that sometimes we can't even move, yet, in the night still we can't sleep for the stench." 

Beautification...

Abhijit Datta, another member of MASUM and a lawyer at the Howrah District Court, feels the anger and frustration of the people forced to live at the dump. "This is not a place fit for human habitation, between a dumping ground and condemned buildings on the verge of collapse. But the municipal corporation doesn't care if these people die here because they are Dalits. In this sense the conditions for these people are not different now from how they have been for centuries." 

Passing through the busy streets of Howrah, Datta points to an area of land on the right -Bellilious Park. The place looks uninviting: little can be seen other than some rubbish piles where the main dumping ground had once been located; the settlement was on the other side. Whereas the park was originally established in an open area outside the city limits, it is today surrounded on all sides by the walls of apartment buildings and other constructions. The area is densely populated, and by now of high commercial value.

The community was evicted on the ground that they were responsible for polluting the park; their removal being a step towards its beautification. The condition of the park today speaks to the audacity of this lie. It is a barren and dusty wasteland. To the left, on a dark open ground, some local
boys play cricket. A short distance to the front, a painted statue of independence leader Chandra Bose keeps watch over a filthy, lethargic stream. The only place with a stand of trees is to the right, where the houses of Parvati, Rajinder and Rajjo had stood until February 2003. The location
of their former houses is easy to see: the rubble is still there, the corporation not even having bothered to clear it all away after knocking it down. Nothing has been done with this part of the land since.

Picking through the rubble, pieces of a temple wall are uncovered. Somebody has piled a few bricks into a makeshift shelter nearby. The remnants of some structures remain upright-here is a corner of the school; there is the ground floor of one boarding house. Those walls still standing are covered with graffiti: "We were settled here by the British, we expanded under the Congress regime, and now these leftists have evicted us. Is it the real face of Marxism?"

Between the debris and the road is a recently constructed high concrete wall, delineating a new compound containing some buildings and other structures, including a common shed for washermen, a lower caste group. Apparently the plan that called for beautification has been abandoned in favour of construction of new buildings, in the very location that some houses of the Dalits once stood. "Why are they erecting these things? What is the purpose? Because of electioneering, to get some votes, this thing has been erected. They are just playing two downtrodden communities-the Dalits and the washer people-off against one another," Roy says. 

'Stay Like Street Dogs Forever?'

Passing the washing compound, a short distance down the road is another place where some 50 families from Bellilious Park have settled. Their dwellings are on a narrow patch of land between a main road and an elevated train line. Although conditions here appear worse than at the
larger site, residents say they prefer it because of its proximity to their places of work and that it is not located next to a giant rubbish dump. Here Rambali Rabidas and Bhola Hela are sitting in the shade of a parked truck. Both work as street cleaners for the municipality, for which they get a monthly payment of 5, 500 rupees. As both are over 50 they are approaching retirement, at which time they should receive a pension and some other benefits from the same corporation that has demolished their houses and stolen their possessions. 

"I have been working for the Howrah municipality for 34 years, and my general experience has been bad," says Rambali. Asked why and he points to the obvious: "This corporation has destroyed my house and looted or wrecked everything inside it. How could I be happy? They sent a huge
force, so what could we do? Each time we tried to take our things, the police beat us. We had to save our lives, not worry about our belongings." "We had been told that if we were employees of the corporation then all we would have to do would be to show our employment cards and our houses wouldn't be destroyed, but later they bulldozed everything anyway," adds Tara Murti Hela. Tara is also approaching retirement, but has only worked for the municipality for a few years, having taken her husband's job after he became unwell. She and her family had been living in one
of the quarters at the park constructed by the municipality for workers. 

"Each time we put our articles somewhere, one of them would come and steal them," she remembers. "I lost my clothes, my television, refrigerator, cooking equipment and so many other things. The police also beat my son. He was just standing among some other people, and when the police rushed the group, they caught him and beat him with their batons. Their senior officers were standing to one side and just watching. They never told
their men to stop beating. They just stood there. So how could we take anything? What could we say or do? In the end, we just had to flee. We never thought of trying to get anything back."

"None of the municipal officers have ever come here to see our situation," says Rambali. "We have gone to them several times, but they do not even want to listen to us. With the help of the police they have just pushed us away from their office building when we tried to visit."

"I have only one question," Rambali asks, as the last rays of sunlight fade behind the buildings on the boundary of his old neighbourhood to the west. "Will we stay like street dogs forever? Or will we get our houses back and the perpetrators of this wrongdoing be punished?"