I started out writing this along with a previous post but thinking about it made me so mad that I had to start a different entry.
India has it's own Robert Moses--demolition man Vijay Kalam Patil. A man who believes that "development always follows destruction". The article goes on to describe his noble deeds as he 'frees city land from the clutches of illegal occupants.' even justifying this with words from the Gita. All this in an effort to become Shanghai!
Noted journalist P.Sainath calls him a "Man-made Tsunami".
Anirvan and I on our recent trip in India visited Sahyog--the school in Mumbai that I steward for Asha for Education. The school is located in the Jari Mari slums in Mumbai. Sahyog originally started in Jari Mari but then an initial round of demolitions took place right after 9-11 and a significant population was "relocated" to Din Doshi.
What was Din Doshi like for these people. It was atop a hill. There was no access to public transportation. A bus that had been arranged cost Rs.10 each way- a significant portion of the income of people using the service. There was no water. People were not alloted flats based on there needs. In a multi-storey building without an elevator, older people were put in upper floor flats.
Even when we were there this time we heard about how families were returning to the sites of demolition because they had no where else to go--this was home, their community. The edges of the slum are bursting. It creeps slowly over landfill towards the airport wall.
But demolition without insightful rehabilitation isn't the solution. There are people dying, losing livelihoods in this man-made disaster and even as we raise money for the Tsunami, another disaster unfolds before our eyes.
