Is Gujarat using the earthquake to dispossess villagers?
August 2001: The Indian People's Tribunal (IPT), headed by Justice Sukumuran had just completed a series of public hearings on the post-quake situation in Kutch. On 19th Aug 2001 it was scheduled to look at the conditions of a village in Jamnagar district. According to the organisers of the IPT the future of the village was very uncertain, and it merited a visit. I happened to go along as an observer with some jury members of the Tribunal. We set off in the morning from Morbi, which is about 60 kilometres from Navlakhi. The jeep hurtled past a railway crossing, moving swiftly westwards. Then the landscape changed. A damp breeze signalled the proximity of the ocean; salt farms lined the roadside. Much to our delight we spotted a colony of stilt-legged birds, their long curved necks giving away their identities. The flamingos stood erect. Thin legs and long beaks dipping into brackish seawater. We stopped our vehicle to take a closer look. The flamingos quivered with tension for a split second. Then with a wide-winged flourish they flew away. Graceful arches of colour across grey, marshy land. Breathtaking. A little further along we saw clouds of fine black dust. A sobering glimpse of the desolation that lay ahead. At some distance security personnel stopped us. "There is no village here", said a short, well-built man, "there is nothing in there." He shook his head emphatically and asked why we wanted to go further along? We are looking for Navlakhi, we respond. "This is it", he replies. This? All we could see were coal mountains and dumpers with iron jaws. Yes, he said, this is Navlakhi. "No village, this is the property of the Gujarat Maritime Board." We decided we would take a look at "the property of the Gujarat Maritime Board." Navlakhi is one large black dot right off the Jamnagar coast. Coal-dust sprouts out of the ground and erupts into giant hill ranges: a black mountain sloping into the sea. The ground beneath is black, coal grass brushes our feet. Black clouds, black water, black grass. A few derelict buildings are criss-crossed with grimy streaks looking like forlorn, unwashed children. Quite suddenly we saw it. A long line of rubble, piles of bricks. An abandoned temple and a large masjid with green flags waving defiantly in the air. Absent are the sounds of children shouting at each other. No queues of women at water taps. No water taps either. A village that was. Navlakhi stands alone, minus its people, with only the roar of trucks and the shouts of men to keep it alive.We turned back. Thus we stumbled upon the `village'.Ebb tide. The sea reduced to patches of muddy water leaving in its wake a marshy stretch of land. Wedged between the road and the sea is a row of tin sheds. In the far distance you can see wide islands of green. We got off the jeep. A group of men and children surrounded us. Where is Navlakhi? we asked them. No village, said a young man shaking his head. This is it; he waved his hand towards the narrow stretch of marshy land. What happened? I asked a group of women who were looking curiously at us. They threw us out. They disconnected the water supply, the electricity. Who can live without water? Like rats, they shoved us out. Who? I asked again. The Gujarat Maritime Board. The young man Hamid, recounted the harrowing story for us. "The GMB wanted the people out of the village, they wanted to use the place as a coal dump. We resisted, and demanded alternate homes. This happened six months back. Then they told us we would have to shift to some interior villages. We are a fishing community. How can we make a living in the interior? We need the sea. We can only survive on the seashore." Large pans of prawn drying out in the sun give testimony to Hamid's assertion. An old man and a child sit repairing a large blue nylon fishing net. The sun hid behind a black mountain of coal and the light changed ominously. The desolation of the landscape is complete. Another villager, Naseem, interjected, "They cut off the water supply when we resisted." A wide-eyed group of children eyed us with curiosity. "With these children, how can we do without water?", she continued. "With or without children how can anybody live without it?". "And so," continued a third villager Hussain with the story, "some people left. About 800 families have all dispersed in nine or ten different villages, some of them very far flung. Twenty odd families remained behind in the village, and then two months after the quake they threw us out. Without compensation, without water supply, without electricity." "Now we have to literally beg for water", said one of the women angrily. One of them folded her hands and bent forward. "This is what we do when water tankers come in to go to the coal dump", she said. "We go down on our knees, and say please give us some water. Some of them take pity on us and stop. Others simply ignore us." They live in tin sheds fortified by blue plastic sheets. They are surrounded by water and green islands. "Mangroves, said Hamid. I planted each one of them". He showed us other patches of green that he has helped to create. The Forest Department pays him for each sapling that he plants. It is hard work, but with fine results, his eyes gleam with pride. Hope in the midst of grinding poverty. "There is no health care", Abdul told an IPT jury member. "None here. We have to go to Morbi for treatment. Yes, there are buses, but sometimes it is too late. See, this Mohammad, - they all pointed to a middle aged man - he lost his wife recently. A wave of sympathy surrounds him. Mohammad sat quitely, lacing his fingers together nervously. His face is incredibly weather-beaten, his eyes crinkled against the sun and he simply nodded at us. "The sea shapes our lives. We cannot live without it. There is no question of moving out from here. We will not survive. So we have filed a case in the Gujarat High Court. Haroobhai Mehta is our lawyer". "Did the GMB try to shift you before the earthquake?" I asked. No, Hamid replied with a firm shake of his head. "Before the quake they simply told us that we have to go. But we continued to stay there. Then after the earthquake they cut off the water supply and electricity, so our people had no choice." This sequence of events is by now familiar. Villages in Lakhpat taluka, Kutch are being shifted by the Gujarat Mineral Development Board (GMDC) after the earthquake. The GMDC has acquired these villages for expansion of lignite mining in the area. I remember my last visit to Jhulrai in May. Under the ministration of the GMDC, the village has split into two. Half the villagers had been dumped into a vacant plot of land. The others had chosen to remain back in the original village. Jhulrai is a remote shadow of itself today: a haunting sadness has wrapped itself around its people. Kinship networks have been disrupted, and there is a persistent insecurity among the people. "We begged them not to go", the women of Jhulrai told me in May. "We pleaded, we cajoled. They decided to leave and here we are: our families broken up, our lives in disarray. But we will stay here, we cannot leave our Chamunda Mata temple behind." Now, in Navlakhi they cannot leave the sea behind. Twenty odd families struggling through the skin of their teeth. Tragi-comedy. Ports, industries, power plants, minefields: the insignia of development. Displacement: the bitter after-taste of the same development. What will happen to the people of Navlakhi, of Jhulrai? And to the tens of thousands of people who are displaced each year? There are questions galore: the answers are difficult to implement. Clouds of black dust fill my vision as I write this report: my computer may well be powered by that very coal from Navlakhi. Bina Srinivasan
August 2001
The author is a feminist writer-researcher currently studying the impacts of displacement on women.