“Slum dwellers are our Gods”

The road leading to Hotel Grand Hyatt is day-by-day shrinking in size with illegal encroachers enjoying a field day at the cost of the tax-payers? The road beginning from Vakola Pipeline to Ashok Nagar has become a vote-bank for illegal encroachment. Little is the Shiv Sena corporator Sanjay Potnis nor Congress MLA Kripashankar Singh doing anything to curb the encroachers. While speaking to Santacruz Patrika, a resident stated, “With the road shrinking and traffic moving at heavy speed we have absolutely no space left to walk and in grave danger of risking our lives. We had approached the corporator but he did not heed to our demands.” Further, the rag-pickers near Shastri Nursing Home have been offered an alternative accommodation. But, a few of them have rented out their alternative accommodation and encroached upon the land. It was yesterday that at midnight an autorickshaw coming from Hotel Grand Hyatt at a fast speed rammed into the huts thereby destroying them. While speaking to Santacruz Patrika one of the families said, “Since we all had gone to have food served by the nearby Navratri Mandal, no one was in the huts. Otherwise 3-4 children would have been crushed to death.”

It's agonizing to witness the ongoing deterioration, decomposition, shredding of the social fabric and hurtling of Mumbai to it's slow but sure death, thanks to the exponential growth in the number of slum dwellers and other encroachers. This is having a grave effect upon on every aspect of living of its legitimate residents due to the consequence of usurpation of a large number of compulsory open spaces like the footpaths, playgrounds, recreational grounds, railway, other government lands etc. It would be shocking to know that all of this occurs in gross violation of a slew of laws and regulations of the land.

None of the law-makers or the law-enforcers seem to have ever given a serious thought to the after effects of the burgeoning population of unauthorised occupiers of our public land which in reality were mandated for providing amenities for the welfare of the law-abiding and tax-paying residents of the city – like smooth running of railways, buses and other vehicles, expansion of government offices, construction of public schools, hospitals and Courts, providing playgrounds, recreational grounds, gardens etc. Alas, none of our so called "public servants" (read elected representatives and administrators) have given a thought to this injustice. They have seldom, if ever, thought beyond their own narrow and short-sighted policies of promoting and pampering their vote- banks by aiding / abetting or protection of the illegal encroachers and deriving pecuniary gains or enhancing their career. At the most (and that too under public pressure) they take action, albeit cursorily and in a half-hearted manner to soothe the ruffled feathers. What's more, once in a while even when some honest and duty conscious officers have sought to diligently clear the encroachers, they have had to contend with insults, obstacles, transfers and punishment postings as penalty for implementing the laws. One factor that has led to the romance of the politicians and the slum-dwellers is that the latter are being promptly given the voting rights

The dismayed Hon'ble Judges of the Supreme Court had denounced this trend by stating "The promise of free land, at the tax- payers' cost, in place of a jhuggi, is a proposal which attracts more land grabbers. Rewarding an encroacher on public land with a free alternative site is like giving reward to a pick-pocket." Thus, the end result is that a major chunk of the hard-earned tax payers' money collected from the true residents of Mumbai are utilized to provide amenities like housing, electricity, health-care, drainage lines, water supply etc to the slum dwellers. On the other hand the lawful residents are left with a bitter taste in their mouths – apathy from their elected representatives to their problems, usurpation of open spaces, air and noise pollution, breakdown of civic infrastructure, unhygienic conditions, spread of serious diseases like malaria, dengue, tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera and even sexually transmitted diseases like HIV / AIDS, lack of space for pedestrians, traffic congestion, increase in number of unauthorized hawkers, lack of car-parking space, a dearth of green lungs in the vicinity and increase in security threats to the residents.

An ex-Maharashtra CM had grandly announced to the party workers that "Slum dwellers are our Gods". No wonders every politician worth his salt is seen prostrating before slum dwellers prior to elections. What better could be expected from our politicians when they are out to exploit the weaknesses of the migrants and illegal slum dwellers and convert it into the currency needed to come back to power – votes. The Maharashtra Government had passed the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act 1971 to protect the encroachers. But then never was it thought fit to give it a permanent deadline. Thus, almost every subsequent government have gone about extending the deadline beginning from 1975 to 1980 and finally to 1995. The promise given in the Congress-NCP-RPI manifesto on 1.10.2004 by the Chief Minister, with an eye on the slum vote-bank, promises extension of the slum regularization date from 1.1.1995 to 1.1.2000 if voted to power. Have our "elected representatives" forgotten that they are chosen to provide law & order and better quality of life to the lawful residents of the city? Don't they realize that the decisions that they take sitting in the Assembly should benefit every true resident and should never be supportive of a law-breaker? Where will this madness end? Every right-minded citizen should oppose this move of the Government to appease the illegal residents at the cost of well-being of the city if they care to have better quality of life for themselves and for posterity. One hopes that such regressive and irrational policies are reneged by the powers-that-be and better sense prevails in the larger public interest.