... A word unto you

The established systems believe blindly in their infinite existence and so curtail the deviations, negative or positive, with their ultimate authority for a final say. Unfortunately the so called ‘final say’ happens to be the same which is said (and set) in the beginning. Any system once established becomes static and so the life in it. In its endeavour to restrain deviants, the system ends up in enforcing barriers of different nature. There is no evidence that a lopsided and static system favoured all the segments of its population. In a time where we talk about dynamism at intellectual circles, the life of Indian Dalits reminds us of the static nature of our society, which in a way we all have denied or ignored but never accepted. We all contribute as individuals, as communities, as governments and as a nation, knowingly or unknowingly, to all the barriers that Dalits presently face in accessing resources, primarily their food and livelihood, and in living as equals. The plight of exclusions and discriminations based on caste hierarchical system is an unforgettable history and a formidable present in this country.

Exclusion can not be executed in its entirety until it is extended into the economic sphere of the lives of the people. Denial of equality is being built on the denials of equal opportunities, ownership of assets and income distribution. This is again supplemented by the hindrances in accessing health care facilities, welfare schemes, etc. The same is the case happening in the discrimination drama which is primarily focused against the Dalits of this country.

The economic trap that entangles the Dalit community grows well beyond their life’s economic sphere and curtails also their socio-political mobility. It never allows them to move upwards in the caste hierarchy which results in their being destined to be at the lower rung of the society. Forced to stand in the last of the ‘democratic’ queue, they are simply denied of their deserved assets and desired benefits. Starting from the unequal income distribution to the unavailable health care facilities; there is a vast range of factors that paint the present’s canvas to be ugly so that it cannot be a beautiful history of tomorrow.

Denial of basic needs gradually grows into the denial of livelihood opportunities in the society, unless and otherwise a greater surplus is created for redistribution. A casteist economic system that is functioning in a visible form in rural set up and invisibly in urban areas is continuously succeeding in the extension of the rigid traditions through all the possible means. Importantly the denial of Dalit’s right to get educated is one of the major barriers that the dominant class creates to keep the oppressed distant from seeking any new and alternative livelihood options, which may again pose threat to the traditional dominancy in amassing wealth and in the limited distribution of surplus. Dalit kids getting barred from the schools and teachers sprinkling cow-urine to ‘purify’ dalit kids are very few natural outcomes of the deeper existence of such a socio-economic system. There are also instances where the humiliations by 'casteist' teachers forced Dalits to start their own school.

Hunger as a way of life is not very uncommon in this country. What might strike in it would be the major proportion of Dalits who share the burden of this meta-narrative of suffering. When history reveals the ugly roots of this persisting inequality, the present too looks not very promising. The visible imbalance requires a further deep attention to trace out the barriers that hinder the oppressed communities from equally accessing the deserved livelihood options.
Whenever the native as well as neighbouring communities fail to serve the basic needs of all the sections of its populace, the state is expected to intervene with remedial measures, mostly in the mode of welfare schemes. There can be two ways which (mis)lead the eligible beneficiaries out of the purview of the scheme benefits. One is the low or no awareness about the schemes from the part of people and the other is the implementation mechanism which functions with a complicated set of eligibility criteria that again indirectly help the lower level state machinery to strategically exclude the real needy. The game is here played with a coin which has tails on both the sides and continuation of which will never get them the ‘heads’ that is actually needed.

There is more to be known about the second way of exclusion from scheme benefits that is of state complexities in implementation than the lower awareness of the people. As when awareness creation foresees a clear solution, making a simple implementation mechanism poses challenges to the policy makers and that needs a great deal of understanding of the barriers that people actually face in accessing the welfare schemes of the Government.

Access to the scheme benefits requires in the first instance the basics to be present in the local set up. The issue of cards, registration in institutions, listed in official lists, etc. In case of Dalits it is these basics which are non-existent either due to denial or negligence. It is important to note here that in an eastern U.P village named Dogra (in Kushinagar Dt), where a starvation death was reported (Nagina Musahar), the state immediately intervened in a large extent and could succeed to list the villagers under all the available schemes. The villagers got all types of cards, registrations and inclusions. Of course the distribution of benefits is still questionable. But the point here is that all the Dalit communities can not afford to have such ‘martyrs’ just to get listed under schemes and there is nothing to be proud of such sacrifices too.

Revelations through many disturbing statistics and reports clearly shows that a better implementation of a scheme is dependent not only upon the factors at policy level but also includes the local government machinery. In the present scenario of decentralization process the local government machinery also involves the community leaders, at least in a rural set up. If the community happens to be casteist and lopsided, it affects the functioning of the local administration to a great extent as the distribution of benefits is ultimately dependent upon them. From school teachers to panchayats presidents to electoral system where everyone and everything is ruled by caste, the reach of welfare schemes would be still skeptical. When it really matters what we are and where one’s social identity is rigidly determined there is not much short cuts to reach the destination. There is of course a long way to go.

Starvation deaths in the context of Musahars are now a popularized issue as development journalists and also mainstream media have written reports after reports and have exploited all the public sympathy. The question is how far we were able to go beyond just sympathasing. All the focus of our criticisms was mainly on making a responsive state leaving aside the responsibility of the native and neighbourhood communities.

As a society we are convinced to believe that human labour is necessary to keep our spaces clean. The next generation intellectuals have started creating scientific knowledge base against positive discrimination without knowing the other half of the India. The whole public consciousness is being comfortable by converting everything into state failure. In such situations, the deceived communities have not many options as the barriers in securing their much needed food are socio-political. They are left to face the unbearable consequences and desperately search for hard ways to live. Our understandings tell us that the barriers faced by the oppressed are not only the failure of the state rather a societal failure.

Having made a generation to believe that, they have to either die or migrate or continue their distressing profession to cope up with hunger and food insecurity, a system has got well established on the basis of caste hierarchy. It is not possible that only laws and policies can bring equality into the common living sphere. There is a need to think something beyond. The state may pave the way to bring in certain strategies, which would really ensure the food security through all the possible means, the first step towards self-emancipation. It is then left to the society to decide whether to live equally or not.

Knowing more and more of the inequities that prevails within us makes me disturbed and pushes me to search for the ways out. I am tracing the meta- narrative of the inequality that prevails among us. It leaves me with more questions than answers. There is still this hope that we together can really trace it down and endeavour towards equalising.

Madurai - Some thoughts on Urban Homelessness

The well-being of all its citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable is, to a great extent, dependent on the state policies and the mechanisms to implement the same. There are even greater spaces to be filled up by the state, where the society and neighbourhood communities fail to be humane. Even if the general societal feeling happens to be more accommodative, there is still a strategic lack to prove that as a means for the well-being of the excluded groups, such as homeless.

The present study has tried to trace out the role played by the state in affecting the lives of Madurai’s homeless in both positive and negative ways. There are indeed a few important initiatives to be elaborated here. The study has also tried to take stock of few more initiatives other than Governmental. These non-governmental initiatives are temporary solutions in nature and here we feel the importance of the state to play its insignificant role in a polished manner.

The discussions with the officials of the Madurai Corporation, revealed a fact that the homeless people are nowhere in their past or present agenda. Especially, the town planning division of the Corporation has just invisiblised the whole lot of homeless population in its developmental projects and they completely feel that homeless people are not at all their consideration. Citing all their financial hurdles, the Corporation officials believe that the responsibility to rehabilitate the city’s homeless people lies upon the State government and their regime is limited to the provision of needed basic services to the ‘legitimate’ citizens of the city, i.e., who live in houses. It is that financial resources have not been decentralised to local bodies in the state on par with the decentralisation of responsibilities. The Corporation wants to play a safer game without leaping into the deeps of unknown risks, and caters to those who have power, and are least bothered about the coreless, mostly who do not even vote. On the other hand the state government has strategically pulled out its hand in the name of decentralising the responsibility. As the homeless have been thrust into no-man’s land, their well being has gradually become no-one’s responsibility.

Police, being the prime force of the state government, has an important role to play in allowing as well as not allowing the homeless population to live on the streets/pavements. Anyhow the police force of the city was more patient towards the homeless crowd and was not torturing them to leave their residing places or not even taking any measures to rehabilitate them. As the Justices F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla and K. Veeraraghavan of Madurai Bench of Chennai High Court have mentioned in their recent court order to rehabilitate the Madurai homeless beggars, the Head of Police Administration in Madurai city itself was not aware of the functioning of the Special care homes and the Government care camps in the State. Even the persons who were arrested (which happened very rarely) for alleged begging, were detained under public nuisance case and not under the Tamilnadu Prevention of Begging Act, 1945. It is again important to note here that majority of the homeless populace of the city is being dependent on securing alms for their livelihood and the above said act of 1945 marks begging as a punishable offence. Still, the police force was not ready to effectively implement the prevention act only because of the rehabilitation elements contained in it following the initial detentions. The most disadvantageous part of the act is that it starts with the proposition that begging is a punishable offence and thus allows the use of brute force in detaining them in the initial stage before rehabilitating them. But that is the only way any state would know to shift its unmanageable sect of people into the manageable sphere.

Towards the end of 2006, a lawyer, who said to be affected by the homeless beggars of the city, filed a writ petition in the Madurai Bench of Chennai High Court requesting to direct the state or its police force to strictly implement the above said beggary prevention act. The court, on March 26 of 2007 issued an order favouring the writ petition and even awarded him with a cash reward of Rs.10,000. The order forces the police to detain the homeless beggars of the city and then to rehabilitate them in Special care home and work house which is situated only in one place for the entire state. The court has ruled out the inconveniences that the Police may need to face due to this single rehabilitation home for the entire state. This has led the police force to detain many of the homeless people of the city, including much of the respondents of the present study and consequently sent many of them to the rehabilitation home, which is situated in Melpakkam near Chennai. But this so called rehabilitation measure has made many of the homeless people to leave for nearby towns and another significant portion of the homeless people has temporarily escaped to their villages and again came back to their streets after all these rehabilitation drama is over.

The Government with its conservative mechanism many a times resort to the same kind of invisiblisation and custodialisation in order to deal with the unmanageable sect of its population. But, what is needed is to provide the rehabilitation measures a humane face and lifting up the responsibility of rehabilitating them from the police department so as to include the same in the agenda of social justice or other similar department.

There is also a general but illusory idea that the free food provision in temples at the lunch time serves the homeless people to a great extent. It is said to be illusory as the discussions with few temple authorities of Madurai Mennakshi Temple revealed that the preference in free food provision is given to the devotees of the temple who come from different parts of the country. They rarely consider the homeless people who resides adjacent to the temple premises and at few times they are served with the left over food items. The scheme of free provision of lunch in temples was introduced mostly as a means to attract more votes from the upper caste Hindu community and not very much to serve the poor people.

But, there are few non governmental agencies that are committed to provide free food to the homeless population of the City. Some of them are very much focused as they do not serve any able bodied homeless person with free food. They want to serve only the old aged, disabled and mentally disturbed homeless populace in Madurai. There are anyhow other voluntary efforts for providing free food to the homeless without such discriminations. What is lacking with these organisations is a long term vision for rehabilitating the homeless people and most of them feel that it is Government’s duty to find a way out. Those who do not believe in state existence too have narrowed vision of rehabilitation homes which again needs a lot of external funding to be poured in.

The root cause of Madurai’s homelessness is very much in the failures of families and native societies in having a humane face towards these vulnerable people. Thus, even if the Government wants to rehabilitate them, the efforts should be taken with a humane touch and not by using brute force.

The solutions lies also in financial decentralisation from state to the local Governments, which can again help the Corporation to have an independent plan for City development by accommodating the homeless people in its broader agenda. Secondly, preventing the police force from implementing the outdated ‘prevention of beggary act of 1945’ to detain the homeless beggars for the so called rehabilitation. There instead rehabilitative centres can be initiated in the city itself by having the involvement of the voluntary organisations. Government run night shelters will be another way to accommodate them as a measure to protect their otherwise unsafe nights. Provision of better alternatives for their livelihoods would still be challenge until there are safer measures for their initial rehabilitation.

People indeed take the hard decision of coming out of their homes at the peeks of their being not respected and also their reasons and reasoning for being homeless are to be respected. Still, efforts can be very well taken to restore themselves in their families or native societies if it can turn out to create a pleasant outlook. The implementation comfort of this strategy is yet to be discussed upon.

Chennai - Some thoughts on Urban Homelessness

Urbanisation in two ways has caused the homelessness in Chennai. One is the direct attraction in had in the initial period, which again has drawn thousands of rural mass into the city in search of new economic opportunities. Many of the rural areas around Chennai having experienced more dry years and failed agriculture in those days made these people to refuge into the growing industrialisation of the city. This has indeed provided them with numerous direct and indirect employment opportunities, which were then enough to secure their food and not a place to reside in. They have settled down their lives in the streets of the city and gradually adopted into homelessness.

Besides this direct attraction, it is believed that the infrastructural development of then growing urbanisation, such as, four lane roads, electric trains and recent fly-overs have caused more and more indirect evictions which left the native people to be homeless in their own places. It is important here to note that Chennai is a cluster of ‘once upon a time’ villages, which are merged into the development of a metropolitan city and lost their identities as individual villages. Places like Mayilapoor, Thiruvanmiyur and Thiruvallikkeni having very old temples are still evident for once existed villages. As no one notices a small cloud, which gets melted amidst the colourful evening sky, the history of urbanisation has no traces of these indirect evictions happened during the course. Apart form few old people none of the homeless either know that some of them are the natives of the same place and once had their houses there.

There are also few non governmental initiatives that have taken place for the well being of the homeless people and they are all proved to be inconsistent due to the non-availability of funds and change in staff structure, etc. But these efforts in a way have managed to evolve a kind of co-operative spirit among the homeless people by forming them into associations and self help groups. Many of the homeless women are now into the SHG route and have their own little savings. The associations among the homeless people have facilitated the emergence of the local leaders, who are now half trained to fight for the rights of their fellow homeless people. They are half-trained in the sense; they are suddenly left alone by the sudden withdrawals of the NGOs involved in training them.

Certain non governmental initiatives are now trying to adopt a right based approach by restricting themselves only to the provision of legal support. Here again these organizations are so irregular in performing their task and also not very much convincing of their principle, which has now made the homeless people not to depend very much upon the voluntary sector. But there are still few homeless people who work for these NGOs as community mobilisers and secure some minimum remuneration for their work. Though these initiatives are not being proved as fruitful to the whole homeless community, the general feel is that it is good as at least few among them are able to make some money out of it.

Still, the expectations upon the Government support is very much high and has been viewed as the long term solutions for their sufferings.

Rephrasing the forgotten history may not help the homeless people to improve their present situation, but it still helps us to realise the humane face that the urbanising phase should have. Any policy level decision to improve the urbanite character of the city should also consider the lives of the poor as well as dependent population living in. This ethical consideration is getting its importance in this juncture as the State Government is now decided to implement the Chennai metro rail project (as it is in Delhi) by pouring in some thousands of crores of rupees. Central Government and few foreign agencies have also agreed to support this new metro project in Chennai. Now the concern is that the project should not only leave any poor people homeless, but also should not disturb the lives of the people who are already homeless in the city. Such an indirect eviction is not a righteous history which can be repeated again.