Following the government order on scarpping of the Niyamgiri mining project and indictment of Vedanta for carrying out expansion work of its refinery at Lanjigarh without permission, more than 5000 workers were suddenly retrenched yesterday by L&T, the contractor for carrying out Vedanta's construction work.
On being served the retrenchment notice - verbally - the workers demanded their backlog payments’ and compensation to which the company did not heed. Workers then went on to stage a strike. It is reported that demands and downright denials led to a violent situation, in which there was some damage to the plant properties. Then the police accompanied by vedanta goons attacked the demonstrators and beat them up mercilessly... More than hundred workers are injured with bleeding heads, broken limbs, and internal injuries. Hundreds of workers have been arrested and, as reports coming from Lanjigarh this morning suggests, are being further beaten up in the police station.
Some backgrounder and facts:
1. I had interviewed more than two dozens of workers on camera last February and they had said that not a single worker is given an identity card; even many of them did not possess any entry slip (roll card).
2. The original address of most workers was distorted on record so that in case of any accident or retrenchment or any other such thing, the company could prove that such person did not exist at all, and that they could not be challenged legally.
3. Most workers complained the payment was much less than promised/stipulated besides being very erratic.
4. Workers felt trapped as their backlog payments were huge and could not even leave the job even if they wanted to.
5. Safety measures were almost non-existent and the workers always did their job taking great risks.
6. There had been many deaths inside the plant in accidents, which were not reported outside.
... and so on.
The present situation calls for intervention by the media and legal experts. Since the company cannot go on with the expansion work now after being slammed officially and publicly, there has to be ways for the workers to get their rights... and not such a raw deal as being dumped, then beaten up and arrested.
This is in response to the comment atthis blogspost.
Wow! This is my India! This is my India that can best be mapped under tin sheet roof. Earlier I got the sense of Yasu and her team mapping the geography of India as per perspective of migrant workers in garden city of Bangalore. Even as gardens disappear at rapid pace to give way for mega conglomerates to feast on glitter and shine on imagined India of 11% GDP with fly overs, sea links and airports, Yashu in this mail comes up with another map. This time it is map of time, the real time map of lives of her subjects of films, care and solidarity - sometimes imagined, sometimes through watchful eyes of ever robust yet sick system.
This map of time is distinct from hanging India maps from tin sheet roof at CIS campus: maps of space. This map has mental scribbles of Yashu herself. The migrant workers are "not allowed to bring their families, they are not allowed to make friends with outsiders, they are bunched up together, they are supposed to just build our cities and move on..."
What does this map indicate? Life in captivity? Life in slavery? Life chained to violent system? I always we have constitution of India that guarantees freedom of movement and freedom of right of life. We indeed have one. But that was suitable for the 1950s and 1960s. It is perhaps long outdated. It is only because of this that Yashu's scribblings here looks bit disturbing.
I feel Yashu and her team has touch some very 'disturbing' aspect of India Pvt Ltd. She encountered overpowering character of contractor who is hell bent to implement discipline so much to get India to shine if she still evades. Wow! this is my India that stand tall far above tin sheet roof tops. This is my India that is addicted to growth. This is my India that rejoices every fruit produced by Avtar Singh and Sanjeev. And Yashu has spoiled party! She picked on its fodder for burgeoning belly. She mercilessly entered the labour camps and found father figure - Avtar Singh! Perhaps he is a father figure to hanging Indias under the tin sheet roof. I am sure blooming Indias above the tin sheet roof has never known his existence forget about he fathering anything for imagined Bangalore.
Life in the labour camps is temporary. Life even outside is temporary everywhere. Sometime my ears echo the 'concentration camps' every time I read Yashu's mail. Surely my ears have gone bonkers, they are a gone case by now. There is magnetic filth inside them. They need some thorough clean up to listen to right things. My poor ears! Let me try reading again something else.
Who is going to see the film that Yashu, Ekta and Paromita are making? "how we are going to share the final film with them... as they are here today and gone tomo...their addresses are as temporary as them in my city." I guess that is a nature of migrant workers caught in spiral of economy and time. Brutally exploitative economy and restless time. They would still be working multiple shifts if earth slows down its rotation to 48 hours. The restless system, the restless motions, restless economy, restless minds, restless contractors, restless India, restless needs some remedy. Do you have it in you?
It is a same economy. Workers like Avtar Singh and Sanjeev are greeted with restless as variety of hospitality of Yashu's city. Is it something pioneering about Yashu's city? At all! This is one common thread that ran through few of maps for making change project that we have been privileged to be part of. My state of Goa corporate-state nexus is restless to dig and sell iron ore to China and Japan. Mining economy is restless. Kolkata city is restless to the extend it goes on relentlessly to demolish human habitats that like of Avtar Sigh and Sanjeev would be inhabiting, Riju is painstakingly mapping this restlessness. Restless 'Developments' across the country has brought about number of people to Bombay pavements. Devanshi of Yuva is doing her bit in mapping this. Global political economy as restless as ever and Diamond mining in Panna, M.P is example it restlessness. Anjuman has mapped this. There is restless of the Indian State to takeover forest lands and hand it over for carbon trading agreements. Kaveri and Ayyapa has been involved in checkmating this trend via their map in small way in Karnataka. And there is massive restlessness even 'peace hunting' to clear the way to corporates in southern Chatisgargh. Ram Bhat is mapping this. Gujarat government is found mysteriously dozing when it comes to revival of state's step wells. Kakoli Sen has highlighted this in her majestic installation with highlight of Vadodara. This too has lot to do not only in water security but also on restless trend in changing/manipulating history/memory. I am sure there are more cases, more interpretations.
So the restlessness galore widely. In Yashu's context is accessible and visible in direct raw sense.
My musings continues :) Surely be glad to meet up with you Yashu sometime soon :) I am glad that my mail was so hugely supportive and self-assuring. Surely there is way ahead here subject of explorations of not just for you and me but everyone on this list.
It was cool, just after evening rains at CIS campus in Bangalore on April 28, 2010. It was even cooler to enter Yashawini's installations tracking migrant workers movements across India. From the tin metal sheets hanged tiny transparent India Maps. From the visual projector kept on ground kept throwing multiple focuses inside the room. Also accompanied was some audio vibrations.
I took tiny hops around the room to read up scribblings on the pages that hanged along with each of India map transparency. They very rough scribblings for they were not scribbled by polished artist passed out from any professional institutes around. They were scribbled by by hands that toiled to build modern robust India that occasionally shines. They were scribbled by laborers who wondered around India staying in small shanties that could provide enough warmth of emotions, and little light and glow.
Inside little room, in the middle of the hanging scribbles and pouring stories of India I found myself dissolved, dissolved in solitude for a moment. Somehow I felt home. I did whisper few words to Yashawini there. Yet more remained to be said. More remained to be listened to. In the middle of untidily scribbled notes I found a reference to Goa. Yashaswini then connected me to another one soon at the other end of room and country as well - Midnapur in West Bengal and found recorded as stayed in Madgaon - commercial capital of Goa.
Thoughts overpowered me and I got penetrated deep within. Quickly I reached my tiny tots days. I found myself amongst the laborers from some part of Karnataka that worked their lives and one even his death in the mines in my village of Siolim in North Goa. I found myself cared for by these laborer. I found myself playing amongst boys of these labour camps. I began to feel them. I began to recognize them. I remembered their names - Suresh, Shankar, Laxmi, Pandya, Bajarang, Maruti. I re-entered the the terrain that I had left way back in 1987.
Imagination took a flight. I became aware of some kind moments of the times. I became aware of some tense moment of the times, the fights, very often at our door step. I recollected myself as young kid doing bartender duty on behalf of our family business. Oh we earned our fortune - if I can call it - by selling liquor to these laborers.
Very soon labourers and I along with my family became one. Mining dust became our unifying force. My lungs became very weak and contracted tuberculosis. My dad too picked up tuberculosis. We never knew word 'protest' those days. So society just left us to rot in dust. We were lucky. My sickness was detected. Treated. Initially by medical doctor who almost gifted a death to me through his free service of outdated medicines. I escaped but not before getting disfigured completely. My skin colour turn blackish and I got contact sickness attacks. The women from these labour colonies came to care for me as child in need. Only gradually I would recover, more fully when finally left the place to another one where currently my family stays.
Gradually I became aware of the deep biases and prejudices against the migrant workers. As a child even I go carried away and even fanned them further. Migrant workers, i learned in my childhood was referred always as suspicious robbers. I could never feel the life of migrant till I became migrant myself and moved to Delhi and lived in Kotla in 2005-06. The labour localities in my village continued even tough mines were closed down by court order. Sometime in 1989 the local people caught one of men in these localities robbing and that was enough pretext to set the houses of labourers on fire. The locality was disrupted. Some moved to another part of village. Some moved in different villages around.
Mostly these labourers worked on stone quarry mines and crushers dealing with granite stones. blasting was carried on routine and green hills were butchered down with bull dozers. They supplied necessary raw material to meet construction houses of middle classes who calls then names most renowned and derogatory of them is 'ghatti'. No Social science in Goa is closed to this reality. It is like the three monkey as far as migrant in Goa are concerned. It could be very suffocating to live and breath in place like this. In fact it is. You can imagine my plight. It is another matter that generate my own oxygen.
Migrant debate now is getting juxtapose opposed as Goans versus non-Goans. No Vedanta boss Anil Agarwal who is involved in rampant brazen mining of Goa is not referred as non-goan. It is only the target tool for the labourers by Goa's middle class. Perhaps they must all get into Yashaswini's and two other colleagues (Ekta and Paromita) installation and see a different world.
Six years back in 2004 State government deployed police and bulldozers and demolished house of the migrant labour on Baina beach near Vasco. I increasingly realize that intervention like the one made by Yashaswini is so very crucial to diffuse tensions as well as to undo phobias of middle class India. The point however is how do we repeat this at a larger scale? How do we re-instate economy in the debate on migrant status?
I have more questions then answers after I walked out of installation in Bengaluru or Bangalore. I only knew that Yashu has done something very precious. She and her two colleagues - Ekta and Paromita - had put up installation that was bold and whose scope overflows far beyond art. It touched political theory and practice. In can be called Praxis. I identified myself at some deep level with it.
Sebastian Rodrigues
Picture credits to Riju Sumadro
Bangalore press did cover this as well. Please click here to read the story 'their India has no borders' in Bangalore Mirror.
For overall report on 'maps-for-making-change project please click here as reported in DNA India website.
Goa is mostly known for being a top tourist destination, but away from the coast mining is the major industry, and it is severely impacting local water. Click here for video.
Forest Tribes Lose Rights
For video on takeover of tribal forest spaces by the Indian Forest Department click the links here.
