Hundreds of Dalits, poor, workers, and small vendors have been settled for the last four decades in the stretch from Daroga Rai Path to Hartali More in Bihar’s capital Patna. The government has constructed a dhobighat, fish market, night shelter, Anganwadi and primary school in this area. The night shelter which serves as a shelter for rickshaw and hand cart pullers has been here for decades. The government has pronounced the diktat for these people to be evicted without notice. The argument was that roads, a flyover and an underpass would be built here. The construction company bulldozers started the demolition process. Even water and electricity connections were cut off in homes as well as public utility spaces. The CPIML organized the people and started the resistance. The CPIML MLA Satyadev Ram who has been allotted a bungalow not far from here joined the movement himself. A mass dharna was organized at Hartali More Chowk addressed by Satyadev Ram, Dhirendra Jha, Shashi Yadav, Anita Sinha, Jitendra Kumar, former Ward Councillor Vinod and others. Satyadev Ram raised this issue strongly inside the Assembly also demanded that the poor must not be evicted without prior alternative arrangements. In view of the massive nature of the protest, leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav visited the dharna site along with CPIML MLAs Satyadev Ram, Gopal Ravidas, Virendra Gupta and others. Large crowds gathered at the dharna site and the issue drew widespread notice. A team comprising CPIML and RJD leaders met the DM Patna. Tejashwi Yadav put the point across strongly to the common people that RJD and CPIML alliance (Mahagathbandhan) will fight this battle together and will not allow slums and hutments to be demolished without prior alternative arrangements being made. Under pressure from the agitation, water and electricity supply was restored promptly. The administration has given the assurance that people will be evicted from the place only after making alternative arrangements.
Similar spirited agitations have taken place in recent times in cities like Buxar, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga and Begusarai. The administration has backed down a little bit in the face of strong resistance, but the government is unwilling to make systemic and policy changes. There is no land rights related law for dalits and the poor in urban areas in Bihar. Taking advantage of this, the government and the dominant sections have always worked to demolish settlements of dalits and the poor. Very few dalit bastis are left in cities in Bihar including Patna because the PP Act 1948 is not applicable and there is also no provision of land bandobasti (settlement) for the poor. After independence the first law was passed in Bihar giving ownership rights to dalits and poor settled on ryot lands. Under this Act the poor got parchas under the PP Act and still continue to do so, on the basis of their struggles. The previous occasion on which CPIML MLAs met the Chief Minister on this issue he said, why are you people meddling with the minds of the poor? Why do they need to live in cities? Now villages also have roads, water and electricity supply.
The problem of housing for the urban poor is going to get worse as the government is converting village-panchayats into urban bodies on a large scale. There is no talk of land rights for the landless, dalits and poor in urban bodies, and the Nitish government has long since scrapped the land ceiling Act.
In the name of schemes like the Jal Jeevan Hariyali Yojana, widening of river embankments and expansion of roads, eviction drives are being carried out on a large scale. Lakhs of poor families have been given and are still being given notices to remove their homes. Movements against eviction of the poor are going on in Darbhanga District at Shobhan, Chhipalia, Darhar, Rambhadrapur (Bahadurpur Block), Devna Mushari (Tardi Block) and Mabbi (Sadar Block), while in Madhubani District thousands of poor families have been settled at 6 or 7 places during this period. The Garib Basao (Settle the Poor) movement has become very popular in Madhubani and is spreading rapidly. Similarly, in Lakhisarai, Patna, Gaya and, Nawada and other Districts the poor are being evicted from the banks of the canala and ‘paeens’. This state-wide drive to evict the poor has become the priority of the BJP-JDU government. It is a matter of great shame that the BJP Minister for Land Reform and Revenue stated inside the Assembly that the government has instructed all Districts to purchase bulldozers on a large scale and that the homes of whoever is settled on government land will be bulldozed.
It should be noted that there are about one crore dalit-poor families in Bihar who are faced with a huge problem of housing land. Dozens of people live in a one-room hut-like house along with goods and cattle. There are about 30 lakh such families who have no papers for the land they are settled on. The settlements of dalits and the poor in Bihar are on the banks of rivers, embankments, ponds, land created by dead rivers, along roadsides, and on the edge of forests. These lands should have been made over in their names long back under ‘bandobasti’ but this was never on the agenda of governments running away from land reform. The Bandopadhyaya Commission formed by the Nitish government had recommended that 10 decimal land should be given to each landless family for housing. Nitish Kumar had also talked about giving 5 decimal housing land to the landless. He further said that we are ready even to buy land for giving to the landless. According to a top government official, there are enough gairmajrua, malik gairmajrua, parti kadam and kesar-e-hind lands in Bihar which can be given for the settlement of needy families. To the contrary, when the CPIML raised the land rights issue in the Assembly, the Chief Minister countered it by asking, where is the land? Actually the government is in cahoots with land thieves and the land mafia, and that is why it refuses to see the land which can and should be given to the landless.
The right to land and housing for dalits and the poor has always been an important issue in AIARLA movements. Our slogans “The land on which we have settled is ours” and "Government land is our land” have become very popular in villages and panchayats. This was the main issue in the protest organized in front of the Vidhan sabha on 14 March. Our demands are: Stop razing the homes of the poor with bulldozers; give Vasgeet parchas to the poor for the lands on which they are settled; stop evicting the poor without alternative housing arrangements; make a new housing law on the basis of a comprehensive survey of the landless and homeless; expand the scope of the housing land rights law to urban areas; construct access roads to every dalit-poor village. 52% of Bihar’s population is poor, so there should be regular arrangement for rations for them including dal, oil and spices. The demand for free electricity up to 200 units has become an essential demand of dalits and the poor. The demands of the March 14 protest have been conveyed to the government. If the government fails to take any initiative, this movement for land and housing will be intensified. The government’s bulldozers will receive a befitting reply from the bulldozer that is the people’s movement.
