Media disappoints in slum demolition saga

BY UFAQUE PAIKAR AND SHARIB ALI| IN Books | 10/03/2011

The coverage given to the fraud that was allegedly perpetrated on Golibar slum residents shows the media’s bias for high profile stories.

UFAQUE PAIKAR AND SHARIB ALI say that most newspapers did not even bother to find out both sides of the story. Pix: The Golibar slum

In the last six months Golibar has been in a state of turmoil. With forceful evictions, demolition of homes, protests, violent incidents and arrests, Golibar has become a site for clashes between builders and institutions of the state on the one hand, and affected people and concerned citizens on the other. Golibar, located in Santa Cruz (east), is the second largest slum in Mumbai: a city where slums occupy 6% of the total area and house 60% of its population.

Golibar Housing Co-operative, registered in 1984, which has 120 chawls on 38 acres of land with confirmed property rights, is set to be redeveloped by Shivalik Ventures - a real estate company in which Unitech has a 50% stake. The redevelopment is taking place under the Slum Rehabilitation Act of 1995 under which the government allows private builders to redevelop slums and gives alternative housing to the slum dwellers.

The context

In March 2003 Ganesh Kripa Society, one of the 46 societies in Golibar, signed a deal with Madhu Contractors for redevelopment. In March, 2008, without informing the society, Madhu Contractors entered into a deal with Shivalik Ventures on the project. Since then Ganesh Kripa Society, along with almost all other societies in Golibar, has been involved in a struggle against the builder and the State Rehabilitation Authority.

It is interesting to look at how the media, which took a moral high ground on the Adarsh Society scam by subjecting it to intense scrutiny, sought to represent an issue which involves one of the largest redevelopment projects in Mumbai. Largely, the media choose to ignore it. Though the conflict between the builder, state and the people was going on for over a year, two out of the three English newspapers - the Times of India and the Hindustan Times - picked it up as late as mid November, 2010. Golibar residents woke up to the fraud when they were served with an eviction notice on January 1, 2010. On February 18the residents went to the Nirmal Nagar police station to file a first information report but the police refused to do so. An FIR was lodged only on September 19 after the residents had gone to the court, which directed the cops to do so.

Residents of the Ganesh Kripa society then registered a civil case protesting that they had not appointed Shivalik as their builder and the 70% consent shown by the builder was a fraud. On 21^st September the court ruled that the people need to evict their homes as ‘no useful purpose will be served’ in investigating the case of forgery as some houses had been demolished and a few people had been shifted to temporary accommodation. The residents then filed a writ petition asking for a probe into the fraud to be completed. Between November 9 and 11, without the probe being completed, several unsuccessful attempts were made to demolish the homes.

Post attempts at demolition, on 14^th November residents took out a thousand strong silent rally in a desperate bid to make their voices heard. It was only then that the Times of India carried a three inch piece titled, ‘Residents protest ‘unfair’ demolition’. There was no effort on the part of the report to provide any context. The report had no mention of the case of forgery by the developers, or the controversial section 3k of the Slum Act within which the redevelopment is taking place. It also did not carry any account of what the people had to say. The HT report on 18^th November was titled, ‘Transit camps unhygienic, allege Khar residents’. Then both the newspapers dropped the story for two months to return to it only on January 20.

On 25^th November residents of Golibar organised a public gathering of thousands where noted social worker and activist Medha Patkar urged them to insist on their right for a fair deal. A few days later on the 29th, the residents presented a letter outlining the crisis, signed with their own blood, to the chief minister. Also, frustrated with their appeals to the media and the quality of coverage, the people of Golibar started their own blog - The Khar East Andolan blog.

On 20^th January more than 20 houses were demolished. Inspite of the people pointing out that the Bombay High Court had passed orders on 21^st September and 23^rd December 2010 directing Shivalik Ventures to provide transit accommodation to them before vacating their home, several people were lathi-charged, dragged by their hair and arrested by the police for opposing the demolition .The police provided a protective cordon for the builders.

The next day the TOI published a story titled, ‘Golibar demolition drive turns violent’. The report said: “A demolition squad that landed at a slum colony in Santa Cruz (E) to raze the structures there had to face the wrath of the residents on Thursday morning. The collectorate staffers, who had set out to implement a high court order to evict the slumdwellers in Golibar for a rehab project, were not allowed to enter the society, forcing the police to intervene. The protest turned violent after some residents and activists blocked a bulldozer following which the cops resorted to lathi charge.”

The report omitted documenting the grievances of the people and made no effort at investigating the case. The Hindustan Times report said, ‘Activists protest, 19 houses of Khar society razed’. In the following days as the HT continued to report on the issue with stories titled “Razed, but still home” (Jan 22), “Probe SRA project” (Jan 25), and “Khar society wants court to stay demolition” (Jan 26), where it voiced some of the concerns of the people, the anti demolition movement started concretizing into a full blown movement. The presence of Medha Patekar and other activists which included academicians and a retired Supreme Court judge, boosted the protesters. The media coverage that followed after the people started using instruments of organised protests, raises several questions.

Organised resistance and systemic exclusion

On 26^th January, 500 people from Golibar, along with former Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Suresh Hosbet, Gandhian leader Medha Patkar, Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Dr. Parshuraman, land rights activist Daniel Mazgaonkar, Vivek Pandit, writer-academician Chaaya Datar, and Dalit poet Sambhaji Bhagat, met at the Sangharsh maidan in Golibar and constituted a people’s parliament. On February 6, more than 4500 people took out a mass rally in Golibar where they appointed a people’s inquiry commission.

Both these events went unreported by the mainstream English media. What got reported was a small rally on the 30^th of January against Medha Patkar’s interference in the project. This event got picked up by all three agencies with several contradictory facts. The DNA was the first to report on the issue - even before the event took place. On 30^th January it said, “Golibar locals to take out anti-Patkar rally’. On the 31^st, the HT pointed out, ‘Medha Patkar should see both sides of the coin: Golibar locals’. The report pointed out that nearly 500 residents protested against Patkar for causing delay in the slum redevelopment. The Times of India seemed to have covered something else altogether. In a story titled “Golibar locals protest against Medha Patekar” it reported ‘Over 4000 families from 46 cooperative housing societies protested against social activist Medha Patkar’s role in a slum redevelopment scheme at Golibar in Santa Cruz east’.

In contrast, The Mumbai Mirror (‘Medha Patkar moves her catchment area to Mumbai’), and the alternative English journals and magazines like the Tehelka (‘Mumbai’s second largest slum fights to save itself’), and Indiatogether (‘Who is illegal’) have made efforts at understanding the people concerns. TV9 also deserves special mention as the only news channel to have given the issue extensive coverage.

(Ufaque Paiker and Sharib Ali are students of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences)