To
Ratnakar Gaikwad (IAS Retired)
Former Metropolitan Commissioner
Office of Maharashtra Chief Information Commissioner
13th floor, New Administrative Building
Opposite Mantralaya, Madame Cama Road
Mumbai 400032.
Ratnakar_Gaikwad@hotmail.com
Copy to Prithviraj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra
Dear Sir,
We address you as the former MMRDA chief, as this issue concerns MMRDA, and does not directly concern Right to Information. On Friday, 13th July, you strongly rebutted a news item that implied that your daughter indirectly benefitted from award of MMRDA’s canteen contract to an NGO called Sankalp Mahila Audyogik Utpadak Sahakari Sanstha. Your letter to the editor of Free Press Journal said that the issues raised in the news item were largely trivial and factually incorrect.
This letter was leaked to us: http://tiny.cc/Gaikwad-Letter-to-Editor
(Note: We felt it was fair to publish your email in the public domain. After all, you signed it in your official capacity as the State Chief Information Commissioner, and not as a private individual. If we were to file an RTI application asking for all your emails in this capacity, we would like to believe that you would not deny us copies of emails received and written in this capacity; is that correct?)
It is heartening that you are willing to represent as former chief of MMRDA even now — that you are not washing your hands off MMRDA, which you headed from August 2007 to January 2011.
We don’t want to talk about your daughter, Sir, because that would indeed be frivolous. We want to talk about the bigger issues that your letter raises — about the working of MMRDA, housing colonies built under SRA, rehabilitation of Project Affected People (PAP) and generating livelihoods. Actually, we want to talk about how the PR machinery of MMRDA uses NGOs like Sankalp to create feel-good news – also called propaganda — to obscure the real issues behind a smokescreen. And we want to bring up the key issues that have been obscured by such methods.
SANKALP NGO, SLUM REHABILITATION & THE PR SMOKESCREEN
In your email to the editor of Free Press Journal last Friday, you asserted, “Sankalp is an NGO formed by the women from the families affected by MMRDA projects and Shivanjali has no connection whatsoever with the same… Another allegation that is published against me is that the 3000 sq. ft. of space was not charged any rent or deposit from Sankalp. The allegation amplified the lack of understanding on the part of the reporter as also the RTI activists. The MMRDA has been implementing various ambitious projects for many years and has resettled and rehabilitated about forty thousand project affected families. It remains our commitment, as specified by the rehabilitation policy, to travel an extra mile to provide livelihood and create opportunities to generate income for the project affected families. Further, if they are found under qualified we are expected to give them training in professional and or semi-professional skills to ensure they earn their livelihood at the newly relocated place. The World Bank has made a responsible and complimentary note in its reports in this regard. It is not out of place to mention that the Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA, is fully empowered to set up a livelihood cell and accordingly in the year 2008 it was so established to help families affected by the MMRDA projects.”
To paraphrase: Sankalp is an NGO floated by MMRDA’s Livelihood cell which you set up in 2008 for employing the women living in a massive Relief & Rehabilitation (R&R) colony in Mankhurd. The RTI documents posted by RTI activist Sulaiman Bhimani in his blog make it evident that you are not denying that MMRDA gave very substantial financial and other assistance to this NGO. You are just saying that it was part of MMRDA’s social commitment for the betterment of project affected persons living in your PAP colony at Mankhurd.
THE REAL PICTURE THAT IS MASKED BY SANKALP
Our grouse is that Sankalp enables MMRDA’s cheerleading team, which consists of Dilip Kawathkar MMRDA joint project director (PR) and others, to create feel-good news events like this: http://tiny.cc/Sankalp-World-Bank
And so World Bank and others present this sort of airbrushed image of Mankhurd: http://tiny.cc/World-Bank-Mankhurd
But the ground reality is not like that at all. The reality is like this:
Narrow Alleys less than 3 m wide seen from ground level
At the Mankhurd colony which you mentioned in your letter, Sir, DC regulations and architectural norms for designing human habitations are thrown to the winds. Has this neighbourhood of 65 buildings (about 9,300 residential tenements) designed to make the poor even poorer, while enabling builders SV Patel Constructions and Hiranandani-Akruti to reap undue profits? Because greed, profiteering and exploitation is writ large in this neighbourhood built in 2005.
Poor natural lighting and air circulation, and terrible sanitation, have been designed into these sub-human habitations. Emotional distress, chronic sicknesses and the stench of excrement hangs in the air. A fire hazard hangs over the heads of around 50,000 people, a disaster waiting to happen, as the extreme closeness between buildings gives no space to allow fire-fighting vehicles to be brought into play, and facilitates the spread of fire and deadly smoke.
Narrow alleys seen from terrace
For a detailed look at the drinking water, hygiene, road infrastructure etc. that MMRDA provides families that have been “rehabilitated”, see these pictures taken at Oshiwara: http://tinyurl.com/RNA-Oshiwara
Providing livelihood to a few dozen women after moving their families into such sub-human conditions, is really a sweetener for a very bitter pill, don’t you think? MMRDA’s Livelihood cell diverts the attention of the public and the media from the real issues.
Google maps of Mumbai vividly show how, locked away under slums are hundreds of hectares of land, enough to accommodate entire towns of Maharashtra. In order to free up all the land that they occupy, MMRDA is tasked with rehabilitating the millions who live there by providing them low-cost flats. If the land is freed up for providing better civic amenities to the people of Mumbai — including the slumdwellers who constitute 60 percent of its population — then this is indeed a laudable activity.
But is this the case? Or is the land being freed up for builders, by herding slum-dwellers into worse-than-slum conditions, endangering their health and safety?
We earnestly hope you will not pursue the policy of silence. Because the people of Maharashtra must not be allowed to feel that the only time you speak up is when it concerns the fair name of your family members.
Warm Regards,
G R Vora
grvora1@gmail.com
9869195785
Krishnaraj Rao
thebravepedestrian@gmail.com
9821588114
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.