Mir Ashfaquzzaman

THE national housing authority supervised the demolition of more than one thousand brick and non-brick structures on 24 acres of land at Duwaripara in the city's Pallabi area on February 14. The land, as reported in the media, falls under the second phase of the Mirpur Rupnagar Extension Project. Four hundred and seventy-four people were given allotments on the land through a lottery in 1994. However, the residential plots could not be handed over to their designated owners as the land continued to be occupied in the name of waqf estate and a legal wrangle over its ownership dragged on. The court settled the dispute on January 21 and ruled in favour of the designated plot owners.

The legality of the demolition drive can hardly be questioned; after all, the court did rule the occupation of the land in the name of waqf estate was illegal. However, the question here may not be only about the legality of the demolition or the eviction of several thousand people from the land at Duwaripara. According to newspapers, the occupants were given 48 hours or so to leave the structures designated for demolition. As different newspapers reported, some of the evicted people had no other choice but to stay on the footpath for a day or two or even more, as they could not manage to rent a house in the middle of the month. The counter argument would be that these people had actually more than two days of the notice period to move out because the court's ruling came three weeks or so back.

Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that a significant number of people were literally thrown out in the cold as a result of the demolition drive, apparently for no fault of theirs. Barring a few, most of the people evicted were tenants of the brick and non-brick structures and belong to the low-income section of society. Their only fault seems to be that they rented the house in good faith and did not ask the landlords whether the room or house they were planning to move into had been authorised or whether there was any dispute over land ownership. Were they actually required to make such enquiries? Of course not.

It is ultimately their sheer misfortune that they ended up being the wrong people, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Ironically, the people who had actually spelled hardship for them – the people who had occupied the land in the name of waqf state, sold plots or erected brick and non-brick structures on the land to let, knowing fully well that their actions might not be within the ambit of law – come out of the entire episode largely unscathed and probably with hefty returns on their investment. The sad thing is that they always do.

When the military-controlled interim government of Fakhruddin Ahmed assumed office little over a year and a month ago, one of its first few actions was demolition of unauthorised structures, mostly slums, on government land. Over the first few days and weeks, tens of thousands of people, again belonging to the poor and marginalised sections of society, became homeless overnight. Anyone familiar with the slum dynamics, if you like, knows that a handful of people with social and political influence encroach upon government land, build shanties and rent those out. In most cases, the shanties are provided with electricity connections that are as illegal as the encroachers' stake on government land is. In other words, the encroachers actually make money with little or no investment at all. When a government initiates a demolition and eviction drive to free government land from encroachment, they hardly feel any pinch. It is those in need of cheap housing who bear the brunt – they are thrown out on the street with whatever belongings they have and spend a few days under open skies before moving into some other illegal slums with illegal electricity connections. Meanwhile, as the government's initial enthusiasm dies down, the shanties mushroom on the government land again and again the encroachers make money. The cycle continues.

There is another dimension to the slum dynamics. Every now and then, the media reports one slum or the other burnt to the ground. In fact, hours before the demolition drive began at Pallabi nearly 1,000 shanties were burnt in a fire at Tikkapara slum in the city's Mohammadpur area. As is the case with slum fires in general, the cause of the fire could not be pinpointed and the fire-fighting operation was constrained by the narrow access to the slum. Fortunately, there was no casualty and the fire fighters managed to save valuables worth about Tk 45 lakh from the fire. Nonetheless, for many of the slum dwellers, it was back to the scratch. They lost whatever belongings they had and would have to start afresh.

It has been severally alleged that the some of the slum fires are not accidental and are actually orchestrated as a sequel to tussles over possession of land. Some people have also suggested involvement of real estate developers. However, there has hardly been any investigation into these allegations, let alone any plausible conclusion vis-à-vis the cause of fire. Accidental or deliberate, it makes little difference to slum dwellers though; they have to suffer either way and pay the price for other people's actions. The tenants of the brick and non-brick structures at Duwaripara did not initiate the illegal occupation of the land under the government's housing project. Similarly, it is not the dwellers of different slums so far demolished who encroached upon government land in the first place. Yet, they are the ones who suffer while the actual offenders get away.

The demolition drive at Duwaripara on February 14 or the ones we have seen in the early days of the interim government may have been legal but they could hardly be called just because they meted out punishment to some for the wrongs perpetrated by others.

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