Untitled - Rebel Studies Library

100 PLANET OF SLUMS
Urbanist Solomon Benjamin has studied the example of Bangalore,
where the Agenda Task Force, which directs overall strategic decisionmaking,
is firmly in the hands of the chief minister and major
corporate interests, with negligible accountability to local elected representatives.
"The zeal of the political elite to turn Bangalore into a
Singapore has resulted in extensive evictions and demolitions of settlements,
especially small business clusters in productive urban locations.
The demolished land is reallocated by master planning to higher
income interest groups, including corporations."17
Similarly in Delhi - where Banashree Chatterjimitra finds that the
government has utterly "subverted the objectives of supplying land for
low income housing" by allowing it to be poached by the middle classes
- the development authority has targeted nearly half a million squatters
for eviction or "voluntary relocation."18 The Indian capital offers brutal
confirmation of Jeremy Seabrook's contention that "the word 'infrastructure'
is the new code word for the unceremonious clearance of the
fragile shelters of the poor."19 Sprawling along the banks of Delhi's
Yamuna River, Yamuna Pushta is a large and very poorjhuggi (squatter
town) of 150,000, housing mainly Bengali Muslim refugees. Despite
protests and riots, clearance of the area began in 2004 in order to make
way for a river promenade and tourist amenities. %ile the government
basks in international praise for its new "green plan," residents are
being trucked away some 20 kilometers to a new peripheral slum,
despite official evidence, according to the Hindustan Times, that
"revealed that shiftingJhuggi dwellers of the Capital has decreased the
average income of the relocated families by about 50 percent."20 "We
have to spend at least half of what we earn commuting to our places
of work in the city;' evictees complained to another newspaper
reporter.21
17 Solomon Benjamin, "Globalization's Impact on Local Government," UN­
HABITAT Debate 7:4 (December 2001), p 25.
.
18 Banashree Chatterjimitra, "Land Supply for Low-Income Housing in Delhi,"
In Baken and "an der Linden, Land Deliver} for Low Income Groups in Third World Cities,
pp. 218-29; Neelima Risbud, "Policies for Tenure Security in Delhi," p 61.
19 Seabrook, In the Cities of the South, p. 267.
20 Varun Som, "Slumming It," Hindustan Times, 24 October 2003.
21 Ranjit Devraj, "No Way but Down for India's Slum Dwellers," Asia Times,
20 July 2000.
HAUSSMANN IN THE TROPICS 101
Urban Mrica, of course, has been the scene of repeated forced
exoduses to clear the way for highways and luxury compounds. One of
the most notorious and heartbreaking - rivaling Apartheid's demolitions
of Sofiatown and Crossroads - was the destruction of Maroko in
Lagos in 1990. A former fishing village at the swampy end of Lekki
Peninsula, Maroko was colonized by poor people displaced in the late
1950s "so that Victoria Island and Ikoyi could be drained and developed
for Europeans and wealthy Africans." Although impoverished,
Maroko became famous for its populistjoie de vivre, dark humor and
spectacular music. By the early 1980s, the once marginal Lekki
Peninsula itself was considered a prime site for the extension of highincome
residences. The 1990 bulldozing of Maroko left 300,000
homeless.22 "Few Nigerians alive," writes the poet Odia Ofeimun, "can
forget the sense of betrayal and the trauma of severance that was occasioned
when it happened under military jackboots. It was memorialized
across Nigerian literature in poetry, drama and prose.'>23
Under the regime of Daniel Arap Moi, Nairobi's political bosses and
influential slumlords were allowed to build rental tenements on public
land earmarked for roads, including a 60-meter strip through the heart
of Kibera. Now the post-Moi government of President Mwai Kibaki
wants to "restore order" to planning by clearing out more than onethird
million tenants and squatters.24 During recent demolitions,
residents - many of whom had been conned into investing their lives'
savings into buying plots already dedicated to roads - were told by
heavily armed police that they had a scant two hours to evacuate their
homes.25
When it comes to the reclamation of high-value land, ideological
symbols and promises made to the poor mean very little to the bureaucrats
in power. In Communist-governed Kolkata, for example,
squatters have been evicted from the center to the edge, then evicted
22 Margaret Peil, "Urban Housing and Services in Anglophone West Africa,"
p. 178.
23 Odia Ofeimun, "Invisible Chapters and Daring Visions," This Day, 31 July
2003. Some examples: Ogaga Ifowodo, Red Rain (originally, Maroko} Blood); Maik
Nwosu, Invisible Chapters; J.P. Clark, "Maroko" (in A Lot From Paradise); and Chris
Abani's deliriously wonderful Grace/and.
24 Vasagar, "Bulldozers Go in to Clear Kenya's Slum City."
25 See articles in The East African Standard (Nairobi), 8-9 February 2004.