Issue 69 Vol III, August 15, 2008

C O M M E N T

The other Chandigarh
Prof. Manjit Singh

Chandigarh is a very young city and a planned city right from the very beginning. The modern architecture of the city to some makes it beautiful; to others it is really monotonous, lifeless, mechanical and oppressive. When people call it beautiful, they mean that it is small, clean with lot of parks, less polluted, and has good infra-structural facilities such as educational institutions, medical facilities, and of course good shopping centers. There is also a tourist view of Chandigarh: it has an old University, has a lake, a rock garden, a golf ground and many other botanical gardens. Never goes our sight to those islands, spread all over Chandigarh, that are small closed worlds, and about which perhaps we almost know nothing. It is a world of slums that constitute one-third of the total population of the city beautiful.

The mainstream civilizational processes in India always reproduce within the Manu’s framework of Varna system; does not matter whether frame follows process or vice-versa. The beauty of Chandigarh, conceived by French architect, metamorphoses into a grotesque form of Manu’s organic social theory of Indian Varna system, the moment we have a look at the slums. For instance sector one is head of mythical Brahma from where all power flows to Chandigarh, followed by two rows of sectors with arms, further southward stomach, and finally, what makes it grotesque, are not less than 20 feet attached all around its body in the form of squatters, what we commonly call slums.

What is it to be slum dweller in Chandigarh? No house (instead, just a shack) to live, no electricity, no water, no toilets, pools of stagnant water ideal for mosquito and fly breeding, and above all no medical facilities in case of any health problem. Who are these squatters? Most of them are uprooted poor peasants from rural India, and many of them are distressed migrants from the neighboring areas. More than three fourth of them are Dalits or people from the social margins of our society. How do they survive? A large number of them are casual workers, rickshaw puller, vegetable venders, petty traders, construction workers and doing other types of menial/ scavenging jobs. Women folks are mostly maids working in middle class houses for Rs.300 to 400 per month. Child labour is rampant and small kids are highly malnourished. The potbellies of small children are full of worms. There is stink all around as children defecate in the open, next to the hearth where their mother is cooking food for them. Women have no privacy, neither within the shack nor other wise. Men folk take community bath in the open from public taps but these ‘privilege’ women can’t afford to. Men folk can go for answering the call of nature in the open spaces, but what about women? And let me repeat, all these slum dwellers constitute one-third of the total population of Chandigarh.

From the preceding depiction it seems that there are, at least, two different worlds, though sharing the same geographical space, but are wide apart from each other. They meet momentarily at a horizon called market and that is all. At best, the world of slums is oblivious to ‘Chandigarhias’, and at worst it is social pathology. Chandigarhias know fully well that in the absence of distress sale of labour, at throwaway price, by the slum dwellers the beauty of the city cannot be maintained. But the indifferent attitude shows that we are concerned only up to the purchase of the labour power for a song, and not about the process part of it, i.e. how the cheap labour power is supplied by the hapless slum dwellers.

By all standards the life of an average slum dweller is comparable to slaves who did not have any control over their labour, with the only difference that under classical slavery the well-being of a slave was the responsibility of the slave master whereas Neo-slaves in the form of slum dwellers are left to the harsh realities of market where they fend for themselves.

[The writer is Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, PU, Chandigarh]

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Somnath Chatterjee defends himself, no apologies coming for CPM

INDIAN parliament [Lok Sabha] speaker Somnath Chatterjee who refused the dictates of his party bosses to resign from the speaker’s position before the trust vote by UPA government has strongly defended his conscious decision. By not resigning  as demanded by his party, the CPM in a private communication to him on July 20,  Chatterjee said he took a conscious decision “not to accept a position which would totally compromise the sanctity of the most important legislative office in the country.”

Chatterjee has been ten time member of the parliament and has been group leader of the CPM.

Three weeks after speculation began on his resigning from his position following the withdrawal of support by the Left parties to the United Progressive Alliance and nine days after his expulsion from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Chatterjee broke his silence through a five-page statement posted on the Speaker’s website.

Giving a detailed account of what transpired between him and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) over the last few weeks leading to his expulsion days after the trust vote was won by the government on July 22, Mr. Chatterjee said: “I have consciously taken the principled decision to uphold the Constitution of India at the risk of being unjustifiably dubbed as anti-party.”

Noting that he was elected unanimously to the Lok Sabha after 18 nomination papers were filed in his favour by ruling as well as opposition parties, Chatterjee said he had assured all members of the House then he would discharge his responsibilities in a non-partisan manner. “I have said … I have no matter or issue of my own, except to see that the House runs according to the Constitution and its Rules of Procedure and Conventions, to which only, I owed and owe allegiance to as long as I remain Speaker.”

He suggested that in view of the raging controversies, based on the CPI (M)’s contention that even as Speaker the Member of Parliament continues to be under the direction and control of the party, a convention should be developed that during the tenure as Speaker, he or she should “temporarily resign from the membership of the party” so as not to face a situation which compromises the position as Speaker vis-À-vis his or her party.

Chatterjee laid out the sequence of events of the last few weeks. On July 6 Mr. Karat met him and explained the party’s stand on the nuclear deal.

On July 9 CPM General Secretary Parkash Mr. Karat “telephonically conveyed [to me] that a section of the party felt that my continuation as Speaker may be untenable. However, it was stated that the final decision would be taken by me,” Chatterjee noted. The same day he “was surprised to learn from the media” that his name had been included by the CPI(M) in the list of its MPs given to the President of India while communicating to her that the party had withdrawn its support to the United Progressive Alliance government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh.

However, on “several occasions since July 9,” Chatterjee said, Mr. Karat and other important members of the CPI (M) reiterated that it was for the Speaker alone to take a decision regarding his resignation.

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