MARGIN SPEAK
Campa Cola Episode,EPW article
Baring the Ugly Bias
Anand Teltumbde
Now that the Supreme Court
has taken suo motu notice of
the plight of the Campa Cola
residents, will it show the same
sensitivity with regard to the
cases of the poor too?
Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a
writer and civil rights activist with the
Committee for the Protection of Democratic
Rights, Mumbai.
10 december 7, 2013 vol xlviii no 49 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
redictably, the high drama on
P
12 November at the Campa Cola
compound in south Mumbai's posh
Worli area ended the following day when
the Supreme Court stayed the demolition
until 31 May 2014. The jubilant residents
celebrated with crackers and festivities,
for it barely took less than 24 hours for the
media-backed, "middle-class" campaign
to prevent the impending execution of
the Supreme Court order to demolish the
illegal construction in the compound.
Politicians, cutting across parties, vied with
each other to express solidarity with the
residents. The electronic media took up
the crusade, scheduled panel discussions
with socialites to drum up "public" support
for the Campa Cola residents, continuously
streaming the pictures of the spirited
resistance the latter had put up against the
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's
(BMCs) demolition squad. Social media too
was afi re to muster support. Seeing the
"plight of the residents", even the Supreme
Court melted and suo motu stayed the
demolition. For those two days, Campa
Cola was the only news in the country!
Those of us who have been a part of the
struggle against demolition of slums in
Mumbai and the millions of slum-dwellers
who have actually suffered the pain of
witnessing the demolition of their modest
homes over the last two decades amus-
edly watched this bizarre spectacle. The
people who built Bombay with their sweat
and blood and who slog to maintain
Mumbai's shine repeatedly face the bru-
tality of BMC's bulldozers without any of
these worthies – the media, the politicians,
the highbrow socialites, and even the
judiciary – ever taking a note of it. They
were stunned to see BMC offi cials, who
other wise did not care even for the new-
borns of the slum-dwellers, "behaving
in a humane manner". Paradoxically, the
entire episode was played up as a refl ection
of the indifference of the system for the
"middle classes", this in sharp contrast
to the pampering of slum-dwellers. It
verily exposed, once more, the monu-
mental falsehood of the ruling establish-
ment and its abhorrence for the poor.
Apt Case for Demolition
The media painted the episode as a simple
case of cheating of gullible buyers of fl ats
by unscrupulous builders in collusion with
corrupt BMC offi cials sheltered by politi-
cians. Given the fact that the realty busi-
ness in Mumbai and elsewhere is based on
black money, corruption and criminality,
this projection did not violate common-
place understanding. But unfortunately,
the Campa Cola case is not as plain as that.
The residents of the Campa Cola com-
pound, who feign innocence, were com-
plicit in the criminality of the builders as
they knew what they were doing right
from the beginning. As it is well known
by now, the plot in the Campa Cola com-
pound, belonging to Pure Drinks, was
developed by three builders in the 1980s.
They had permission to build only six
fl oors but they went beyond the permis-
sible limit and eventually built 17 and 20
fl oors, thereby creating 96 unauthorised
fl ats. They ignored stop-work notices right
from November 1984 hoping that they
would be able to get the fl ats regularised
by paying the required penalty. One of the
building's architects has himself testifi ed
that everyone from the residents to the
local politicians knew the structures being
built were in violation of the stop-work
notices. The fl ats were a steal and the
residents, who were well connected and
who had enough appetite for risk,
grabbed them. When the BMC did not give
an Occupation Certifi cate and provide a
water connection, the residents appro-
ached Bombay High Court in 1999.
They fought doggedly a 20-year legal
battle but could not succeed in regularis-
ing the illegal construction. When the
residents appealed against the verdict of
the trial court, the high court had noted
that the residents knew that they had
bought fl ats which were constructed in
violation of sanctioned plans. The Sup-
reme Court, while dealing with their
MARGIN SPEAK
appeal, gave its verdict in February 2013,
which not only noted what the lower
courts had observed (that the residents
were not innocent) but also that the resi-
dents were infl uential enough to get the
state government regularise the irregu-
larity. It thereby fortifi ed itself by pre-
venting the state government from arbi-
trary intervention. As the chief minister
repeatedly expressed his helplessness in
the matter, one can imagine that this was
a palpable possibility. There is no doubt
that the builders and the chain of BMC
bureaucrats violated the law but, unlike
numerous other cases, the rich residents
of Campa Cola were not innocent. The
illegal construction is therefore an apt case
for demolition, this to hold out a lesson
against the menacing incidence of irreg-
ular construction in Mumbai and else-
where. Moreover, such a judgment would
reassure people about the rule of law – if
slums can be demo lished, devastating the
lives of poor people, so too can the abodes
of the rich at the Campa Cola society.
Massive Falsehood
When sections of the media and/or the
middle classes cry hoarse against politics
and politicians, they basically make
known their resentment towards the
masses of poor people, who are assumed
to be the main prop of the politicians. Self-
assuredly, the commercial media blurted
that the demolition order would never
have been confi rmed if the Campa Cola
compound had been a slum; all politicians
would have rushed to regularise it. What a
degree of falsehood! It is the slums which
are demolished; the properties of the rich,
like the Adarsh society or the Campa Cola
society, based on blatant irregularities, are
invariably protected by the politicians. In
2004 alone, in the largest demolition drive
in Mumbai, as many as 70,000 shanties
were razed to the ground and about
3,00,000 families evicted to make way for
Mumbai's Shanghai Dream. Every demoli-
tion leaves behind scores of human trage-
dies but the media and the middle classes,
by and large, seem uncon cerned. Tens of
thousands of people have lost their meagre
belongings; children have literally died of
cold, hunger and disease; but the elite of
this ruthless city did not even bother to
know what had happened to them.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 7, 2013 vol xlviii no 49 11
Politicians in their desperation surely
woo slum-dwellers but the latter are no
more their vote bank. Experience has
taught them enough about the hollow-
ness of the political system, which invar-
iably manifests itself during the times of
their struggles. They have not allowed
politicians to come in. Whom they vote for
in elections is purely an expedient decision
taken at the spur of the moment as a
necessary evil. It is not the poor but the
burgeoning middle classes, highly asser-
tive but with their characteristic superfi -
ciality, that have become the mainstay of
politicians in the neo-liberal era. Their
infl uence on policymaking far outweighs
the infl uence of any other class. Another
falsehood denigrating the poor as a par-
asitical class is related to the insinuation
that they do not pay taxes. The fact is that
the total tax to income ratio of the poor
is far higher than that of the rich. The
simple truth is that the poor cannot avoid
taxes whereas rich have many ways to
subvert them. When the government gives
some pittance to the poor, this is projected
by the media as illegitimate patronage by
the politicians. But when the rich defraud
the public exchequer, leading banks to
write-off Rs one trillion over the last 13
years, not even a whisper is heard.
Legality versus Justice
Another strange argument made is that
while legality warranted demolition of
the illegal construction at the Campa Cola
compound, justice demanded its regu-
larisation. Will media say the same thing
for the poor in whose case both legality
and justice are sacrifi ced with impunity?
Take, for instance, the case of the residents
of Golibar colony in Khar East, the second
biggest slum in Mumbai, who have been
struggling against the illegal demolition of
their houses under the controversial Slum
Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme.
In 2003, the residents of Ganesh Krupa
Society in Golibar colony roped in Madhu
Constructions to rehabilitate them under
the SRA scheme. In 2008, Madhu Construc-
tions transferred the development rights
to Shivalik Ventures for redeveloping the
society, without informing the affected
community. When Shivalik Ventures
ser ved a notice in 2010 for evictions, the
residents approached the high court
s aying that they had not appointed Shiv-
alik Ventures and that the 70% consent
submitted by the company was actually
forged. Notwithstanding, the company
demolished 12,750 houses and provided
transit camp accommodations to only
1,250 affected people. The residents have
actively agitated over the issue, under-
taking indefi nite fasts under the leader-
ship of Medha Patkar in June 2011 and
again in January 2013, but to no avail.
The SRA scheme to rehabilitate Mumbai's
slum-dwellers has been a golden goose for
the builder-politician combine. The irregu-
larities in its operation have been com-
mented upon even by the Comptroller and
Auditor General (CAG) of India. During the
agitation of the Golibar residents, the Ghar
Bachao, Ghar Banao Andolan had insti-
tuted a Citizens' Commission comprising
prominent personalities, headed by justice
Suresh, to enquire into the six SRA projects:
Shiv Koliwada, Ramnagar (Ghatkopar),
Ambe dkar Nagar (Mulund), Indira Nagar
(Jogeshwari), Chandivili (Mahendra and
Sommaiyya quarries) and Golibar (Khar).
The commission brought out horrifi c sto-
ries of oppression, fraud, intimidation, etc,
by the builders in collusion with the police
and politicians. Going beyond the CAG
report, it pointed out that instead of eight
lakh houses, only 1.5 lakh houses were con-
structed under the SRA scheme from 1996
to 2011, and concluded that the SRA
scheme was a failure. It recommended that
the entire scheme be thoroughly reviewed.
The government committee however did
not fi nd anything amiss. Needless to say,
the indefi nite fasts by Medha Patkar and
many residents over several days did not
make news for our vigilant media nor did it
constitute a cause worthy of the concern of
our politicians.
To sum up, now that the demolition has
been stayed, many options to save the
Campa Cola compound shall be tried by
its protagonists. Unfortunately, in the
face of the precedence it would create to
regularise massive irregularities in the
real estate space, none of the options might
really work. One may appreciate the
sensitivity of the Supreme Court in tak-
ing suo motu notice of the plight of the
Campa Cola residents. However, one
expects it should show the same sensitivity
with regard to the cases of the poor too.
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