# If Goanet stops reaching you, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # Want to check the archives? http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others #
##########################################################################
Baina is a problem that festered and was permitted to grow for too many years. The cleaning up was inevitable, and necessary.
It's sad that the authorities made good on their job so ham-handedly - a metaphor for bad, inept, unthinking governance. But Baina was a tumour that needed to be excised.
And yet, throwing the baby out of with the bathwater is not the answer. Something needs to be done for the innocents who have lost so much in the bargain - and the middle-classes who will benefit from the removal of the scum owes it the innocents to rehabilitate them. I hope it happens.
We are a kind people who need to display this kindness now, more perhaps than ever before, in a way that pre-empts what self-serving politicians will do. And do-gooder journalists shd wipe their crocodile tears and help constructively in the process.
Stanley Pinto
STANLEY & YVONNE PINTO 153 The Embassy 15 Ali Askar Road Bangalore 560 052, INDIA Home Tel: (91-80) 2220 3320 & 5114 8153 Mobile: 91-98453 95319
----Original Message Follows----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Goanet-news]SUNDAY SPECIAL: Returning home to a mass of rubble: the untold story of Baina
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 01:53:26 +0530 (IST)
########################################################################## # Would you like to discuss the news? Your comments are of interest! # # Post your comments, feed-back, opionion to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
RETURNING HOME TO A MASS OF RUBBLE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF BAINA
From Pamela D'Mello
Panaji, Jun 17: Sitava Harijan stands before the Mormugao Municpal Council, with her ration card and her election voter ID. The saree she wears and a few household items is all that her family of six managed to rescue from their home when authorities lathi charged residents and bulldozed their illegal shanties in the port town of Vasco da Gama on June 14.
Jitaya Bhind, a security guard at a nearby factory managed to take nothing. He had left for work at 7 am that day and returned to find his home of 45 years a mass of rubble. All he now has is a plastic bag with his security uniform.
The sudden and brutal action --- one of the biggest demolitions in the state --- has become somewhat of an embarrassment for the government. "The government wanted to get rid of the red light district. but why did they also target families", asks Anil Chavan, who lost his small shop in the 40 year old red light district.
Some of those affected show their notices from the govenrment estate office, which were still being processed, when the demolition began. Admitting this, state authorities have promised a rehabilitation and relief measures, but hardly enough to compensate for their losses, the dishoused people complain.
Most of them are Dalit migrants from neighbouring Karnataka and from North India, working in the port and surrounding areas in the unorganised sector.
Intially, the 2500 commercial sex workers operating from Baina, were the focus of the demolition. But by June 14, when the area was flattened, all had dispersed and seem to have been the least affected.
Most moved to other states after a police cordon since December 2003 froze all business coming to the area.
The 250 who stayed on spurned a rehabilitation package offered by the state appointed Goa Women's Commission, when it became clear it would confine them to an unused goverbment building under police guard.
Most of the pimps, brothel keepers and gharwalis simply shifted to flats or alternative accomodation before the demolition began.
Justifying the action, the state government points to a high court order directing destruction of the 250 cubicles where the sex trade operated from.
But the opposition Congress and NGOs banded under the Forum for Justice in Baina have sought a national human rights commission intervention for the brutal manner in which the monsoon demolition was carried out and extended to other houses not identified by the High Court.
On Wednesday South Goa Congress MP Churchill Alemao intervened to stop further demolitions of adjoining shanties, that obstruct a highway project.
But on Thursday, middle class residents of the town, long supportive of an oust-Baina campaign in a state where xenophobic anti-outsider sentiment simmers beneath the surface --- held a meet congratulating the chief minister's "courageous action".
Moves are afoot to rename the area, one suggesting it be recalled `Sambhaji Nagar". (ends)
-- The writer is the special correspondent in Goa for The Asian Age.
