Dalits,
Devanahalli and Some Difficult Questions
19/02/2007
Anita
Ratnam
In much of the recent exposes on SEZs, the needs of
the industry versus the rights and concerns of the farmers have been repeatedly
highlighted. Indeed, this debate has raised fundamental questions about the
meaning of progress itself.
In the same vein, the need to shift human resources from being under-utilised
and underpaid in a crippled agrarian sector to decent employment in the booming
industrial economy gets underlined. Yet the actual processes through which this
happens and the journeys of young men and women who make this “big move” are
hardly front page news.
Within this, the anxieties and the experiences of the Dalit youth that is
attempting such a transition are particularly striking. From working on farms
and fields, moving to construction sites, garment factories or call centres is
not a simple shift.
As familiar cultural landscapes are
left behind, new world views, new ways of living, earning, loving and dreaming
surreptitiously creep into these young people or the “urban” and the “global”
remain alien and frightening spectres. Whether this journey is seamless and
painless or fraught with fears, traumas, and tail-spins, is something that
needs to be unravelled carefully.
The new International Airport being constructed at Devanahalli has thrown open
a Pandora’s Box regarding such transitions, especially in the wake of
large-scale land sales and acquisitions. The Bangalore International Airport
Project (BIAL) comprises over 4,000 acres of acquired land and 4-5 times that
amount of land will be sold in the “free market” mostly through brokers who
will again sell off the land to hotels, resorts, NRI housing colonies,
factories, office complexes, etc. Farmers get a much better deal here than
through the state’s forced acquisition of their land.
Youth from landed families have therefore some “capital” to fall back on as
they make the transition from agriculture to the world of factories,
floriculture, five-star hotels and IT parks. The young women are married off to
“good” boys as handsome dowries can now be paid.
Watching in bewilderment are the
young men and women from Dalit families who realise that jobs in agriculture
are either doomed or non-existent and jobs in government service, shrinking.
For these young men and women, jobs in the airport or in the new knowledge
economy seem simply out of reach, because they are largely unaware of what jobs
are available and of what skills they need to get those jobs.
Some of these young men and women have become petty agents for the land mafia,
others plod on in a BA course that might go nowhere and others drop out as the
bus fare and college fee itself becomes unbearable. Despite their good marks,
it is their lack of technical skills, their rustic rural background, lack of
corporate etiquette and the prejudice that Dalits are really not “intelligent”,
that come in the way of jobs.
At the same time, young people from around the new International Airport in
Cochin have reportedly been able to assert their right to jobs in the new
Airport Complex. It is not yet public knowledge as to how they managed to
assert this right and what kind of jobs they have been finally offered.
Will this be possible at BIAL too? Will the State Government take such a stand
or will it back off, in case such stances irk and irritate the private partner
companies in BIAL? While land has been acquired for BIAL claiming it is a
public purpose project, when it comes to jobs the public-private partnerships
could surely come into the foreground, especially as it is private companies
who are actually in charge of building and operating the various facilities in
the airport. The number of private companies involved in BIAL is increasing
week by week.
While young people take huge risks and try to acquire new skills, language,
identities and even dress sense, will this readiness to change and survive be
reciprocated by the BIAL constituents? Young Dalit men and women from
Devanahalli are already enrolling in English classes, taking computer courses,
joining Apparel Technology training, learning electrician trade-skills, pushing
their fragile household economies into even more slippery ground.
This is a growing trend and one recognises that they are not just asserting
their desire, ambitions and their rights; they are also making new paths. Stony
silence or counter questions that suggest they are spoil-sports or idiots who
do not comprehend the economic opportunities, the multiplier effects of
airports and airport cities, can only add insult to injury. Is it not time that
their issues are addressed and questions answered in a manner that underlines
their dignity
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