We had been at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar when Maha Kumbh began and we saw children who were preparing to become Naga Sadhus and we wanted to find out more. We met many and interviewed a few, including 11-year-old Manish Giri whose parents had donated him to the Akhara. He followed his Guru through the day and sat chewing toffee. Sagar Puri was another young boy who had shaved off his head and was excited about being called a Naga Baba. He had run away from home and found his Guru.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Indian Express on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Hardwar, January 21, 2010
He staggered towards where we were sitting, his eyes wild, and remote. He was performing the part of a detached young man, a man who was about to renounce everything so he could pray for the world, and redeem it. Quite like Jesus, only that Sagar Puri, who is training to be a Naga Sadhu, would pick up arms and fight if his religion was threatened. After all, they are the warrior sadhus, he said.
Camping at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar, trying to impress his teachers, Sagar Puri, the 17-year-old boy, is preparing for the initiation ceremony where he will be taken in the order of the Naga Sadhus and henceforth, become a powerful man.
Leading up to the Royal Bath where thousands of Naga ascetics will march to Har-ki-Pauri for the holy dip in the Ganges, the akharas – 13 in the city – are busy with the preparations.
The band played in the distance, their garish uniforms the colour of Sadhus’ saffron as they played sample tunes for the grand procession on the Royal Bath of the Sadhus in Hardwar on Feb. 12, and 17-year-old Sagar Puri mingled with the old, most of who huddled together outside the Bhairon Mandir and smoked chillums, or read newspapers, and the young who looked a little dazed with so much going around. The preparations had already begun for the celebrations, and Puri wanted to belong, to rise up in the ranks of the akhara.
In a couple of weeks, his own initiation ceremony would begin, and he had networked enough, running errands for Sadhus.
But in Sagar Puri’s contrived demeanour, in his convoluted sentences that linger between his restlessness, his zeal to prove that he is indeed a true ascetic, and his yearning for powers that a Naga Sadhu has, you could make out he wanted to awe the world with his status. He carried a cell phone, posed for pictures with his chin up, and renunciation was the last thing on his mind.
Almost three years ago, Sagar Puri, who is one of the thousands of young boys who have come to the Juna Akhara in hopes of becoming a Naga Sadhu this Kumbh, ran away from his house in Chandigarh.
He wouldn’t say why he left home but he said he felt lost, didn’t identify with what everyone else was aspiring for because that didn’t lead anywhere, he said.
So, he found a Guru with dreadlocks who smeared his body with ash and talked about Nirvana, and he was enchanted with the glamour. It was also a way out of poverty and struggles to break it even in life.
He followed the Guru, gave up on the pants and shirts he wore, shaved off his head, and took on the saffron robes.
It’s dark outside. The fog, dense with the smoke from the fire and the chillums many sadhus smoke in order to focus and keep away numerous distractions the world throws in their way, seeps in through the chinks of the doors, from the windows and it’s like waking up in a dream, surrounded by the winter haze. He walks barefoot; the holes in his socks haven’t been darned. Because he is on own here.
During the initiation ceremony, he will do the pind daan, or perform funeral rites for his parents and self, a symbolic act implying he has now left the world he was born into, and crossed over to another one, a point of no return.
“I talk to my parents on the phone. They came to reclaim me once but later signed a letter saying that they had given me to the Juna Akhara. I am their only son but I was different,” he said. “You see we are lost in this world. We find our refuge. This is mine. I am happy here. I see my parents in my Guru.”
On most days he walks to the river to bathe in icy cold waters with others. Then sit in front of the Gurus and perform rituals for hours.
His time at the akhara is a test. They watch him, and he has to be careful. He has to prove his mettle so he can graduate to the second stage.
“He will become a Naga Sadhu at the Vijay Havan, and take on the samskara,” Girija Datt Giri, a Shri Mahant at the Juna Akhara, said.
More than 5,000 young boys and men will take the oath to become Naga Sadhus this Kumbh. It is only at a Maha Kumbh that initiation ceremonies can be held.
“It is tough. We don’t let them drink water for 24 hours before the ceremony. He sits in front of the ritual fire, and we also ask him if he wants to go home in case of those who ran away from home,” he added.
It is only after the long puja that Puri can eat. The akhara, the biggest in town, has its own cooks who prepare meals.
Post breakfast, Puri sits outside the temple, watching others, as they smoke their “peace pipes”. If they pass it on to him, he takes a drag.
From the rooms, the news from the television filters through the walls, and he runs inside to catch the telecast on Kumbh.
He returns and listens in to the sadhus,, whose matted dreadlocks fall below their knees. “The life of a Naga means a life of all possibilities,” a Sadhu said, and that’s what sent Sagar dreaming about all the possibilities – of people coming to him, praising him for his ultimate sacrifice, he walking the streets covered in ash, naked, in his Naga Baba avatar, shutterbugs clicking away at the speed of light, his photos appearing all over the world.
Over lunch at Jwalapur, a nearby kasba, where many Naga Sadhus who have come from different parts of the country, are camping before they march to Hardwar in a grand procession on Jan. 30, Sagar Puri wields a stick, calls out to a couple of foreign photographers and asks them to click his pictures.
At 17, he wants to be the star, and he speaks about soul and attachment, and the cycles of birth and how if one doesn’t try to be liberated, they could end up being born as dogs that’d be running in the streets licking garbage, or worse, as an insect who’d suffer an inglorious death on a wall.
Most afternoons, he watches National Geographic channle, and sits with his gurus, smoking, chatting, and giving interviews to the media.
There’s no routine here. Sometimes, like other young boys, he goes to the restaurants to eat sweets.
He won’t tell you his real name because he is forbidden to talk about his former life. This is his short cut to a comfortable life, to nirvana.
His father, a shopkeeper, wanted him back but then it meant school, entrance examinations, report cards, and a list of other responsibilities. So, he broke free long ago.
Sagar Puri is excited about the Kumbh, about the rituals, about his own part, importance.
In the room that he shares with others, they live a communal life. Everything is shared.
There’s no fixed time for bed.
“You sleep when nobody needs you,” h said. “You get up when they call you. Nothing is time-bound.”
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Love and longing at GB Road
When we walked through the city's infamous road, looking up at the windows, and at the women, I wanted to be able to talk to them about the young men who stood across from where they were and gazed at them. But they wouldn't talk to us. At first it was fear and we hesitated to walk up the dingy staircase. Then, when we finally did, they refused to let us in, let us have a glimpse, a piece of their lives. We were merely intruders, disturbing them, extracting stuff others had already got out of them. Weren't we after their sob stories? No, but all we wanted was to ask them about love. Then I saw this young man singing aloud. And that's where love was. In his songs. We hope to return again and we hope this time, they will let us in. Because I really want to know the ones who brighten the kothas and yet live miserable lives.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express Real Page 3 on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi , January 23, 2010
She stood in the window, her bleached streaked hair arresting the rays of the setting sun in its messed coiffure, and looked down at the street. There were pimps pacing up and down the corridors, smoking, and haggling for a higher rate for her body, there were women with bulging stomachs, wrinkled noses, at an age where a man’s face sort of empties as they met their gaze, and then there were pretty young things who stood in similar windows anticipating, and preying.
At Garstin Bastion Road, or Swami Shradhanand Marg, the name given to the famous red light district in city’s capital in 1965, the around 1,000 prostitutes were getting ready for business, a few hours before the auto parts shops lining the street downed their shutters. Then, it would be their domain, and only customers looking for their favorites would saunter in, gaze in the windows, up the narrow, dingy staircases and counted their money, deciding the limits of their bargain.
The girl, her cheap silver earrings dangling from her ears, and her lips painted loud pink, was searching, scanning the streets till her eyes rested on a young man, who wore a triped shirt, and jeans that had too many zip pockets, and sported longish hair, streaked like hers.
And he looked back at her from where he was standing, squeezed between cars, a little nala behind him, and started to sing, pausing to address her, and blow millions kisses her way.
He called her Preeti.
Preeti only smiled, and turned away, then looked at him again.
That’s love and longing at GB Road where according to those who live and work there in closet size rooms, where smell of sweat and flesh linger in the doorways, love is what they can’t let in. Because that corrupts, they said.
As we waited for Charsi Bai, one of the kotha malkeens, we looked up, dissecting the smell and all, at the landing of the staircase. A woman looked down at us. We were intruders, and we didn’t come looking for what they were offering.
She disappeared in the maze of rooms inside, and another one stuck her head outside. Her eyes, pumped with cheap mascara, and her eyelids smeared with bright bronze shadow, looked past us, tumbled upon the streets. At that hour, there weren’t many buyers around.
Because it is illegal to solicit, the women never came out. Their pimps, and there were plenty of them – young boys from Bihar , old paunchy men who chewed betel leaves and spat everywhere, moved around, eyeing the passersby.
One woman stood at the landing. She was annoyed. The business in GB Road is not booming anymore. The rates range from Rs. 100 to Rs. 500, but then the usual customers, the rickshaw pullers, the students, couldn’t pay them a ton.
Recession and its after effects – the beautiful up market prostitutes from Russia , Dubai and other countries – are on sale, too. Why spend on us – smelly, irritable, with no sophistication and always clamoring for a tip – when you can save and get the best, she said.
There are girls from Andhra Pradesh, who were rounded up by the state police and dragged and put in a van and deported to their villages last year and have come back since, there are the fair women from Nepal who are modern, wear fashionable clothes, and there are the Rajasthanis.
According to Suraj Singh, who has worked in one of the hundreds of shops that function in the 20 buildings of GB Road for 27 years, the place has remained unchanged. The women maintain their distance and shop owners respect them.
“They call us “bhaiya” and we don’t have any problems with them ever. But it is sad to see them being exploited sometimes,” he said. “The day the Andhra Police came and dragged 179 of those girls out, we felt bad. They had children with them, they were crying but they just put them in a van and drove away. Some people come and sell their wives and you hear the commotion, and the wailing. It’s sad.”
In one of the kothas, in what looked like a small reception area, more than a dozen women were waiting for their turn. The young ones, with their plunging necklines, and fluttering eyelashes, ran to the landing, whispering, adjusting their hair. This was their moment. They had to make the most of their youth before diseases claimed them. It will be a while before they paid off their debts to the naikas, the women who purchased them.
The air was abuzz with anticipation, and competition.
A middle-aged woman, with thick glasses, wrapped in a shawl, was waiting, too. Once, when she was in her prime, she had her lovers, her loyal customers, too.
“My life is spent now. All over the years I did the same thing. There’s no respite,” she said.
There were other women, too, who huddled under the parapets of the old buildings, begging. Their days are over. They were members of the kothas, then became housemaids to the younger queens, and then when they couldn’t do that, they descended those staircases and were out on the streets.
They won’t tell you their sad stories. There’s no time for that sort of nonsense because at the end of it, what’s the use of repeating it all.
There’s no time for love because love leads nowhere or here to the brothels, Rishi
Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini, an NGO working for the sex workers’ rights, said.
“Every girl has a love story. Puja was a girl who fell in love with her customer, a young man of 25 years. It lasted for 6-7 months and then she realized he was abusing her, drinking off her earnings,” he said.
So, love in the air is an infection they guard against.
Preeti went inside. The young lover stood alone, waiting for her to reappear.
Like him, many young men, college students, others, come to the infamous road in the mornings, looking up at the windows, for their imagined lovers, and wait for the evening. If they have the money, they can go in and ask for her. She can’t turn back then. Or they will stand under the window, singing songs, and live under their lover’s glances.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express Real Page 3 on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi , January 23, 2010
She stood in the window, her bleached streaked hair arresting the rays of the setting sun in its messed coiffure, and looked down at the street. There were pimps pacing up and down the corridors, smoking, and haggling for a higher rate for her body, there were women with bulging stomachs, wrinkled noses, at an age where a man’s face sort of empties as they met their gaze, and then there were pretty young things who stood in similar windows anticipating, and preying.
At Garstin Bastion Road, or Swami Shradhanand Marg, the name given to the famous red light district in city’s capital in 1965, the around 1,000 prostitutes were getting ready for business, a few hours before the auto parts shops lining the street downed their shutters. Then, it would be their domain, and only customers looking for their favorites would saunter in, gaze in the windows, up the narrow, dingy staircases and counted their money, deciding the limits of their bargain.
The girl, her cheap silver earrings dangling from her ears, and her lips painted loud pink, was searching, scanning the streets till her eyes rested on a young man, who wore a triped shirt, and jeans that had too many zip pockets, and sported longish hair, streaked like hers.
And he looked back at her from where he was standing, squeezed between cars, a little nala behind him, and started to sing, pausing to address her, and blow millions kisses her way.
He called her Preeti.
Preeti only smiled, and turned away, then looked at him again.
That’s love and longing at GB Road where according to those who live and work there in closet size rooms, where smell of sweat and flesh linger in the doorways, love is what they can’t let in. Because that corrupts, they said.
As we waited for Charsi Bai, one of the kotha malkeens, we looked up, dissecting the smell and all, at the landing of the staircase. A woman looked down at us. We were intruders, and we didn’t come looking for what they were offering.
She disappeared in the maze of rooms inside, and another one stuck her head outside. Her eyes, pumped with cheap mascara, and her eyelids smeared with bright bronze shadow, looked past us, tumbled upon the streets. At that hour, there weren’t many buyers around.
Because it is illegal to solicit, the women never came out. Their pimps, and there were plenty of them – young boys from Bihar , old paunchy men who chewed betel leaves and spat everywhere, moved around, eyeing the passersby.
One woman stood at the landing. She was annoyed. The business in GB Road is not booming anymore. The rates range from Rs. 100 to Rs. 500, but then the usual customers, the rickshaw pullers, the students, couldn’t pay them a ton.
Recession and its after effects – the beautiful up market prostitutes from Russia , Dubai and other countries – are on sale, too. Why spend on us – smelly, irritable, with no sophistication and always clamoring for a tip – when you can save and get the best, she said.
There are girls from Andhra Pradesh, who were rounded up by the state police and dragged and put in a van and deported to their villages last year and have come back since, there are the fair women from Nepal who are modern, wear fashionable clothes, and there are the Rajasthanis.
According to Suraj Singh, who has worked in one of the hundreds of shops that function in the 20 buildings of GB Road for 27 years, the place has remained unchanged. The women maintain their distance and shop owners respect them.
“They call us “bhaiya” and we don’t have any problems with them ever. But it is sad to see them being exploited sometimes,” he said. “The day the Andhra Police came and dragged 179 of those girls out, we felt bad. They had children with them, they were crying but they just put them in a van and drove away. Some people come and sell their wives and you hear the commotion, and the wailing. It’s sad.”
In one of the kothas, in what looked like a small reception area, more than a dozen women were waiting for their turn. The young ones, with their plunging necklines, and fluttering eyelashes, ran to the landing, whispering, adjusting their hair. This was their moment. They had to make the most of their youth before diseases claimed them. It will be a while before they paid off their debts to the naikas, the women who purchased them.
The air was abuzz with anticipation, and competition.
A middle-aged woman, with thick glasses, wrapped in a shawl, was waiting, too. Once, when she was in her prime, she had her lovers, her loyal customers, too.
“My life is spent now. All over the years I did the same thing. There’s no respite,” she said.
There were other women, too, who huddled under the parapets of the old buildings, begging. Their days are over. They were members of the kothas, then became housemaids to the younger queens, and then when they couldn’t do that, they descended those staircases and were out on the streets.
They won’t tell you their sad stories. There’s no time for that sort of nonsense because at the end of it, what’s the use of repeating it all.
There’s no time for love because love leads nowhere or here to the brothels, Rishi
Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini, an NGO working for the sex workers’ rights, said.
“Every girl has a love story. Puja was a girl who fell in love with her customer, a young man of 25 years. It lasted for 6-7 months and then she realized he was abusing her, drinking off her earnings,” he said.
So, love in the air is an infection they guard against.
Preeti went inside. The young lover stood alone, waiting for her to reappear.
Like him, many young men, college students, others, come to the infamous road in the mornings, looking up at the windows, for their imagined lovers, and wait for the evening. If they have the money, they can go in and ask for her. She can’t turn back then. Or they will stand under the window, singing songs, and live under their lover’s glances.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Maha Kumbh begins
So we took the train from Delhi to Haridwar to cover the Kumbh. We landed in a hotel on the ghats and walked the ghats soaking in religion, faith, colors and everything else that's Kumbh. The night was cold and from the chinks in the window, the fog seeped into the room, and it was surreal. The river gurgled past the window and looked bewitching.
Not many people were here. Perhaps thousands only for the Makar Sankriti snan.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express on Jan. 14, 2010.
We didn't find much yesterday but maybe today. We are hopeful.
Chinki Sinha
Haridwar, January 13, 2010
At his first ever Kumbh Mela in 1974, when he was a young man visiting his in-laws, ML Giri said the ghats weren’t so full of people. Nor were there so many police personnel wielding batons and guns patrolling the Har-ki-Pauri. Back then, it was all about faith, he said.
“Perhaps 100 cops in total. But look at it now. There are new roads, new ghats. Since 1986, we saw crowds, and it has never stopped,” Giri, a volunteer at the Seva Samiti, a charity organization that looks after the upkeep of the Har-ki-Pauri, said.
Thirty-six years later, Kumbh has become touristier, and more upmarket. The ghats have been renovated, bridges have been built, and more than ever before, there’s much more on the minds of men and women – environmental concerns, security, terrorism - going for the holy dip than just salvation and washing away of sins.
From a loudspeaker, a female voice urged the faithful to refrain from using soap as the mass of men and women, an estimated eight lakh visitors to Haridwar for the three-month-long festival, started to descend the steps on the ghats for the ritual snan on the eve of Makar Sankranti, the day that marks the decline of winter in the country, and one of the most auspicious days for the ritual bathing.
Tucked alongside of the loudspeakers that blared instructions and devotional songs as the time of the arati neared, the closed-circuit television captured the moments, and security personnel in the Mela Control Room watched closely for hints.
Security at the Kumbh is unprecedented with thousands of police personnel – state police, CRPF, RAF, CISF, SSB, and ITBP – standing guard at the 26 ghats.
Kumbh Mela rotates among four cities where the nectar that would give immortality fell during a war between the gods and the demons, as per the Hindu mythology. Of the four drops that fell when the tussle was going on, one fell in Haridwar.
Temperatures are expected to take a dip today when the first snan commences. It would be the coldest Kumbh since 1986 in Haridwar. In 1986 and 1988, the temperatures hovered around six degrees.
At a chai stall at Har-ki-Pauri, a group of RAF personnel sipped hot, piping tea as they took a small break before sundown when they anticipated the crowds to converge at the ghats. That’s when they would patrol up and down the 70 meters of the ghat, wielding their batons and guns.
The RAF personnel have been deployed for 15 days now and will remain in Haridwar for three months through the end of the Kumbh Mela.
Clocking in more than 10 hours of work every day, Sulochana Devi said they have been trained to deal with all sorts of issues that could arise – stampede, terror attack, fights, anything.
“Oh, we won’t let anything happen,” she said.
Perhaps, when she is off duty on Jan. 14 when the festival begins, she can come to the ghats to get rid of her sins, she said.
Security personnel in their blue, khaki and military green uniforms mingled with the crowds, watching, and on alert.
Further down the ghat, a bunch of rescue police sat facing the Ganges, ready to take a plunge. Life jackets were carelessly strewn beside them.
Around 250 rescue officers from the Uttaranchal police are deployed at the ghats to avoid any untoward incidents like drowning in the icy old waters.
"This is my first Kumbh and I am excited. This is like an adventure," Harish Kothari, 21, said. "It is not so deep but we are not taking chances."
Kumbh melas have had no history of terrorist attacks but they have been marred by fighting amongst sadhus, and stampedes that have killed hundreds.
But the Uttarakhand government is taking no chances. The ghats are decked up, and the town is all geared up for the millions of people – pilgrims, spectators, and hordes of media persons.
In its bid to promote the temple town of Haridwar as a seat of spiritual tourism in the country, the government has invested around Rs. 550 crores in a number of infrastructure projects including a foot bridges, multi-level modern car park, and a network of roads.
The government also gave approval to Prabhatam Aviation to fly chartered flights carrying five people from Dehradun and Delhi. A helipad near Har-ki-Pauri already exists and Prabhatam officials said they have the permission to operate from there.
While no bookings from Delhi have yet been confirmed, the first flight from Dehradun will take off at 12 in the afternoon. The fares from Delhi are Rs. 50,000 per person, and from Dehradun, it is around Rs. 11,000.
“We have been operating such helicopter services for other pilgrimages like Kedar Nath and Badri Nath but this is our first time for Kumbh,” Neelam Khanna, general manager of advertising, said. “There are flights everyday but for Delhi, we need a day’s notice.”
From a distance, the temple town looks as if it was freshly-painted. The pink mounds of the temples stand out against the lush mountains, and the new asphalt roads shine after the rains on Wednesday morning washed them.
Nearly 10 million pilgrims are expected to flock to the city in the next three months until April 28, when the mela ends.
Security arrangements also make it mandatory for sadhus to carry identity cards like other tourists.
The 130 square kilometres of the notified mela area from Bahadurabad to Neelkanth houses 250 hotels, 300 dharmashalas and around 400 ashramas. Besides, camps and tents set up by charity organizations and luxury tourism chains also exist.
Not many people were here. Perhaps thousands only for the Makar Sankriti snan.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express on Jan. 14, 2010.
We didn't find much yesterday but maybe today. We are hopeful.
Chinki Sinha
Haridwar, January 13, 2010
At his first ever Kumbh Mela in 1974, when he was a young man visiting his in-laws, ML Giri said the ghats weren’t so full of people. Nor were there so many police personnel wielding batons and guns patrolling the Har-ki-Pauri. Back then, it was all about faith, he said.
“Perhaps 100 cops in total. But look at it now. There are new roads, new ghats. Since 1986, we saw crowds, and it has never stopped,” Giri, a volunteer at the Seva Samiti, a charity organization that looks after the upkeep of the Har-ki-Pauri, said.
Thirty-six years later, Kumbh has become touristier, and more upmarket. The ghats have been renovated, bridges have been built, and more than ever before, there’s much more on the minds of men and women – environmental concerns, security, terrorism - going for the holy dip than just salvation and washing away of sins.
From a loudspeaker, a female voice urged the faithful to refrain from using soap as the mass of men and women, an estimated eight lakh visitors to Haridwar for the three-month-long festival, started to descend the steps on the ghats for the ritual snan on the eve of Makar Sankranti, the day that marks the decline of winter in the country, and one of the most auspicious days for the ritual bathing.
Tucked alongside of the loudspeakers that blared instructions and devotional songs as the time of the arati neared, the closed-circuit television captured the moments, and security personnel in the Mela Control Room watched closely for hints.
Security at the Kumbh is unprecedented with thousands of police personnel – state police, CRPF, RAF, CISF, SSB, and ITBP – standing guard at the 26 ghats.
Kumbh Mela rotates among four cities where the nectar that would give immortality fell during a war between the gods and the demons, as per the Hindu mythology. Of the four drops that fell when the tussle was going on, one fell in Haridwar.
Temperatures are expected to take a dip today when the first snan commences. It would be the coldest Kumbh since 1986 in Haridwar. In 1986 and 1988, the temperatures hovered around six degrees.
At a chai stall at Har-ki-Pauri, a group of RAF personnel sipped hot, piping tea as they took a small break before sundown when they anticipated the crowds to converge at the ghats. That’s when they would patrol up and down the 70 meters of the ghat, wielding their batons and guns.
The RAF personnel have been deployed for 15 days now and will remain in Haridwar for three months through the end of the Kumbh Mela.
Clocking in more than 10 hours of work every day, Sulochana Devi said they have been trained to deal with all sorts of issues that could arise – stampede, terror attack, fights, anything.
“Oh, we won’t let anything happen,” she said.
Perhaps, when she is off duty on Jan. 14 when the festival begins, she can come to the ghats to get rid of her sins, she said.
Security personnel in their blue, khaki and military green uniforms mingled with the crowds, watching, and on alert.
Further down the ghat, a bunch of rescue police sat facing the Ganges, ready to take a plunge. Life jackets were carelessly strewn beside them.
Around 250 rescue officers from the Uttaranchal police are deployed at the ghats to avoid any untoward incidents like drowning in the icy old waters.
"This is my first Kumbh and I am excited. This is like an adventure," Harish Kothari, 21, said. "It is not so deep but we are not taking chances."
Kumbh melas have had no history of terrorist attacks but they have been marred by fighting amongst sadhus, and stampedes that have killed hundreds.
But the Uttarakhand government is taking no chances. The ghats are decked up, and the town is all geared up for the millions of people – pilgrims, spectators, and hordes of media persons.
In its bid to promote the temple town of Haridwar as a seat of spiritual tourism in the country, the government has invested around Rs. 550 crores in a number of infrastructure projects including a foot bridges, multi-level modern car park, and a network of roads.
The government also gave approval to Prabhatam Aviation to fly chartered flights carrying five people from Dehradun and Delhi. A helipad near Har-ki-Pauri already exists and Prabhatam officials said they have the permission to operate from there.
While no bookings from Delhi have yet been confirmed, the first flight from Dehradun will take off at 12 in the afternoon. The fares from Delhi are Rs. 50,000 per person, and from Dehradun, it is around Rs. 11,000.
“We have been operating such helicopter services for other pilgrimages like Kedar Nath and Badri Nath but this is our first time for Kumbh,” Neelam Khanna, general manager of advertising, said. “There are flights everyday but for Delhi, we need a day’s notice.”
From a distance, the temple town looks as if it was freshly-painted. The pink mounds of the temples stand out against the lush mountains, and the new asphalt roads shine after the rains on Wednesday morning washed them.
Nearly 10 million pilgrims are expected to flock to the city in the next three months until April 28, when the mela ends.
Security arrangements also make it mandatory for sadhus to carry identity cards like other tourists.
The 130 square kilometres of the notified mela area from Bahadurabad to Neelkanth houses 250 hotels, 300 dharmashalas and around 400 ashramas. Besides, camps and tents set up by charity organizations and luxury tourism chains also exist.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Hope for Middle East in Wadi Nisnas
This little neighbourhood in Haifa gave us hope. Perhaps conflict in the region could end. An edited version of the piece appeared in the Sunday section of the Financial Express on Jan. 10, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, January 10, 2010
In Wadi Nisnas, hope screams silently from the walls, the terraces, and from the streets. In Haifa’s stronghold of coexistence, in Wadi Nisnas, artists saw what could have been if there had been no conflict, or wars, that have shaped Israel, its people, and their collective memory, or what could be if the people decided to move on and live together like they do in Wadi Nisnas.
In a country where the heroic Israeli narrative has not yet run its course, where forgetting their persecution over centuries is a sin and memorials built to remember the victims of the wars dot the landscape, where looking beyond the immediate has never been an alternative, in this small neighborhood where Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together for years, stories of coexistence are everywhere painted, moulded and hung by the artists from all over the country on the walls ravaged by rockets.
From the blackened walls, from the balconies, they lead you to believe another way is out, that peace can be a possibility.
On such weary, grey walls, hope is the little white bird that some artist hung on a small balcony, peace is a graffiti on a crumbling building façade where an artist drew a safety pin in the shape of the Mediterranean Sea, bright blue, calm and beautiful. But the open ends of the safety pin speak of the Middle East’s dilemmas and tryst with elusive peace, the peace that exists in talks, in peoples’ dreams, in artists’ visions. It’s not closed, the region isn’t secure, and the loose ends need to be secured, that’s what the artist envisioned.
Sixteen years ago, the municipality of Haifa began the Holidays of Holidays celebration in December in the quaint neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas, which in Arabic means Mongoose, an indigenous animal. Over the years, artists have created their pieces dictated by the different themes of the festival but much of the artwork revolves around personal stories of loss, and of hope like that of Haya Tuma, wife of Emil Tuma, a communist leader and one of the founders of Al-Ittihad, an Aradic newspaper, who also led the Haifa communist party with Emile Habibi. Emil was killed in the neighbourhood after he returned from Lebanon.
Haya’s marriage with Emil, an Arab Orthodox Christian, personified Jewish-Arab unity in a country torn apart by strife. Haya met Emil when she was 18 and married him a couple of years later. For the Jewish bride, her marriage also opened windows to the other side – the story of the Palestinian suffering - and she learned to mourn for the Palestinians, and hoped to leap over the chasm to the other side.
Haya, a ceramic artist, came to live in Wadi Nisnas with her husband. To the wife, her husband became her canvas, her story. In the narrow alleys, in cramped quarters, her artworks speak of her love, and her desperation, its deep sadness, too. They also speak of her hope that another way is possible, of peace that is not so elusive after all, and of countless lost opportunities for the Jewish and Arab people who could have buried the turmoil and the angst long ago.
So, on a wall in one of the alleys near the market, Haya Tuma nailed her vision, and her despair.
There’s a wooden door. Above the door, what seems like a framed wedding photograph of Haya Tuma and Emil Tuma, hangs. In its sepia shades, in its shredded edges, a smiling, coy Haya looks radiant. It’s the picture of their union, of an alternative.
Next to the wooden door, there’s a large key that hangs from the wall. But there’s no keyhole. In a way it symbolizes the Arab dilemma, of its refugee status, our guide explained.
“There’s space for all, for Arabs, too. But we have to find it. Just like how Haya saw it. There’s the key but there’s no keyhole. It’s a political artwork,” our guide said.
Haya made the artwork in 2001. She died in 2008. After her death, her son Michael Tuma, who is an artist in Germany, opened up her trunk and found the little pieces of ceramics she had made and stuck them on in the shape of a tree in the parking lot of the neighborhood across from where Haya’s artworks from the past hang in her memory and as a tribute to her vision.
This experiment in coexistence that started 16 years ago has now become one of the major celebrations in the city and many come to walk through the undulating lanes of the neighborhood including school children from nearby cities and tourists who want to see a different side of the conflict.
In this little space, in its alleys that lead nowhere in particular, people, it seems, have realized that life is too short for such a long conflict, it’s perhaps too short to even count the losses, too short to remain victims whichever side you belonged to. So, when they step out of their homes, and walk to the bus stop, or to their shops, they glance at the graffitis calling for change, for a solution to the division of people, of lovers, of humanity, depicting the horrors of the war like the graffiti next to the door that Haya put up that says “somebody live here in 1948” , and they feel emboldened, part of the courage in the artworks infecting them. For art, and love and peace, are contagious, and someday in future, they can look out across the sea, or the desert, across the grey security wall, and look at the warring countries where many of them have friends and families, and wave to them, or invite them for meals, or dinners.
But that hope for peace was once close to being buried under the debris of the building that the rockets from Lebanon struck killing at least two people.
At a shop, many locals sat drinking thick Turkish coffee and chatting in between the puffs of their cigarettes. Ever since, the municipality began the experiment, the neighborhood is full of people in December – tourists, school children, everyone. In December, at the culmination or the onset of three important festivals – Christmas, Hanukkah, and Muharram or Eid – of the three major faiths all of which lay claim on Jerusalem for it here that they were born and it is here that their prophets will descend, the festival begins.
Amir, a resident, said in Jerusalem the air is oppressive. It is heavy with history, religion, and conflict. Here, in Wadi Nisnas, breathing is much relaxed, he said.
“You can still feel the tension. But it is different from Jerusalem. We have lived together and we still do,” he said.
In 2006, this coexistence was threatened when rockets from Lebanon, the ones that Hezbollah fired from across the calm Mediterranean, struck the office of the newspaper that Tuma and Habibi edited. It killed at least two people. In those days, tension flared up again. Jews became suspicious of their Arab neighbours who didn’t criticize the Hezbollah leader and his organization, as one newspaper reported. It is then that Hassan Nasrallah managed to create a rift, it said.
But then, Wadi Nisnas managed to pick up the pieces from the doubt that raged in men’s minds and the festival once again showed them that there was a way out of this chaos and suspicion.
Artists got back to work, and the area was once again buzzing with tourists, and those seeking elusive peace. Wadi Nisnas to them became the oasis of peace. Similar projects were considered in other cities but never took off because tolerance is hard to find elsewhere, as one local put it.
“In Tel Aviv, there are mostly Jewish people. So, there’s no need. Jerusalem is the site of the conflict. Everyone wants a piece of it,” he said.
On the day we visited, school children from Hadera, a nearby city, filled the streets of the neighbourhood, chatting, and laughing.
It was a Wednesday, and the sun shone through the chinks in the parapets and on the huge graffiti infusing them with light, and energy. It was just before Christmas. Hanukkah had just concluded. An Arab Christian girl waited for customers at her house front. Her table was full of cookies and other Christmas sweets. In a shop window, Christmas decorations were displayed and red and green were the colors that stood out the most.
The festival today is the pride of Haifa.
“The experiment of Haifa was not repeated. This is a mixed city. The festival promotes coexistence of Arab and Jewish people,” our tour guide who belongs from Haifa said.
Built on the slope of Mount Carmel, and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Haifa, a mixed city, is the third largest city in Israel. Most of its Arab population is Christian and some of its Jewish people came from Russia. It also houses the Bahai Gardens, the pilgrimage site for the Bahais all over the world, and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The terraced gardens that’s maintained by the followers of the Bahai faith is one of the most visited sites in Haifa.
While tourists walk down the northern slope, through the garden, the pilgrims walk up the mountain, stopping by its fountains to meditate.
When Israel claimed its statehood in 1948, it was at the Haifa port that Jewish immigrants landed. The city became the gateway for a new life in the Promised Land to the Jews who under the Right to Return, came to Israel, the land promised to them by God, in thousands. Most were fleeing persecution and displacement after the holocaust.
Elsewhere in Israel, in Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, the stories of loss and war and identity accompanied us everywhere. In Jerusalem, it shouted from the Wailing Wall, from the Dome of the Rock, from the streets of the Old City, and in Tel Aviv, we listened to the narratives of death in the Holocaust Museum, in its party clubs where men and women drank away through the night to create an illusory world where who knows what tomorrow might bring.
But in Wadi Nisnas such stories were touched with a tinge of hope and optimism. In its unique walls, we saw that people wanted peace, they yearned for it.
In this neighborhood, we too became hopeful.
If there was ever a way out of conflict, Wadi Nisnas would be its first turn.
Chinki Sinha
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, January 10, 2010
In Wadi Nisnas, hope screams silently from the walls, the terraces, and from the streets. In Haifa’s stronghold of coexistence, in Wadi Nisnas, artists saw what could have been if there had been no conflict, or wars, that have shaped Israel, its people, and their collective memory, or what could be if the people decided to move on and live together like they do in Wadi Nisnas.
In a country where the heroic Israeli narrative has not yet run its course, where forgetting their persecution over centuries is a sin and memorials built to remember the victims of the wars dot the landscape, where looking beyond the immediate has never been an alternative, in this small neighborhood where Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together for years, stories of coexistence are everywhere painted, moulded and hung by the artists from all over the country on the walls ravaged by rockets.
From the blackened walls, from the balconies, they lead you to believe another way is out, that peace can be a possibility.
On such weary, grey walls, hope is the little white bird that some artist hung on a small balcony, peace is a graffiti on a crumbling building façade where an artist drew a safety pin in the shape of the Mediterranean Sea, bright blue, calm and beautiful. But the open ends of the safety pin speak of the Middle East’s dilemmas and tryst with elusive peace, the peace that exists in talks, in peoples’ dreams, in artists’ visions. It’s not closed, the region isn’t secure, and the loose ends need to be secured, that’s what the artist envisioned.
Sixteen years ago, the municipality of Haifa began the Holidays of Holidays celebration in December in the quaint neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas, which in Arabic means Mongoose, an indigenous animal. Over the years, artists have created their pieces dictated by the different themes of the festival but much of the artwork revolves around personal stories of loss, and of hope like that of Haya Tuma, wife of Emil Tuma, a communist leader and one of the founders of Al-Ittihad, an Aradic newspaper, who also led the Haifa communist party with Emile Habibi. Emil was killed in the neighbourhood after he returned from Lebanon.
Haya’s marriage with Emil, an Arab Orthodox Christian, personified Jewish-Arab unity in a country torn apart by strife. Haya met Emil when she was 18 and married him a couple of years later. For the Jewish bride, her marriage also opened windows to the other side – the story of the Palestinian suffering - and she learned to mourn for the Palestinians, and hoped to leap over the chasm to the other side.
Haya, a ceramic artist, came to live in Wadi Nisnas with her husband. To the wife, her husband became her canvas, her story. In the narrow alleys, in cramped quarters, her artworks speak of her love, and her desperation, its deep sadness, too. They also speak of her hope that another way is possible, of peace that is not so elusive after all, and of countless lost opportunities for the Jewish and Arab people who could have buried the turmoil and the angst long ago.
So, on a wall in one of the alleys near the market, Haya Tuma nailed her vision, and her despair.
There’s a wooden door. Above the door, what seems like a framed wedding photograph of Haya Tuma and Emil Tuma, hangs. In its sepia shades, in its shredded edges, a smiling, coy Haya looks radiant. It’s the picture of their union, of an alternative.
Next to the wooden door, there’s a large key that hangs from the wall. But there’s no keyhole. In a way it symbolizes the Arab dilemma, of its refugee status, our guide explained.
“There’s space for all, for Arabs, too. But we have to find it. Just like how Haya saw it. There’s the key but there’s no keyhole. It’s a political artwork,” our guide said.
Haya made the artwork in 2001. She died in 2008. After her death, her son Michael Tuma, who is an artist in Germany, opened up her trunk and found the little pieces of ceramics she had made and stuck them on in the shape of a tree in the parking lot of the neighborhood across from where Haya’s artworks from the past hang in her memory and as a tribute to her vision.
This experiment in coexistence that started 16 years ago has now become one of the major celebrations in the city and many come to walk through the undulating lanes of the neighborhood including school children from nearby cities and tourists who want to see a different side of the conflict.
In this little space, in its alleys that lead nowhere in particular, people, it seems, have realized that life is too short for such a long conflict, it’s perhaps too short to even count the losses, too short to remain victims whichever side you belonged to. So, when they step out of their homes, and walk to the bus stop, or to their shops, they glance at the graffitis calling for change, for a solution to the division of people, of lovers, of humanity, depicting the horrors of the war like the graffiti next to the door that Haya put up that says “somebody live here in 1948” , and they feel emboldened, part of the courage in the artworks infecting them. For art, and love and peace, are contagious, and someday in future, they can look out across the sea, or the desert, across the grey security wall, and look at the warring countries where many of them have friends and families, and wave to them, or invite them for meals, or dinners.
But that hope for peace was once close to being buried under the debris of the building that the rockets from Lebanon struck killing at least two people.
At a shop, many locals sat drinking thick Turkish coffee and chatting in between the puffs of their cigarettes. Ever since, the municipality began the experiment, the neighborhood is full of people in December – tourists, school children, everyone. In December, at the culmination or the onset of three important festivals – Christmas, Hanukkah, and Muharram or Eid – of the three major faiths all of which lay claim on Jerusalem for it here that they were born and it is here that their prophets will descend, the festival begins.
Amir, a resident, said in Jerusalem the air is oppressive. It is heavy with history, religion, and conflict. Here, in Wadi Nisnas, breathing is much relaxed, he said.
“You can still feel the tension. But it is different from Jerusalem. We have lived together and we still do,” he said.
In 2006, this coexistence was threatened when rockets from Lebanon, the ones that Hezbollah fired from across the calm Mediterranean, struck the office of the newspaper that Tuma and Habibi edited. It killed at least two people. In those days, tension flared up again. Jews became suspicious of their Arab neighbours who didn’t criticize the Hezbollah leader and his organization, as one newspaper reported. It is then that Hassan Nasrallah managed to create a rift, it said.
But then, Wadi Nisnas managed to pick up the pieces from the doubt that raged in men’s minds and the festival once again showed them that there was a way out of this chaos and suspicion.
Artists got back to work, and the area was once again buzzing with tourists, and those seeking elusive peace. Wadi Nisnas to them became the oasis of peace. Similar projects were considered in other cities but never took off because tolerance is hard to find elsewhere, as one local put it.
“In Tel Aviv, there are mostly Jewish people. So, there’s no need. Jerusalem is the site of the conflict. Everyone wants a piece of it,” he said.
On the day we visited, school children from Hadera, a nearby city, filled the streets of the neighbourhood, chatting, and laughing.
It was a Wednesday, and the sun shone through the chinks in the parapets and on the huge graffiti infusing them with light, and energy. It was just before Christmas. Hanukkah had just concluded. An Arab Christian girl waited for customers at her house front. Her table was full of cookies and other Christmas sweets. In a shop window, Christmas decorations were displayed and red and green were the colors that stood out the most.
The festival today is the pride of Haifa.
“The experiment of Haifa was not repeated. This is a mixed city. The festival promotes coexistence of Arab and Jewish people,” our tour guide who belongs from Haifa said.
Built on the slope of Mount Carmel, and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Haifa, a mixed city, is the third largest city in Israel. Most of its Arab population is Christian and some of its Jewish people came from Russia. It also houses the Bahai Gardens, the pilgrimage site for the Bahais all over the world, and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The terraced gardens that’s maintained by the followers of the Bahai faith is one of the most visited sites in Haifa.
While tourists walk down the northern slope, through the garden, the pilgrims walk up the mountain, stopping by its fountains to meditate.
When Israel claimed its statehood in 1948, it was at the Haifa port that Jewish immigrants landed. The city became the gateway for a new life in the Promised Land to the Jews who under the Right to Return, came to Israel, the land promised to them by God, in thousands. Most were fleeing persecution and displacement after the holocaust.
Elsewhere in Israel, in Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, the stories of loss and war and identity accompanied us everywhere. In Jerusalem, it shouted from the Wailing Wall, from the Dome of the Rock, from the streets of the Old City, and in Tel Aviv, we listened to the narratives of death in the Holocaust Museum, in its party clubs where men and women drank away through the night to create an illusory world where who knows what tomorrow might bring.
But in Wadi Nisnas such stories were touched with a tinge of hope and optimism. In its unique walls, we saw that people wanted peace, they yearned for it.
In this neighborhood, we too became hopeful.
If there was ever a way out of conflict, Wadi Nisnas would be its first turn.
Israel a century later
I had always wanted to go to Palestine and Israel. For a couple of years when I lived in New York, I'd rent Palestinian movies and watch them over and over again. We spent six days in Israel in December 2009 and visited Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. All of these cities had distinct characters. Many, many long years ago, I stumbled upon Exodus written by Leon Uris. I was in high school then. The making of Israel, its history, its myth was fascinating. When I visited later, I revisited those stories. But I yearned to go to Palestine that loomed from behind the grey security walls. Maybe I will.
An edited version of the piece appeared in the Flat World section of the Indian Express on January 12, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Tel Aviv, December 28, 2009
The Dead Sea almost reached the Judean Mountains then. Ron Meir came to Ein Gedi, an oasis near Masada, as a young Zionist in 1953 with 50 other young Jewish men like him who were in their early twenties. Before him stretched an uncompromising land, stony, dreary and harsh.
The young men had come from Europe, and they believed in the promise of Israel.
So they travelled through the deserts, trying to make sense of their new responsibilities and decided to become members of a kibbutz, a socialist community that was first improvised in 1909.
For years until 1967 when Israel occupied West Bank from Jordan and a road was built from Jerusalem via Jericho and along the Dead Sea, Kibbutz Ein Gedi remained isolated. The children of the kibbutz took a bus to a school 30 kilometres away, and living conditions were harsh, the desert tough on them.
Last year, the kibbutz movement that played a crucial role in nation building in Israel by building settlements into remote areas where the first immigrant Jews settled, celebrated its 100 years. It also celebrated a revival because in the 1980s kibbutz, the unique Israeli experiment with socialism had almost come close to extinction.
In 2009, yet another centennial celebration took place in Israel as fireworks lit up the skyline of Tel Aviv, the first Jewish city that completed its 100 years last year. In April of 1909, around 66 Jewish families parcelled land among them, and started to build the city outside the ancient port city of Jaffa, a predominantly Arab neighbourhood. Jaffa, though it has retained some of its old spirit and architecture, is undergoing cosmetic surgery, too.
The municipality is restoring old buildings, offering the homeowners apartments in other parts of the city, and changing the town’s character and demographics, something that Israel has always done to claim what it sees as God’s promise to the Jews of the world. So, Tel Aviv is expanding, claiming sea, land, history, and others’ spaces, because it is growing, and as Israel’s symbol of its future, it needs to grow.
Called Tel Aviv-Yafo after the municipalities of Jaffa and Tel Aviv were merged in 1950 soon after Israel’s independence, it was meant to be modern, an example of what Israel could do, how its identity was not just tied to the contested Jerusalem.
During the celebrations, digital collections of historical materials including the Ahuzat Bayit collection, which focuses on the founding families of Tel Aviv, and several thousand photographs, postcards, posters, marking the 100 year journey of the city were released.
For many Israelis, Tel Aviv is what defines Israel and its future. It is modern, more secular, individualistic and competitive. It carries no baggage from the past, and moves on and ahead, its residents aspiring for the best the city or the world can offer.
It could be any large city in the world with its skyscrapers and bustling markets.
More than anything else, it stands for liberalism and is not tied to the identity of Israel as the 200 plus kibbutz were or as Jerusalem is.
These two centennial celebrations also reflect how Israel itself has transformed over the years, and how its future is being mapped.
When Israel claimed independence in 1948, its founders claimed that they intended to create both a state for the Jewish people and a socialist society.
But in the downfall and the subsequent revival, kibbutz movement reflects how Israel will become, its aspirations, and in the rise of Tel Aviv, the story of Israel that’s not only about conflict but dynamism and normalcy reflects.
***
The first kibbutz, Degania, which was founded by 12 young men and women, on the southern shore of Lake Kinneret where the Sea of Galilee meets the river Jordan in 1909, in 2007 voted for privatzation in order to survive imitaing what most other kibbutz througout the country opted for. To move away from an arrangement where everything was shared, for the kibbutz movement, such a shift towards privatization was also an attempt to keep their community lifestyle in an era of globalization.
Three generations – the founders, who were motivated by the idea of Israel and put up in harsh, desolate deserts to establish Jewish presence in these parts, the children who were born in the twilight era of socialism and dawn of contemporary life, and the present generation who didn’t have to build from scratch and were mostly introduced to Israel’s history and insecurities through memorials or narratives passed down from generations – have contributed to kibbutz life and its ideals. While there is fear that with the onslaught of globalization and return of some sort of normalcy the kibbutz are moving away from their original principles, for Meir and others, it also speaks of its resilience, its ability to compromise to survive.
Most kibbutz were founded before Israel was created in 1948, and became the model of what the newly-created nation stood for.
These were founded by men and women who were returning to the Promised Land and who banded together and worked the land.
When they had come to the isolated area, they lived in small apartments, and their children lived in the hostels in the kibbutz. They met them for a couple of hours everyday before they went to their dormitories. Lunches and dinners were a community affair in the large dining room then but now the dining hall only hosts meals on Saturday, the Jewish Holy day.
“We were part of the socialistic youth movement then. The government gave us the land and we came,” Ron said. “But later on, the young didn’t like shared living. The voice of the young, of our children, changed the way we lived. Times are changing. The idea to be equal doesn’t work anymore.”
Israel seems to have outlived the purpose of its founding ideology. For men like Ron, Israel itself has changed. It has transformed into a much more individualistic society now than it was when it was founded at a time when collective goal subsumed personal aspirations. Now, young people want to own fast-moving cars, they have aspirations, they want property, everything, he said.
Zivit, a tour guide who comes from Haifa, married a Yemenite Jew who was brought up on a kibbutz. When the couple had their first baby, her husband said he didn’t want the child to be separated from them as he was when he was a young boy.
“We wanted our babies to be with us and not grow up in the children’s room like in the kibbutz,” she said.
Zivit and her husband choose to work tough jobs to give a good life to their children. The state gives families monthly allowance based on the number of children they have but that’s not enough if you dream big.
“That’s why I work hard,” she said.
Zivit owns an apartment in Tel Aviv because her children love the city.
There’s also some resentment against the Ultra Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere who the more secular Jews like Zivit scorn because they feel they are bankrolling their indolence.
***
Over the years, what Meir had helped build, and the lives they lived and loved so much, have been tossed away in favour of a more individualistic lifestyle, away from the egalitarian concept of the kibbutz itself where everything was shared. Now, Ron himself works as a tour guide, taking tourists through the Ein Gedi Botanical Garden, and gets a salary at the end of the month.
“Israel has changed. The left is not so strong anymore,” he said. “Until five years ago, everything was shared. The young generation doesn’t want to live the way we did. The old are dying. Capitalism is changing the kibbutz.”
Kibbutz Ein Gedi too has changed like many others. Overlooking the Dead Sea, it has a cluster of about 230 hotel rooms, and a spa, too, to keep itself economically viable.
In the last 10 years, the number of kibbutzim that were financially unstable went down to almost 10 percent from 50 percent.
Some others have taken up jobs outside like. Batya, yet another kibbutznik, drives 20 minutes to work near Tel Aviv but she can’t leave the kibbutz. In the past years, the kibbutz have become more introspective, trying to reward individual achievement and have become less rigid.
Of the 273 kibbutzim in Israel, 75 per cent are located in the periphery of the country. Around 1.6 per cent of Israel’s population, or roughly 120,000 people live in kibbutz. After the downturn it faced in the 1980s, in 2007, 20 years later, the kibbutz saw more people joining them than those who left them. Now, outsiders can rent apartments inside a kibbutz as many have done at Ein Gedi that also is known for its famous botanical garden and spa. These apartments are different, more spacious than what Meir lived in – four families shared one kitchen. Of course now, the kibbutz dining halls are only used during Shabbat or on religious holidays.
Of Meir’s six children, three have become members of the kibbutz, while other three live in cities.
“We had to do this,” Meir said, as he took us around the Ein Gedi Botanical Garden.
Meir has adapted, too.
As a tour guide, he was selling the kibbutz and its socialistic life to us.
“We have a spa too. You want to try,” he said.
Members of a kibbutz had everything taken care of. The commune provided for everything. But then, there was neither space nor scope of personal property. As Ron recalled if someone got a television set form a relative or a friend in the United States in those days, the set was installed in the common area for everyone to watch, Ron said. They couldn’t have owned fancy cars, or chose their careers themselves. It was a secure life. The sense of community pervaded, permeated one’s being.
Ironically now, the kibbutzniks have to embrace what they resisted then – capitalistic individualism. As they liberalize and open up by renting out apartments in the kibbutz to outsiders, building hotel rooms for tourists wanting to get a taste of Israel’s unique experiment with communal life, men like Ron who have lived and survived through the rough patches in the 1980s when survival of kibbutz itself seemed like a difficult proposition can’t help feeling betrayed and a little lost.
During the 1980s when the country was faced with hyperinflation, the movement was threatened. They had debt running into millions of dollars. With the Likud Party at the helm, the golden days of the socialist movement were over. So, they had to reinvent, and innovate in order to survive and in their survival, they intrinsically changed.
Many kibbutzim adopted a graded salary scale according to the position and the type of employment.
***
In many ways, the two celebrations define what Israel today is. The kibbutz, though the founding Zionist zeal has been overtaken by individualistic pursuits, also tell a story of survival, and Tel Aviv narrates a tale of relentless pursuit of dreams, of what Israel can be, what it can do, how it can adapt, and how it has space for everyone – non-religious, secular, modern, traditional and liberal and left and the materialistic.
In Tel Aviv, along the waterfront, the restaurants are open through the nights, people fish in the Mediterranean, read, jog, and shop. The buzz is infectious, and illusions, too. For here, in Tel Aviv, Israel’s capital, you can forget the strife, the casualties, the conflict that’s so much a part of the country’s existence and history.
As one woman put it, in Tel Aviv they live as if there was no tomorrow. They spend, they enjoy because the war is here, it is central to our lives, but Tel Aviv is a bubble, and offers us refuge in its normalness where you can compete, and party as everyone else does in the metropolitan cities of the world.
Tel Aviv can be misleading, too. In its 100 years, it has built tall buildings, ports, galleries, hotels and everything else. It is close to the conflict, yet it is so remote. Here, it accommodates dreams, and other things people elsewhere do – love, and live, and go about their daily lives without thinking about the rockets, or the bombs.
For some in the Kibbutzim, the capital’s remoteness and detachment dilutes what other Israelis have encountered all their lives – conflict, and bombs – and what they stood for, an egalitarian society without the ills of materialism that has crept into Tel Aviv.
It has no baggage like Jerusalem where leaning on religion and myths is essential to keep the claim, or like kibbutz that’s grappling with identity crisis. Tel Aviv doesn’t care, its secular and orthodox live their lives, and the city accommodates dissent and nationalism, everything.
Because its expanding boundaries have the capacity to embrace all.
Even when it was founded, as pictures in an art gallery showed, women partied, smoked, and danced on the beaches dressed in swim suits. Elsewhere, it would have been unthinkable then.
But in celebrating the 100 years of both, Israel proves that here old and new live side by side. Perhaps, not so comfortably but both have their spaces and scope to experiment, adapt, reinvent like how the kibbutz did.
An edited version of the piece appeared in the Flat World section of the Indian Express on January 12, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Tel Aviv, December 28, 2009
The Dead Sea almost reached the Judean Mountains then. Ron Meir came to Ein Gedi, an oasis near Masada, as a young Zionist in 1953 with 50 other young Jewish men like him who were in their early twenties. Before him stretched an uncompromising land, stony, dreary and harsh.
The young men had come from Europe, and they believed in the promise of Israel.
So they travelled through the deserts, trying to make sense of their new responsibilities and decided to become members of a kibbutz, a socialist community that was first improvised in 1909.
For years until 1967 when Israel occupied West Bank from Jordan and a road was built from Jerusalem via Jericho and along the Dead Sea, Kibbutz Ein Gedi remained isolated. The children of the kibbutz took a bus to a school 30 kilometres away, and living conditions were harsh, the desert tough on them.
Last year, the kibbutz movement that played a crucial role in nation building in Israel by building settlements into remote areas where the first immigrant Jews settled, celebrated its 100 years. It also celebrated a revival because in the 1980s kibbutz, the unique Israeli experiment with socialism had almost come close to extinction.
In 2009, yet another centennial celebration took place in Israel as fireworks lit up the skyline of Tel Aviv, the first Jewish city that completed its 100 years last year. In April of 1909, around 66 Jewish families parcelled land among them, and started to build the city outside the ancient port city of Jaffa, a predominantly Arab neighbourhood. Jaffa, though it has retained some of its old spirit and architecture, is undergoing cosmetic surgery, too.
The municipality is restoring old buildings, offering the homeowners apartments in other parts of the city, and changing the town’s character and demographics, something that Israel has always done to claim what it sees as God’s promise to the Jews of the world. So, Tel Aviv is expanding, claiming sea, land, history, and others’ spaces, because it is growing, and as Israel’s symbol of its future, it needs to grow.
Called Tel Aviv-Yafo after the municipalities of Jaffa and Tel Aviv were merged in 1950 soon after Israel’s independence, it was meant to be modern, an example of what Israel could do, how its identity was not just tied to the contested Jerusalem.
During the celebrations, digital collections of historical materials including the Ahuzat Bayit collection, which focuses on the founding families of Tel Aviv, and several thousand photographs, postcards, posters, marking the 100 year journey of the city were released.
For many Israelis, Tel Aviv is what defines Israel and its future. It is modern, more secular, individualistic and competitive. It carries no baggage from the past, and moves on and ahead, its residents aspiring for the best the city or the world can offer.
It could be any large city in the world with its skyscrapers and bustling markets.
More than anything else, it stands for liberalism and is not tied to the identity of Israel as the 200 plus kibbutz were or as Jerusalem is.
These two centennial celebrations also reflect how Israel itself has transformed over the years, and how its future is being mapped.
When Israel claimed independence in 1948, its founders claimed that they intended to create both a state for the Jewish people and a socialist society.
But in the downfall and the subsequent revival, kibbutz movement reflects how Israel will become, its aspirations, and in the rise of Tel Aviv, the story of Israel that’s not only about conflict but dynamism and normalcy reflects.
***
The first kibbutz, Degania, which was founded by 12 young men and women, on the southern shore of Lake Kinneret where the Sea of Galilee meets the river Jordan in 1909, in 2007 voted for privatzation in order to survive imitaing what most other kibbutz througout the country opted for. To move away from an arrangement where everything was shared, for the kibbutz movement, such a shift towards privatization was also an attempt to keep their community lifestyle in an era of globalization.
Three generations – the founders, who were motivated by the idea of Israel and put up in harsh, desolate deserts to establish Jewish presence in these parts, the children who were born in the twilight era of socialism and dawn of contemporary life, and the present generation who didn’t have to build from scratch and were mostly introduced to Israel’s history and insecurities through memorials or narratives passed down from generations – have contributed to kibbutz life and its ideals. While there is fear that with the onslaught of globalization and return of some sort of normalcy the kibbutz are moving away from their original principles, for Meir and others, it also speaks of its resilience, its ability to compromise to survive.
Most kibbutz were founded before Israel was created in 1948, and became the model of what the newly-created nation stood for.
These were founded by men and women who were returning to the Promised Land and who banded together and worked the land.
When they had come to the isolated area, they lived in small apartments, and their children lived in the hostels in the kibbutz. They met them for a couple of hours everyday before they went to their dormitories. Lunches and dinners were a community affair in the large dining room then but now the dining hall only hosts meals on Saturday, the Jewish Holy day.
“We were part of the socialistic youth movement then. The government gave us the land and we came,” Ron said. “But later on, the young didn’t like shared living. The voice of the young, of our children, changed the way we lived. Times are changing. The idea to be equal doesn’t work anymore.”
Israel seems to have outlived the purpose of its founding ideology. For men like Ron, Israel itself has changed. It has transformed into a much more individualistic society now than it was when it was founded at a time when collective goal subsumed personal aspirations. Now, young people want to own fast-moving cars, they have aspirations, they want property, everything, he said.
Zivit, a tour guide who comes from Haifa, married a Yemenite Jew who was brought up on a kibbutz. When the couple had their first baby, her husband said he didn’t want the child to be separated from them as he was when he was a young boy.
“We wanted our babies to be with us and not grow up in the children’s room like in the kibbutz,” she said.
Zivit and her husband choose to work tough jobs to give a good life to their children. The state gives families monthly allowance based on the number of children they have but that’s not enough if you dream big.
“That’s why I work hard,” she said.
Zivit owns an apartment in Tel Aviv because her children love the city.
There’s also some resentment against the Ultra Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere who the more secular Jews like Zivit scorn because they feel they are bankrolling their indolence.
***
Over the years, what Meir had helped build, and the lives they lived and loved so much, have been tossed away in favour of a more individualistic lifestyle, away from the egalitarian concept of the kibbutz itself where everything was shared. Now, Ron himself works as a tour guide, taking tourists through the Ein Gedi Botanical Garden, and gets a salary at the end of the month.
“Israel has changed. The left is not so strong anymore,” he said. “Until five years ago, everything was shared. The young generation doesn’t want to live the way we did. The old are dying. Capitalism is changing the kibbutz.”
Kibbutz Ein Gedi too has changed like many others. Overlooking the Dead Sea, it has a cluster of about 230 hotel rooms, and a spa, too, to keep itself economically viable.
In the last 10 years, the number of kibbutzim that were financially unstable went down to almost 10 percent from 50 percent.
Some others have taken up jobs outside like. Batya, yet another kibbutznik, drives 20 minutes to work near Tel Aviv but she can’t leave the kibbutz. In the past years, the kibbutz have become more introspective, trying to reward individual achievement and have become less rigid.
Of the 273 kibbutzim in Israel, 75 per cent are located in the periphery of the country. Around 1.6 per cent of Israel’s population, or roughly 120,000 people live in kibbutz. After the downturn it faced in the 1980s, in 2007, 20 years later, the kibbutz saw more people joining them than those who left them. Now, outsiders can rent apartments inside a kibbutz as many have done at Ein Gedi that also is known for its famous botanical garden and spa. These apartments are different, more spacious than what Meir lived in – four families shared one kitchen. Of course now, the kibbutz dining halls are only used during Shabbat or on religious holidays.
Of Meir’s six children, three have become members of the kibbutz, while other three live in cities.
“We had to do this,” Meir said, as he took us around the Ein Gedi Botanical Garden.
Meir has adapted, too.
As a tour guide, he was selling the kibbutz and its socialistic life to us.
“We have a spa too. You want to try,” he said.
Members of a kibbutz had everything taken care of. The commune provided for everything. But then, there was neither space nor scope of personal property. As Ron recalled if someone got a television set form a relative or a friend in the United States in those days, the set was installed in the common area for everyone to watch, Ron said. They couldn’t have owned fancy cars, or chose their careers themselves. It was a secure life. The sense of community pervaded, permeated one’s being.
Ironically now, the kibbutzniks have to embrace what they resisted then – capitalistic individualism. As they liberalize and open up by renting out apartments in the kibbutz to outsiders, building hotel rooms for tourists wanting to get a taste of Israel’s unique experiment with communal life, men like Ron who have lived and survived through the rough patches in the 1980s when survival of kibbutz itself seemed like a difficult proposition can’t help feeling betrayed and a little lost.
During the 1980s when the country was faced with hyperinflation, the movement was threatened. They had debt running into millions of dollars. With the Likud Party at the helm, the golden days of the socialist movement were over. So, they had to reinvent, and innovate in order to survive and in their survival, they intrinsically changed.
Many kibbutzim adopted a graded salary scale according to the position and the type of employment.
***
In many ways, the two celebrations define what Israel today is. The kibbutz, though the founding Zionist zeal has been overtaken by individualistic pursuits, also tell a story of survival, and Tel Aviv narrates a tale of relentless pursuit of dreams, of what Israel can be, what it can do, how it can adapt, and how it has space for everyone – non-religious, secular, modern, traditional and liberal and left and the materialistic.
In Tel Aviv, along the waterfront, the restaurants are open through the nights, people fish in the Mediterranean, read, jog, and shop. The buzz is infectious, and illusions, too. For here, in Tel Aviv, Israel’s capital, you can forget the strife, the casualties, the conflict that’s so much a part of the country’s existence and history.
As one woman put it, in Tel Aviv they live as if there was no tomorrow. They spend, they enjoy because the war is here, it is central to our lives, but Tel Aviv is a bubble, and offers us refuge in its normalness where you can compete, and party as everyone else does in the metropolitan cities of the world.
Tel Aviv can be misleading, too. In its 100 years, it has built tall buildings, ports, galleries, hotels and everything else. It is close to the conflict, yet it is so remote. Here, it accommodates dreams, and other things people elsewhere do – love, and live, and go about their daily lives without thinking about the rockets, or the bombs.
For some in the Kibbutzim, the capital’s remoteness and detachment dilutes what other Israelis have encountered all their lives – conflict, and bombs – and what they stood for, an egalitarian society without the ills of materialism that has crept into Tel Aviv.
It has no baggage like Jerusalem where leaning on religion and myths is essential to keep the claim, or like kibbutz that’s grappling with identity crisis. Tel Aviv doesn’t care, its secular and orthodox live their lives, and the city accommodates dissent and nationalism, everything.
Because its expanding boundaries have the capacity to embrace all.
Even when it was founded, as pictures in an art gallery showed, women partied, smoked, and danced on the beaches dressed in swim suits. Elsewhere, it would have been unthinkable then.
But in celebrating the 100 years of both, Israel proves that here old and new live side by side. Perhaps, not so comfortably but both have their spaces and scope to experiment, adapt, reinvent like how the kibbutz did.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
The bodybuilders of Ghitorni
While I was covering the Bahujan Samaj Party during the 2009 general elections, I had gone to Ghitorni and was amused to see the number of small gyms scattered all over the place. I returned to the urban village to profile the gyms last week. An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express Real Page 3 on Januray 3, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, January 1, 2010
At 14, when his father asked him what he wanted to do in life, Mastu Gujjar said he wanted to build his body, workout, pump up his biceps and compete for Mr. Universe. That was it.
For the last 14 years, he has done just that like most of the young men in Ghitorni village, an urban village on Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road where the bodybuilding is almost a subculture, which projects it as an ideal for young boys who start weight training from the age of fourteen.
“I saw a boy my age exercising and I wanted a body like his. I started working out. My body started pumping. People started noticing and now everyone knows me here,” he said. “They call me ‘bhai’. They all want to look like me.”
Here, in this urban village of around 25,000, there’s a little gym tucked away in the basements of houses or up on the terraces, anywhere. And men and boys indulge in never ending sessions of workouts.
Mastu opened his own gym on the terrace of an old building, and a steep flight of broken stairs lead to a large room full of equipment. There are no treadmills here. Only weights.
In the evenings, around 50 men lift the weights, their veins protruding, they muscles bulging and through the corner of their eyes, they steal glances at the mirrors that line the room. Most of the men are preparing for Mr. Delhi 2010 Body Building Competition, a few have nothing else to do. For years Mastu has been trying to win the Mr. Delhi Bodybuilding title and he is sure in 2010, he will be crowned.
In Ghitorni, and other urban villages like Aaya Nagar and Sultanpur, where farmers sold their lands to developers, there’s a lull. With little or no education, most young men join neighborhood gyms that are mostly owned by friends or acquaintances that run a gym not to make money but as a passion. Here, they train for hours, measuring the bulge of their biceps as they swell.
There’s yet another reason for the body building obsession here. A few years ago, many young men started to abuse drugs and alcohol. They had the money and in the community that traditionally engaged in farming, after having sold off most of their farms, there was little else to do.
That’s when Mastu Gujjar stepped in. He started weaning away the young men from drugs, taking them to train with Subash Bhadana, general secretary of the Delhi Bodybuilder Association. He wanted to help, he said.
“We wanted them to leave drugs,” he said. “Around 70 per cent of the young boys here were into drugs. We don’t have work, we are not well educated either. So, they had nothing to do with their time.”
Mastu claims he helped at least 40 young boys give up drugs by way of getting them into bodybuilding and fitness. Rakesh, a young man from Aaya Nagar, is one of those. When he came to Mastu eight years ago, he was heavily into drug abuse. Mastu told him then that if he wanted a body like his, he had to quit, which he did once he got addicted to gruelling workout sessions.
A couple of years ago, Mastu opened his own gym called the Mastu Club.
“This is to get them into something better. We have no jobs. We are starting to realize we need to get educated but it will take time,” Mastu said.
But then, in a place where all children start going to gyms for weight training at 14 years, one addiction has led to another. Now, peer pressure too dictates the village’s growing obsession with bodybuilding. Never ending workouts are a norm here.
In the basement of a three-storey house, Amit Lohia set up the Muscle Gym a year ago, again not for money but for his community, he said.
When he was just of his teens, he started to go to akharas to build his body. School, education, career became second fiddles.
“My parents used to tell me to build my body so I could fight. Life in places like this is tough. There are too many fights,” he said.
A personal trainer at Power House, a health club in Delhi, Amit, 27, said this could have possible been the best career for him.
Most young men in the village are employed at nightclubs as bouncers which they attribute to their “fierce” looks with bulging biceps that could impress anyone or ward off anyone, depending on which way you looked at those pumped-up muscles, Lohia said.
Although, the gyms are a recent phenomenon, the community’s obsession with bodybuilding goes back a long way. Back then, there used to be akharas that trained men in wrestling. Those still exist but gyms have captured the imagination of the young who aspire to look like Bollywood stars whose chiselled abs are much in vogue now.
Prashant Lohia, an 18-year-old student, spends hours at the Muscle Gym in the evenings.
“For body improvement,” he said. “At school, they look at me and get jealous. Girls too.”
At Aurobindo College, Amit even participated in a couple of modelling shows.
The gyms only charge Rs. 200 or lesser per person per month. For Mastu and Amit, this is community service.
But it’s only men in the Gujjar community here that go to the gyms. Women don’t, Amit said.
“They do the household work,” he said. “Gyms are not for them.”
There are three gyms and two akharas in Ghittorni. One gym - Star Gym - closed down recently.
At Mastu's, however, a few women come to do weights in the evenings. They are not fromt he community but outsiders who are renting apartments here.
"For women, it is difficult to lift such heavy weights," Mastu said.
Mastu also wants to showcase his body at the upcoming Commonwealth Games. So far, all his efforts have not led him anywhere, he said.
"The government doesn't recognize bodybuilding as a national sport," he said. "There is no money to be made in this. But for me, this is all I have done. Hopefully, things will change. For sure, I am going to send my children to school not to the gyms because the future isn't here."
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, January 1, 2010
At 14, when his father asked him what he wanted to do in life, Mastu Gujjar said he wanted to build his body, workout, pump up his biceps and compete for Mr. Universe. That was it.
For the last 14 years, he has done just that like most of the young men in Ghitorni village, an urban village on Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road where the bodybuilding is almost a subculture, which projects it as an ideal for young boys who start weight training from the age of fourteen.
“I saw a boy my age exercising and I wanted a body like his. I started working out. My body started pumping. People started noticing and now everyone knows me here,” he said. “They call me ‘bhai’. They all want to look like me.”
Here, in this urban village of around 25,000, there’s a little gym tucked away in the basements of houses or up on the terraces, anywhere. And men and boys indulge in never ending sessions of workouts.
Mastu opened his own gym on the terrace of an old building, and a steep flight of broken stairs lead to a large room full of equipment. There are no treadmills here. Only weights.
In the evenings, around 50 men lift the weights, their veins protruding, they muscles bulging and through the corner of their eyes, they steal glances at the mirrors that line the room. Most of the men are preparing for Mr. Delhi 2010 Body Building Competition, a few have nothing else to do. For years Mastu has been trying to win the Mr. Delhi Bodybuilding title and he is sure in 2010, he will be crowned.
In Ghitorni, and other urban villages like Aaya Nagar and Sultanpur, where farmers sold their lands to developers, there’s a lull. With little or no education, most young men join neighborhood gyms that are mostly owned by friends or acquaintances that run a gym not to make money but as a passion. Here, they train for hours, measuring the bulge of their biceps as they swell.
There’s yet another reason for the body building obsession here. A few years ago, many young men started to abuse drugs and alcohol. They had the money and in the community that traditionally engaged in farming, after having sold off most of their farms, there was little else to do.
That’s when Mastu Gujjar stepped in. He started weaning away the young men from drugs, taking them to train with Subash Bhadana, general secretary of the Delhi Bodybuilder Association. He wanted to help, he said.
“We wanted them to leave drugs,” he said. “Around 70 per cent of the young boys here were into drugs. We don’t have work, we are not well educated either. So, they had nothing to do with their time.”
Mastu claims he helped at least 40 young boys give up drugs by way of getting them into bodybuilding and fitness. Rakesh, a young man from Aaya Nagar, is one of those. When he came to Mastu eight years ago, he was heavily into drug abuse. Mastu told him then that if he wanted a body like his, he had to quit, which he did once he got addicted to gruelling workout sessions.
A couple of years ago, Mastu opened his own gym called the Mastu Club.
“This is to get them into something better. We have no jobs. We are starting to realize we need to get educated but it will take time,” Mastu said.
But then, in a place where all children start going to gyms for weight training at 14 years, one addiction has led to another. Now, peer pressure too dictates the village’s growing obsession with bodybuilding. Never ending workouts are a norm here.
In the basement of a three-storey house, Amit Lohia set up the Muscle Gym a year ago, again not for money but for his community, he said.
When he was just of his teens, he started to go to akharas to build his body. School, education, career became second fiddles.
“My parents used to tell me to build my body so I could fight. Life in places like this is tough. There are too many fights,” he said.
A personal trainer at Power House, a health club in Delhi, Amit, 27, said this could have possible been the best career for him.
Most young men in the village are employed at nightclubs as bouncers which they attribute to their “fierce” looks with bulging biceps that could impress anyone or ward off anyone, depending on which way you looked at those pumped-up muscles, Lohia said.
Although, the gyms are a recent phenomenon, the community’s obsession with bodybuilding goes back a long way. Back then, there used to be akharas that trained men in wrestling. Those still exist but gyms have captured the imagination of the young who aspire to look like Bollywood stars whose chiselled abs are much in vogue now.
Prashant Lohia, an 18-year-old student, spends hours at the Muscle Gym in the evenings.
“For body improvement,” he said. “At school, they look at me and get jealous. Girls too.”
At Aurobindo College, Amit even participated in a couple of modelling shows.
The gyms only charge Rs. 200 or lesser per person per month. For Mastu and Amit, this is community service.
But it’s only men in the Gujjar community here that go to the gyms. Women don’t, Amit said.
“They do the household work,” he said. “Gyms are not for them.”
There are three gyms and two akharas in Ghittorni. One gym - Star Gym - closed down recently.
At Mastu's, however, a few women come to do weights in the evenings. They are not fromt he community but outsiders who are renting apartments here.
"For women, it is difficult to lift such heavy weights," Mastu said.
Mastu also wants to showcase his body at the upcoming Commonwealth Games. So far, all his efforts have not led him anywhere, he said.
"The government doesn't recognize bodybuilding as a national sport," he said. "There is no money to be made in this. But for me, this is all I have done. Hopefully, things will change. For sure, I am going to send my children to school not to the gyms because the future isn't here."
Yamuna Expressway
We travelled on the Yamuna Expressway, taking the service lane, the mud road from Agra to Delhi, for three days. We stopped by many villages, talked to many villagers about their hopes and fears once the road comes along.
To cover most of the 165 km, it took us hours on the dirt road. We snaked in through villages, hit the service lane where it was motorable. The car hardly exceeded 15 kms an hour speed but the journey was fun. An edited version of the story appeared in the sunday section of the Indian Express on Jan. 3, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Yamuna Expressway, Jauary 1, 2010
Every morning, a file of little children travel down the wide road that cuts through their villages, each carrying a shovel. All of them seemed to be very tiny, the youngest being a nine-year-old boy, as they hobbled past the underpass, bent under the weight of the shovel that was about their height.
All of them dropped out of schools to look for work on the 165 kilometer Yamuna Expressway, the biggest concrete road in the country and one of the most ambitious projects in Uttar Pradesh, a six-lane wide expressway with the potential to be widened to an eight-lane expressway that will reduce the travel time from Noida to Agra by about 90 minutes and bring development to the area. As of now, it takes about 3.5 hours to reach Agra.
So o n a Wednesday morning near Piperauli Bangar in Mathura , a score of little children of all ages clustered around a man who peered ahead and announced no trucks were coming this way and so they would have to wait until one came along, or walk further up the “highway road”. If they were lucky, they’d find a truck waiting to be unloaded.
So the little urchins, dressed in rags, their faces covered in dust and fly ash that the road threw up as workers filled its belly with mud mixed and fly ash, dragged their shovels and walked on.
Because time is running out for them and for the road, too.
The project has been issued directives from the state government that the state’s first expressway be completed in time for the Commonwealth Games and open to traffic. But it is unlikely that the expressway will be motorable by Commonwealth Games in October this year. As per the concession agreement signed with the UP government, Jaypee Infratech was to hand over the expressway in 2013 but internal deadlines demand the expressway is complete by 2011.
“We can’t do it before April 2011. But we don’t want to not be hopeful but it is difficult to finish the project in 10 months. We are just being realistic,” Samir Gaur, director in charge of Jaypee Infratech that is building the expressway, said.
The scale of the work on the expressway is colossal. At least 8,000 workers, 24 sub contractors and more than 600 supervisors are working around the clock on the stretch. Land acquisition for the project – around 5000 hectares for the expressway and an additional 6000 hectares for development along the controlled access road, part of the ribbon expressway project – is almost over, according to company officials.
Earth filling on around 80 per cent of the expressway is over, and concretisation is underway on about 20 kilometers of the stretch.
The company has imported sophisticated machinery from Germany – four road rollers that can simultaneously pave six lanes.
The first 40 kilometres would be located in Gautam Budh Nagar, passing through Noida, Dhankaur, Mirzapur and Jewar, 20 kilometres in Aligarh, through Tappal, followed by 90 kilometres in Mathura passing Nohjhil, Mat, Raya and Baldev, and 15 kilometres in Agra, with the expressway culminating near Etmadpur in Agra.
Around 1,182 villages were notified by the government with regards to the project and the development parcels to be constructed along the corridor.
The pavement of the expressway planned to be a dual carriageway will consist of cement concrete. Mumbai-Pune expressway is the only other expressway that uses cement concrete. Thirteen service roads with total length of 168 kilometers will be constructed concurrently with the expressway. The company also has the right to develop 25 million square metres or 6,175 acres of land along the Yamuna Expressway at five locations - 500 hectares each in Noida, Aligarh and Agra and 1,000 hectares in Gautam Buddha Nagar - for residential, commercial, amusement, industrial and institutional purposes. In addition, the concessionaire also has the rights to develop an area of 2,500 hectares.
This expressway is based on the concept of ribbon development along the expressway corridor. In many states, the government is attracting developers for expressways by giving them incentives like leasing them land along the road to develop residential plots and commercial property so the cost can be recovered.
The UP government has approved such property development along the Yamuna Expressway and the Rs. 400 billion Ganga Expressway.
According to the authority, the expressway will not only provide a fast moving corridor to minimize the travel time, and connect the main townships and commercial centers on the eastern side of the river, but also bring development to the region and ease congestion on NH-2. In addition, it will connect urban urban conglomerates in Noida to other cities, and provide for Export Promotion Zones including Taj Economic Zone, Taj International Airport and Aviation Hub.
In many ways, the expressway has reconfigured the local geography. The villages lie on one side of the road, what remains of the farmland lies on the other.
In this region in Western UP, farmlands are on the periphery of many projects that will eventually require more land. Not only the Yamuna and Ganga expressways will pass through these districts but also the Eastern Railway Freight Corridor and Delhi-Moradabad National Highway.
Six interchanges have been proposed on 165 km long Yamuna Expressway from Zero Point (Parichowk) to Kuber-Chhalesar, Agra.
At least ten 5-star hotels have been proposed in sports city, in addition to residential complexes to be built by private builders.
***
It is not easy to find work on the expressway. All along the expressway, thousands of workers, mostly migrant laborers from Bihar and West Bengal, are working long shifts through the night to meet the deadline. The concessionaire Jaypee Infratech has roped in more contractors, and is racing against time to deliver. Concretization has only begun on few of the stretches. Although the company officials say the project will not be completed until April 2011, the sub contractors have been given a deadline of March 2010.
Joginder, 9, and the youngest among the 30 odd children who leave their homes early morning, had not been able to take home any wages for the last two weeks.
Rs. 40 that he can earn for a day’s tough labour on the road isn’t a lot of money. But he is tiny and there’s many others looking for work. So he never bargains.
In fact, no one bargains here.
“We walk until there’s a truck and then we run towards it hoping to get work. Often we get pushed over. There are so many of us looking for the same kind of job,” 12-year-old Pradip said. “Sometimes, we walk 8-9 miles looking for work on the road.”
Pradip too dropped out of the school after the “highway road” came to his village. At the school run by the government, the teachers asked for money and he didn’t have any.
His father drives a truck and the family owns no land, and getting by is difficult.
“At the school they were asking for Rs. 5,” he said. “I needed to look for work. Whatever I make, I hand it to my mother and she can cook dal on such days.”
When he had told his parents he was quitting school, they didn’t press for explanations.
“They said go and work,” he said. “So I come everyday. How can we eat otherwise?”
Now that he has taken the road, he isn’t bothered where it takes him. When this road is completed and trucks and cars whiz past the villages, Joginder and Pradip will move on to yet another road.
Maybe in crisscrossing those expressways and the state is building at least two more – the Ganga Expressway and the Hindon Expressway - they will get to a city where growth will absorb them. Maybe someday, he would be able to take one of those roads back home if their villages remain.
The authority on its web site claims that employment opportunities will be given to the local population and preference will be given to land losers during construction as per requirement and their qualification.
But Laxman Singh, a 33 year old shepherd, is desperate. For a week, he hasn’t been able to find any work on the expressway.
“All the land is going. We sold our cattle. For two months I am coming to the expressway looking for work. We go hungry on most days,” he said. “All the jobs go to migrant labourers. They give it to them because they can exploit them. We are from here, we can unite and protest. They can’t.”
After eight hours of walking up and down the road looking for odd jobs, Singh slumped on the side of the road. Exhausted and hopeless. It would be yet another night without food, he said.
At the zero-point on the 165-Km Yamuna Expressway in Greater Noida, there is no pronounced signage marking the beginning of the one of the most expensive and controversial projects of that state. Although the project has been renamed Yamuna Expressway, the sign boards still carry the name “Taj Expressway.”
Here the road begins with an interchange that is under construction with massive pillars jutting into the sky, and goes over the Greater Noida Expressway, descending on the other side.
The project that was conceived in 2001 finally took off in 2006 when work began on the controversial expressway and the Yamuna Expressway Authority, formerly Taj Expressway Authority, started acquiring land along the proposed expressway.
The Uttar Pradesh government constituted the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) that is executing the project.
The contract with Jaiprakash Associates was signed in February 2003, which was to complete the Expressway within seven years. Back then, the estimated cost was pegged at Rs. 1,600 crores.
A dream project of the Mayawati government which was at the helm in 2003, work on the expressway was halted within a month of Samajwadi Party’s taking the oath the same year.
Former Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav not only halted construction on the expressway but also ordered an inquiry by Justice Ranganath Mishra, a retired Allahabad High Court judge, claiming that Mayawati had committed irregularities. But after this was disbanded by the high court, yet another committee was appointed and this too was disbanded.
Then, in May of 2006, Justice S. Narayan inquiry committee, a third probe, was appointed by Mulayam Singh to enquire into corruption charges against Mayawati. But the court gave Mayawati a clean chit and stated that work should resume on the project as it was important for the industrial development of Uttar Pradesh. Mulayam Singh Yadav finally gave up and JAL was again brought on board to complete the expressway.
But it didn’t end at that. Once the Yamuna Expressway Authority started acquiring land along the proposed expressway, numerous Public Interest Litigations were filed in the courts challenging the validity of land acquisition.
However, in October 2009, the Allahabad High Court allowed the state to go ahead with the ambitious project that will come up on land belonging to 115 village panchayats.
The same company – the Jaypee Group - that ran into troubles with Yamuna Expressway has also bagged another contract – an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring Road from National Highway 2 near Kuberpur village to National Highway 3 near Rohta village – the estimated cost of which is around Rs. 1,100 crores.
Touted as the growth engine for future development of the state, the Rs. 10,000 crore project, its cost having shot up on account of delays and litigations, the road will have six interchanges from point zero at Noida. Six toll plazas will be constructed on the expressway to recover the cost of the project build by the concessionaire on build operate transfer PPP basis that will operate it for 36 years before finally handing it to the government.
***
Rajmal Singh hopes the road doesn’t come. But he knows it will. Because from his village, he can see the massive pillars, and the noise of the machines keep him awake through the nights. During these long nights, he fears for his future. When they came to acquire the farmland in Salarpur, a village on the outskirts of Noida, Singh became a millionaire overnight. But he doesn’t know what he will do with the Rs. 2 crores that he got for his land. He has bought some land in Mathura. But this is where he was born, and the road full of promises has nothing for him.
And When the road comes, he won’t be here. He would be gone like many others in his village to look for work elsewhere, and learn to live with loss of his past.
He almost wishes the road project is disbanded, the workers are sent home, and then they can reclaim their lands and grow wheat as they once did. Because the money won’t last forever. That’s the truth of it.
“We are not educated. Where can we find jobs?,” he said. “We feel betrayed. They promised us jobs but we have heard nothing so far.”
But Jaypee officials said Abadi Scheme was proposed for those who lost their houses to the project and the company would ensure they were rehabilitated.
“See, some issues were there but we agreed to the compensation that the government set and in many cases we negotiated. We have given handsome compensation but all dreams can’t be fulfilled,” Samir Gaur said. “With progress and development, changes come. But we have schemes for villagers and there are abundant of opportunities. We are coming up with Abadi villages near the residential plots.”
Salarpur’s fate was sealed when the project was conceived around six years ago. Squeezed in between the Formula 1 racing track and the Yamuna Expressway, almost the entire village falls under what the villagers term “acquirement.” Only three houses will be spared because the road that split their lands, and now threatens their homes, is a hungry road with a voracious appetite.
Most of the land acquisition process is over and only in some cases, physical possession of the lands is remaining.
The Allahabad High Court in December 2009 dismissed a bunch of writ petitions challenging acquisition of land by the state government.
But the village itself is in a limbo, waiting, hoping, and yet it knows it doesn’t have options.
Along the “highway road”, hopes ran high once. Dreams came floating on the road.
In Salarpur, they thought they would set up shops along the way, and the exodus wouldn’t have to take place.
But then, all the land is earmarked for development. A sports city is being built; an airport is on the cards, residential plots are already being advertised and sold.
In the evenings, the skies turn pink. It is what they call the steelworks sunset. Pink and blurred. Something to do with welding, smelting, or fixing. But it is no longer how the sunsets were before the road snaked through the farms. In time, more things will change. Just like the sunset, they too come under the spell of the road, charmed, yet slave to it.
Rajmal Singh knows this well. Already he can see the signs of evil. He feels the road is the wreckage of everything, of the past, of the future, of their existence.
“Some bought plots. But that’s just a few of us. Some bought cars, some will drink away the money,” he said. “The road has only brought misery to us.”
The liquor shops are stocked and villagers queue up, angry, frustrated, dejected.
“We didn’t want to sell but we had to. We will die of hunger. They didn’t give us any jobs,” Inderpal Singh, another farmer said. “Now, all we do is play cards and drink. We are just ruining ourselves. Perhaps, when all is over, we will go to Delhi and find construction jobs.”
Inderpal owned just under a bigha of land. He got Rs. 5 lakhs.
The villagers had tried to hold on to their lands. They approached the Bharitya Kisan Union, protested, marched, but now the fervour is sort of dying.
The young are angry still like Sarjit Singh, who is pursuing his computer science degree from a Greater Noida Institute.
“It is a betrayal. They took the land. They should let us keep the house,” he said.
Like his father Rajmal Singh, he can’t resign himself to the inevitable.
Then there are others who don’t know if they should be angry or cry over their fate.
Sixty-five-year-old Shanti Devi came to Salarpur half a century ago as a young bride. They didn’t own land but reared cattle. The expressway authority has quoted Rs. 6.75 lakhs for their house that falls in the zone earmarked for development alongside Yamuna Expressway. With two buffaloes and a bit of money, the family is at a loss for options.
“I will not leave. My son is weak. Where will we go? This is my silent protest. I will die in my house,” she said.
Salarpur and six other villages have been notified. Where they stand, residential plots, the racing track and a university will come up.
The expressway is facing opposition from farmers’ groups. Many of them are openly rebelling against land acquisition saying the compensation is not at par with the market rate. Some are not ready for negotiations even. Last year in August, one farmer was shot in police firing on farmers protesting against inadequate compensation for land being acquired for the expressway. In Mathura, the protests intensified after farmers burnt down the police chowki and the post office in Bajna, Mathura. For five days, the village had shut down.
Risal Singh, a local, said the road divides their village and although they parted with their land, they can’t sit back and let the authority occupy more land. The state government notified more than 1100 villages when the project commenced leaving thousands of farmers in a state of insecurity and fear.
So, a protest is again brewing, and farmers organize meetings frequently. In at least 400 villages in the area, the agitators are distributing leaflets, organizing and mobilizing more farmers to stage dharnas if the authority tries to acquire more land. They have been notified but they were told that the more land would be acquired only if the need arises.
Rajendra Singh, who was shot on the day of the protest, lived in Avalkhera village. Since his death, his widow and his children have left the village. But his death has left the village in a state of shock, including Mukesh Nauhar, 30, who still has to limp. After a bullet hit him in the leg on the day of the protest, he has been “useless”.
“I can’t work on the fields. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “That day there were so many people. Then police came. I thought something hit me and then I saw blood. I still can’t walk properly. My leg has become numb.”
The addiction to growth is catching up, infecting all, permeating to the little corners that could only be accessed through narrow lanes running through the farms.
Finally, the road and development was going to come to them. Land prices have shot up like in Kuberpur where the interchange is under construction at the Agra end for the expressway.
But against the backdrop of development and all its promises, there’s discontent and a sense of loss, of betrayal.
From her primary school in Vas Agaria, Chandni can see the “highway road” and she speaks of her fears. In the village, they talk about the vices that will travel on the road when it is built.
“They say it is bad. It will bring damage. People can go and jump off the road and die. We will become like the city. There will no fresh air,” she said. “We will no longer remain innocent.”
That’s what she heard her parents say about the road.
But until they put in the iron fences, and the set up the tollbooths along the Yamuna Expressway, the mud and fly ash road is their playground. Young boys climb on to the road with their cricket gear and make the dusty road their pitch.
Further up on the road, a yellow truck carrying mud and ash rolls by. On its rear “Global Truck” is painted in black.
On the side of the road, the village waits its turn to be globalized, for malls, apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and displacement.
About the Expressway
* Jaypee Group has also been awarded a concession to develop a 1,047 km long eight-lane access-controlled Ganga expressway between Greater Noida and Ghazipur-Ballia, the largest private sector infrastructure investment in India. Yet another
expressway is being planned in the state called the Hindon Expressway named after
yet another river in the state like the other two projects. The 250-km-long Hindon Expressway will pass through Ghaziabad and
Saharanpur up to Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
* The Jaypee Group is also building an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring
Road in Agra at a cost of around Rs. 1,100 crores. This will be built
on Design-Finance-Operate and Transfer (DFOT) basis.
* The Yamuna Expressway is planned to be a dual carriageway initially consisting of three 3.75-meter wide lanes in each direction.
* Planned expressway facilities (some of which will involve third-party service providers) include rest areas with parking, shelters and toilets; roadside facilities with fuel stations and coffee shops, restaurants, motels and various other facilities; and plantation and landscaping for environmental, safety and aesthetic purposes.
* Around 9,000 families are allegedly affected by the expressway. Around
Rs 460 crore have been disbursed as compensation.
* Motorists can drive at a speed of up to 120 kmph on the expressway
drastically cutting down on the travel time from Noida to Agra. The
expressway will have no speed breakers.
A look at the compensation rates given to farmers for their land.
*Compensation rates*
* NOIDA: Rs 800 per sqm
* Aligarh : Rs 390 per sqm
* Mathura : Rs 350 per sqm
* Hathras: Rs 350 per sqm
* Agra : Rs 400 per sqm
The Expressway to be developed in Three Phases:-
1. Phase I: Expressway Stretch between Greater Noida and Taj
International Airport.
2. Phase-II: Expressway Stretch between Taj International Airport and
an intermediate destination between Taj International Airport and Agra
3. Phase III: Expressway Stretch between intermediate destination and Agra.
Deadline – Commonwealth Games, 2010.
Quick Facts
Length 165.537 Km
Right of Way 100m
Number of Lane 6 Lanes extendable to 8 lanes
Jaypee Infratech Limited an Indian infrastructure development company engaged in the development of the Yamuna Expressway and related real estate projects. JIL part of the Jaypee Group, was incorporated on April 5, 2007 as a special purpose company to develop, operate and maintain the Yamuna Expressway in the state of Uttar Pradesh, connecting Noida and Agra.
To cover most of the 165 km, it took us hours on the dirt road. We snaked in through villages, hit the service lane where it was motorable. The car hardly exceeded 15 kms an hour speed but the journey was fun. An edited version of the story appeared in the sunday section of the Indian Express on Jan. 3, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Yamuna Expressway, Jauary 1, 2010
Every morning, a file of little children travel down the wide road that cuts through their villages, each carrying a shovel. All of them seemed to be very tiny, the youngest being a nine-year-old boy, as they hobbled past the underpass, bent under the weight of the shovel that was about their height.
All of them dropped out of schools to look for work on the 165 kilometer Yamuna Expressway, the biggest concrete road in the country and one of the most ambitious projects in Uttar Pradesh, a six-lane wide expressway with the potential to be widened to an eight-lane expressway that will reduce the travel time from Noida to Agra by about 90 minutes and bring development to the area. As of now, it takes about 3.5 hours to reach Agra.
So o n a Wednesday morning near Piperauli Bangar in Mathura , a score of little children of all ages clustered around a man who peered ahead and announced no trucks were coming this way and so they would have to wait until one came along, or walk further up the “highway road”. If they were lucky, they’d find a truck waiting to be unloaded.
So the little urchins, dressed in rags, their faces covered in dust and fly ash that the road threw up as workers filled its belly with mud mixed and fly ash, dragged their shovels and walked on.
Because time is running out for them and for the road, too.
The project has been issued directives from the state government that the state’s first expressway be completed in time for the Commonwealth Games and open to traffic. But it is unlikely that the expressway will be motorable by Commonwealth Games in October this year. As per the concession agreement signed with the UP government, Jaypee Infratech was to hand over the expressway in 2013 but internal deadlines demand the expressway is complete by 2011.
“We can’t do it before April 2011. But we don’t want to not be hopeful but it is difficult to finish the project in 10 months. We are just being realistic,” Samir Gaur, director in charge of Jaypee Infratech that is building the expressway, said.
The scale of the work on the expressway is colossal. At least 8,000 workers, 24 sub contractors and more than 600 supervisors are working around the clock on the stretch. Land acquisition for the project – around 5000 hectares for the expressway and an additional 6000 hectares for development along the controlled access road, part of the ribbon expressway project – is almost over, according to company officials.
Earth filling on around 80 per cent of the expressway is over, and concretisation is underway on about 20 kilometers of the stretch.
The company has imported sophisticated machinery from Germany – four road rollers that can simultaneously pave six lanes.
The first 40 kilometres would be located in Gautam Budh Nagar, passing through Noida, Dhankaur, Mirzapur and Jewar, 20 kilometres in Aligarh, through Tappal, followed by 90 kilometres in Mathura passing Nohjhil, Mat, Raya and Baldev, and 15 kilometres in Agra, with the expressway culminating near Etmadpur in Agra.
Around 1,182 villages were notified by the government with regards to the project and the development parcels to be constructed along the corridor.
The pavement of the expressway planned to be a dual carriageway will consist of cement concrete. Mumbai-Pune expressway is the only other expressway that uses cement concrete. Thirteen service roads with total length of 168 kilometers will be constructed concurrently with the expressway. The company also has the right to develop 25 million square metres or 6,175 acres of land along the Yamuna Expressway at five locations - 500 hectares each in Noida, Aligarh and Agra and 1,000 hectares in Gautam Buddha Nagar - for residential, commercial, amusement, industrial and institutional purposes. In addition, the concessionaire also has the rights to develop an area of 2,500 hectares.
This expressway is based on the concept of ribbon development along the expressway corridor. In many states, the government is attracting developers for expressways by giving them incentives like leasing them land along the road to develop residential plots and commercial property so the cost can be recovered.
The UP government has approved such property development along the Yamuna Expressway and the Rs. 400 billion Ganga Expressway.
According to the authority, the expressway will not only provide a fast moving corridor to minimize the travel time, and connect the main townships and commercial centers on the eastern side of the river, but also bring development to the region and ease congestion on NH-2. In addition, it will connect urban urban conglomerates in Noida to other cities, and provide for Export Promotion Zones including Taj Economic Zone, Taj International Airport and Aviation Hub.
In many ways, the expressway has reconfigured the local geography. The villages lie on one side of the road, what remains of the farmland lies on the other.
In this region in Western UP, farmlands are on the periphery of many projects that will eventually require more land. Not only the Yamuna and Ganga expressways will pass through these districts but also the Eastern Railway Freight Corridor and Delhi-Moradabad National Highway.
Six interchanges have been proposed on 165 km long Yamuna Expressway from Zero Point (Parichowk) to Kuber-Chhalesar, Agra.
At least ten 5-star hotels have been proposed in sports city, in addition to residential complexes to be built by private builders.
***
It is not easy to find work on the expressway. All along the expressway, thousands of workers, mostly migrant laborers from Bihar and West Bengal, are working long shifts through the night to meet the deadline. The concessionaire Jaypee Infratech has roped in more contractors, and is racing against time to deliver. Concretization has only begun on few of the stretches. Although the company officials say the project will not be completed until April 2011, the sub contractors have been given a deadline of March 2010.
Joginder, 9, and the youngest among the 30 odd children who leave their homes early morning, had not been able to take home any wages for the last two weeks.
Rs. 40 that he can earn for a day’s tough labour on the road isn’t a lot of money. But he is tiny and there’s many others looking for work. So he never bargains.
In fact, no one bargains here.
“We walk until there’s a truck and then we run towards it hoping to get work. Often we get pushed over. There are so many of us looking for the same kind of job,” 12-year-old Pradip said. “Sometimes, we walk 8-9 miles looking for work on the road.”
Pradip too dropped out of the school after the “highway road” came to his village. At the school run by the government, the teachers asked for money and he didn’t have any.
His father drives a truck and the family owns no land, and getting by is difficult.
“At the school they were asking for Rs. 5,” he said. “I needed to look for work. Whatever I make, I hand it to my mother and she can cook dal on such days.”
When he had told his parents he was quitting school, they didn’t press for explanations.
“They said go and work,” he said. “So I come everyday. How can we eat otherwise?”
Now that he has taken the road, he isn’t bothered where it takes him. When this road is completed and trucks and cars whiz past the villages, Joginder and Pradip will move on to yet another road.
Maybe in crisscrossing those expressways and the state is building at least two more – the Ganga Expressway and the Hindon Expressway - they will get to a city where growth will absorb them. Maybe someday, he would be able to take one of those roads back home if their villages remain.
The authority on its web site claims that employment opportunities will be given to the local population and preference will be given to land losers during construction as per requirement and their qualification.
But Laxman Singh, a 33 year old shepherd, is desperate. For a week, he hasn’t been able to find any work on the expressway.
“All the land is going. We sold our cattle. For two months I am coming to the expressway looking for work. We go hungry on most days,” he said. “All the jobs go to migrant labourers. They give it to them because they can exploit them. We are from here, we can unite and protest. They can’t.”
After eight hours of walking up and down the road looking for odd jobs, Singh slumped on the side of the road. Exhausted and hopeless. It would be yet another night without food, he said.
At the zero-point on the 165-Km Yamuna Expressway in Greater Noida, there is no pronounced signage marking the beginning of the one of the most expensive and controversial projects of that state. Although the project has been renamed Yamuna Expressway, the sign boards still carry the name “Taj Expressway.”
Here the road begins with an interchange that is under construction with massive pillars jutting into the sky, and goes over the Greater Noida Expressway, descending on the other side.
The project that was conceived in 2001 finally took off in 2006 when work began on the controversial expressway and the Yamuna Expressway Authority, formerly Taj Expressway Authority, started acquiring land along the proposed expressway.
The Uttar Pradesh government constituted the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) that is executing the project.
The contract with Jaiprakash Associates was signed in February 2003, which was to complete the Expressway within seven years. Back then, the estimated cost was pegged at Rs. 1,600 crores.
A dream project of the Mayawati government which was at the helm in 2003, work on the expressway was halted within a month of Samajwadi Party’s taking the oath the same year.
Former Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav not only halted construction on the expressway but also ordered an inquiry by Justice Ranganath Mishra, a retired Allahabad High Court judge, claiming that Mayawati had committed irregularities. But after this was disbanded by the high court, yet another committee was appointed and this too was disbanded.
Then, in May of 2006, Justice S. Narayan inquiry committee, a third probe, was appointed by Mulayam Singh to enquire into corruption charges against Mayawati. But the court gave Mayawati a clean chit and stated that work should resume on the project as it was important for the industrial development of Uttar Pradesh. Mulayam Singh Yadav finally gave up and JAL was again brought on board to complete the expressway.
But it didn’t end at that. Once the Yamuna Expressway Authority started acquiring land along the proposed expressway, numerous Public Interest Litigations were filed in the courts challenging the validity of land acquisition.
However, in October 2009, the Allahabad High Court allowed the state to go ahead with the ambitious project that will come up on land belonging to 115 village panchayats.
The same company – the Jaypee Group - that ran into troubles with Yamuna Expressway has also bagged another contract – an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring Road from National Highway 2 near Kuberpur village to National Highway 3 near Rohta village – the estimated cost of which is around Rs. 1,100 crores.
Touted as the growth engine for future development of the state, the Rs. 10,000 crore project, its cost having shot up on account of delays and litigations, the road will have six interchanges from point zero at Noida. Six toll plazas will be constructed on the expressway to recover the cost of the project build by the concessionaire on build operate transfer PPP basis that will operate it for 36 years before finally handing it to the government.
***
Rajmal Singh hopes the road doesn’t come. But he knows it will. Because from his village, he can see the massive pillars, and the noise of the machines keep him awake through the nights. During these long nights, he fears for his future. When they came to acquire the farmland in Salarpur, a village on the outskirts of Noida, Singh became a millionaire overnight. But he doesn’t know what he will do with the Rs. 2 crores that he got for his land. He has bought some land in Mathura. But this is where he was born, and the road full of promises has nothing for him.
And When the road comes, he won’t be here. He would be gone like many others in his village to look for work elsewhere, and learn to live with loss of his past.
He almost wishes the road project is disbanded, the workers are sent home, and then they can reclaim their lands and grow wheat as they once did. Because the money won’t last forever. That’s the truth of it.
“We are not educated. Where can we find jobs?,” he said. “We feel betrayed. They promised us jobs but we have heard nothing so far.”
But Jaypee officials said Abadi Scheme was proposed for those who lost their houses to the project and the company would ensure they were rehabilitated.
“See, some issues were there but we agreed to the compensation that the government set and in many cases we negotiated. We have given handsome compensation but all dreams can’t be fulfilled,” Samir Gaur said. “With progress and development, changes come. But we have schemes for villagers and there are abundant of opportunities. We are coming up with Abadi villages near the residential plots.”
Salarpur’s fate was sealed when the project was conceived around six years ago. Squeezed in between the Formula 1 racing track and the Yamuna Expressway, almost the entire village falls under what the villagers term “acquirement.” Only three houses will be spared because the road that split their lands, and now threatens their homes, is a hungry road with a voracious appetite.
Most of the land acquisition process is over and only in some cases, physical possession of the lands is remaining.
The Allahabad High Court in December 2009 dismissed a bunch of writ petitions challenging acquisition of land by the state government.
But the village itself is in a limbo, waiting, hoping, and yet it knows it doesn’t have options.
Along the “highway road”, hopes ran high once. Dreams came floating on the road.
In Salarpur, they thought they would set up shops along the way, and the exodus wouldn’t have to take place.
But then, all the land is earmarked for development. A sports city is being built; an airport is on the cards, residential plots are already being advertised and sold.
In the evenings, the skies turn pink. It is what they call the steelworks sunset. Pink and blurred. Something to do with welding, smelting, or fixing. But it is no longer how the sunsets were before the road snaked through the farms. In time, more things will change. Just like the sunset, they too come under the spell of the road, charmed, yet slave to it.
Rajmal Singh knows this well. Already he can see the signs of evil. He feels the road is the wreckage of everything, of the past, of the future, of their existence.
“Some bought plots. But that’s just a few of us. Some bought cars, some will drink away the money,” he said. “The road has only brought misery to us.”
The liquor shops are stocked and villagers queue up, angry, frustrated, dejected.
“We didn’t want to sell but we had to. We will die of hunger. They didn’t give us any jobs,” Inderpal Singh, another farmer said. “Now, all we do is play cards and drink. We are just ruining ourselves. Perhaps, when all is over, we will go to Delhi and find construction jobs.”
Inderpal owned just under a bigha of land. He got Rs. 5 lakhs.
The villagers had tried to hold on to their lands. They approached the Bharitya Kisan Union, protested, marched, but now the fervour is sort of dying.
The young are angry still like Sarjit Singh, who is pursuing his computer science degree from a Greater Noida Institute.
“It is a betrayal. They took the land. They should let us keep the house,” he said.
Like his father Rajmal Singh, he can’t resign himself to the inevitable.
Then there are others who don’t know if they should be angry or cry over their fate.
Sixty-five-year-old Shanti Devi came to Salarpur half a century ago as a young bride. They didn’t own land but reared cattle. The expressway authority has quoted Rs. 6.75 lakhs for their house that falls in the zone earmarked for development alongside Yamuna Expressway. With two buffaloes and a bit of money, the family is at a loss for options.
“I will not leave. My son is weak. Where will we go? This is my silent protest. I will die in my house,” she said.
Salarpur and six other villages have been notified. Where they stand, residential plots, the racing track and a university will come up.
The expressway is facing opposition from farmers’ groups. Many of them are openly rebelling against land acquisition saying the compensation is not at par with the market rate. Some are not ready for negotiations even. Last year in August, one farmer was shot in police firing on farmers protesting against inadequate compensation for land being acquired for the expressway. In Mathura, the protests intensified after farmers burnt down the police chowki and the post office in Bajna, Mathura. For five days, the village had shut down.
Risal Singh, a local, said the road divides their village and although they parted with their land, they can’t sit back and let the authority occupy more land. The state government notified more than 1100 villages when the project commenced leaving thousands of farmers in a state of insecurity and fear.
So, a protest is again brewing, and farmers organize meetings frequently. In at least 400 villages in the area, the agitators are distributing leaflets, organizing and mobilizing more farmers to stage dharnas if the authority tries to acquire more land. They have been notified but they were told that the more land would be acquired only if the need arises.
Rajendra Singh, who was shot on the day of the protest, lived in Avalkhera village. Since his death, his widow and his children have left the village. But his death has left the village in a state of shock, including Mukesh Nauhar, 30, who still has to limp. After a bullet hit him in the leg on the day of the protest, he has been “useless”.
“I can’t work on the fields. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “That day there were so many people. Then police came. I thought something hit me and then I saw blood. I still can’t walk properly. My leg has become numb.”
The addiction to growth is catching up, infecting all, permeating to the little corners that could only be accessed through narrow lanes running through the farms.
Finally, the road and development was going to come to them. Land prices have shot up like in Kuberpur where the interchange is under construction at the Agra end for the expressway.
But against the backdrop of development and all its promises, there’s discontent and a sense of loss, of betrayal.
From her primary school in Vas Agaria, Chandni can see the “highway road” and she speaks of her fears. In the village, they talk about the vices that will travel on the road when it is built.
“They say it is bad. It will bring damage. People can go and jump off the road and die. We will become like the city. There will no fresh air,” she said. “We will no longer remain innocent.”
That’s what she heard her parents say about the road.
But until they put in the iron fences, and the set up the tollbooths along the Yamuna Expressway, the mud and fly ash road is their playground. Young boys climb on to the road with their cricket gear and make the dusty road their pitch.
Further up on the road, a yellow truck carrying mud and ash rolls by. On its rear “Global Truck” is painted in black.
On the side of the road, the village waits its turn to be globalized, for malls, apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and displacement.
About the Expressway
* Jaypee Group has also been awarded a concession to develop a 1,047 km long eight-lane access-controlled Ganga expressway between Greater Noida and Ghazipur-Ballia, the largest private sector infrastructure investment in India. Yet another
expressway is being planned in the state called the Hindon Expressway named after
yet another river in the state like the other two projects. The 250-km-long Hindon Expressway will pass through Ghaziabad and
Saharanpur up to Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
* The Jaypee Group is also building an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring
Road in Agra at a cost of around Rs. 1,100 crores. This will be built
on Design-Finance-Operate and Transfer (DFOT) basis.
* The Yamuna Expressway is planned to be a dual carriageway initially consisting of three 3.75-meter wide lanes in each direction.
* Planned expressway facilities (some of which will involve third-party service providers) include rest areas with parking, shelters and toilets; roadside facilities with fuel stations and coffee shops, restaurants, motels and various other facilities; and plantation and landscaping for environmental, safety and aesthetic purposes.
* Around 9,000 families are allegedly affected by the expressway. Around
Rs 460 crore have been disbursed as compensation.
* Motorists can drive at a speed of up to 120 kmph on the expressway
drastically cutting down on the travel time from Noida to Agra. The
expressway will have no speed breakers.
A look at the compensation rates given to farmers for their land.
*Compensation rates*
* NOIDA: Rs 800 per sqm
* Aligarh : Rs 390 per sqm
* Mathura : Rs 350 per sqm
* Hathras: Rs 350 per sqm
* Agra : Rs 400 per sqm
The Expressway to be developed in Three Phases:-
1. Phase I: Expressway Stretch between Greater Noida and Taj
International Airport.
2. Phase-II: Expressway Stretch between Taj International Airport and
an intermediate destination between Taj International Airport and Agra
3. Phase III: Expressway Stretch between intermediate destination and Agra.
Deadline – Commonwealth Games, 2010.
Quick Facts
Length 165.537 Km
Right of Way 100m
Number of Lane 6 Lanes extendable to 8 lanes
Jaypee Infratech Limited an Indian infrastructure development company engaged in the development of the Yamuna Expressway and related real estate projects. JIL part of the Jaypee Group, was incorporated on April 5, 2007 as a special purpose company to develop, operate and maintain the Yamuna Expressway in the state of Uttar Pradesh, connecting Noida and Agra.
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