Bhim Yatra- Day 66

Bhim Yatra- Day 66

     

Day:   66

Date:  13th February 2016, Saturday

District and places covered: Mumbai (Tata Institute of social sciences TISS, Bandra East, Bharat Nagar, Valimiki Chaal), Nashik district

We started our day with a morning walk around the TISS Mumabi campus. We met some of the research scholars. Seeing our Bhim Yatra jackets and head bands, they came up to us and we started talking.  We told them in detail about the Bhim Yatra and distributed our yatra material. It was a unique experience for us to be inside an education institution like TISS. We were feeling overwhelmed to be in such a place. After the walk we had breakfast in the hostel and geared up for the meeting with students and faculty members.

Around 11am we had a meeting in the conference Hall with research scholars, faculty members like Shailesh Darokarand students from various fields. Here we shared our experiences of the bhim yatra, talked about current scenario of sewerage worker and their conditions. We spoke abouit the 2010 bus yatra and explained the impact it had on the government. Then we had one to one interaction with students and concluded with the vote of thanks. After that TISS provided us with lunch and we left for the public meeting in Bandra East.

As planned we reached Bandra East, Bharat Nagar, Valmiki chal around 5 pm for the community meeting. Here all the arrangement from food to community meeting was coordinated by Tannu, SKA Mumbai organizer. Valmiki chal has a population of 3000 safaikarmacharis and large number of them working on contractual basis in private hospitals, hotels, nursing homes and majority of the women are engaged in household work.  We were welcomed by 250 karamcharis who came from Worli, chembur, Panvila, Ghatkoopar. We started the meeting by introducing ourselves and then we spoke about the Bhim Yatra the purpose and the culmination of the Bhim Yatra on 13th April meeting at Delhi.  We also explained the Act, the Supreme Court Judgment and the rehabilitation schemes.  We gave them pamphlets of Bhim yatra and asked them to distribute in other areas and share the purpose of the Bhim yatra with other people. Safai Karamcharis shared that they have been listening about this yatra from Tannu which has already covered half the country. Wilson while addressing the gathering gave details about the rights of the sewerage workers. He demanded an answer from the government for not mechanizing the sewer system when so many dalits were dying everyday in the sewerage work. He said that the government cannot talk about smart cities unless they do away with manual scavenging. He questioned, “why the government asks for all the documents while giving compensation to the victim’s family, who dies during the cleaning of the sewerage hole?” To this, one safai karamchari family responded

“When it comes to cleaning the sewerage holes, why the government don’t ask for the documents? And when we die inside  why they ask for our citizenship, ration card, and so on to provide compensation”-  family of person who died in sewer hole.

After more interaction and discussion we concluded the meeting. The community provided us with tea and snacks. We bid farewell to the community and they wished us luck for the successful completion of the Bhim Yatra. After that we left for Nashik District for night halt. We reached Nashik district, Boarewadi, around 2 am the next day, and community there provided us food and lodging.

In appreciation:  TISS provided us food, lodging free of cost and donated Rs 8000 for the bhim yatra.

JAI BHIM

Bezwada Wilson National Convenor
Safai Karmchari Andolan,
36 / 13 Ground Floor, East Patel Nagar
New Delhi - 110 008