Bulldozers & broken homes: The cruel cost of eviction drives

Update: 2025-07-02 06:26 GMT
Bulldozers & broken homes: The cruel cost of eviction drives
A file image of bulldozers meant for evicting encroachers in Assam. (AT Photo)
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The ongoing eviction drives across the State to free government land from unauthorised occupation need to be viewed critically. Houses have been razed to the ground using bulldozers with many families literally forced to the pavements.

Is this the type of justice expected from a welfare government in a democracy? While there is ample justification to clear encroached land, such an exercise has to be mindful of the humanitarian aspects. There are many landless families who have been compelled to live on government land, as no one can be expected to live in thin air.

Such people, once evicted, are bound to fall upon empty land elsewhere for their survival. Under no circumstances should the government remain blind to such considerations and persist with their ruthless and whimsical eviction drives. Apparently, the authorities do not have adequate data on the number of the landless nor do they have any proper rehabilitation plan. There has to be a distinction between greedy land-grabbers and the genuine landless. Before razing down homes, these concerns must be addressed.

For a family, nothing is more precious than a home, which is much more than a structure of brick and cement or straw and mud. There are children, the elderly and the infirm in most homes and these aspects cannot be brushed aside while disrupting their lives. Many evicted are claiming to have been living on those lands for four decades, even enjoying the benefits of amenities provided by the government itself.

Instead of hounding the landless from one place to another, the government needs to evolve a holistic rehabilitation plan for them.

The people, who have been living for a long time on government land sought to be cleared now by the authorities, can be allowed to remain there instead of being forced elsewhere. But, when it comes to forestland, none should be allowed to settle and even the landless must be evicted and rehabilitated elsewhere. Our forests are vanishing rapidly and the remaining forestland must be guarded zealously. The eviction drives also contrast sharply with the undue haste shown by the government in offering thousands of bighas on a platter to the corporate in spite of mass protests.

The government is under a constitutional mandate to ensure the conditions in which every citizen in the country can sleep under a roof and lead a life with basic human dignity. Demolishing homes and scarring the souls of the landless and leaving them in the lurch is a shocking infringement of their human rights. The government needs to do a reality check and initiate long-term remedial measures instead of persisting with this perverse trend of bulldozer justice.

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