Articles by Gurbir Singh


SLUMS Demolition by Fire Gurbir Singh THE story of the shanty colony Sanjay Gandhi Nagar could be the story of any other slum. Its growth, its inhabitants, the cynical forces trying to raze it to dust represent, a rnicrocosam in Bombay's slum world facing demolition. On the evening of November 10 we watched helplessly the demolition by fire of a part of this tin-and- wood colony. As we tugged at the hoses of the fire brigade men, weeping women dashed past carrying their children and whatever else they could salvage. The firemen fought a loosing battle in isolating the fire. It was finally the good sense of the residents who broke down the huts in the path of the fire, that finally cried halt to its sweep. Under the high pressure water jets the fire slowly petered out. The silhouttes of Bombay's Nariman Point's 20-storey monstrosities looked down on the destruction unmoved. Before Sanjay Gandhi Nagar got its name registered in 1982, it was a cluster if huts of Kannadiga construction workers. Around 1976, Engineering Construction Corporation (ECC), now a subsidiary of Larsen and Toubro, leased this bit of undeveloped land off Nariman Point to house its workers. The Kannadigas on this T-shaped two-acre plot were part of the army that constructed the imposing Maharashtra Vidhan Bhavan, and a host of other massive structures on India's Manhattan