In July 1990, the Slum Clearance Board in the city of Madras (now Chennai) India decided to rid that city's streets of the "untouchables" - the Dalit people who made their homes on the streets. Overnight, six thousand street-dwellers were rounded up, their makeshift thatched homes or lean-tos were burned to the ground, they were tossed into the back of army trucks and driven to an inaccessible flood plain named Vellachery on the outskirts of the city. There, all 6,000 of them were unceremoniously dumped on the ground and told to fend for themselves, with no housing or infrastructure of any kind provided for them. The Streets of Madras/Vellacherry Vellachery was a terrible place to abandon these people with no support services. It was an immense floodplain, separated from the Bay of Bengal by a narrow ridge of sand. Because Vellachery was flooded twice a year with salt water during the monsoon seasons, nothing grew there - no plants, no trees, nothing. And because it was twice yearly flooded, no human being lived there, either. Further, because it was unpopulated, there was no public transportation from Madras into Vellachery - no way to reach the outside world and no way for the outside world to get to it except by four-wheel drive vehicles. It was an absolutely dreadful place to be dumped. World Vision India heard what had happened to Madras' street people. It sent its lead community organizer, Rajkumar, to investigate. Rajkumar began visiting with the people, seeing their plight. He instructed World Vision to enter Vellachery with emergency aid, and soon the people were living in temporary tents supplied by this relief and development agency, and were being fed emergency rations and receiving emergency health care. Rajkumar continued visiting with people in Vellachery, listening to their stories, hearing of their woes and of their hopes and building relationships with them. Soon, he identified potential leaders particularly among the women. He urged them to begin meeting together, which they did as he and other World Vision organizers sat in on their conversations. Rajkumar asked the women what they considered their most pressing problem. Together, they all agreed that it was housing. They and their families needed to have permanent homes before the construction of a permanent community could begin in Vellachery. Rajkumar agreed with them that this was their most important issue. But housing is expensive to build, and time-consuming as well. How was sufficient housing to be constructed to adequately house the 6,000 people of Vellachery? The women considered various alternatives for getting the houses built. They could build the homes themselves. They could ask World Vision or some other service agency to build the homes. Or they could insist upon getting the government to build the housing. As one woman put it, "The government created the problem (by rounding up the street-people and shipping them against their will to Vellachery). The government should fix the problem!" The women decided that the government should be held accountable for providing housing for the families they had dispossessed. So the organizing team assembled by Rajkumar began working with them to develop their plan as to how they would get the Madras government to assume this responsibility. This included training the women how to negotiate with government officials and not be intimidated or overwhelmed by them. Organizing Over the next 18 months, the organized women and youth of Vellachery met with the various officials of both city and state government, exerting intense pressure on them in creative ways to get their assent. For example, to get an audience with one government official who would not see them, they occupied his offices with over 500 women, and refused to leave until he negotiated with them. They won concession after concession. Finally, they met with the prime minister of the state of Tamil Nadu (comparable to a governor of an American state), and gained from her the written order for the housing to be built. The state of Tamil Nadu eventually built close to 7,000 homes for a swelling population of 20,000, so that every family in Vellachery got a home! The land upon which each house was built was deeded to each family while the homes were sold to them for $30.00 apiece, payable over a three-year period. Thus, for the first time in their lives, these "untouchables" became legal homeowners. But there was more. The people created their own plan for their new "city". The women organized to get the state to build a mammoth flood-retention wall so that Vellachery was never again flooded by monsoonal storms. Because of the organized pressure of the people, the City of Madras installed street lighting, plumbing, sewers, and toilets and running water into each home (an unheard-of luxury in India). The city paved the streets, planted trees and built several playgrounds for children. The school system was pressured to build a school building and a library, and to staff both. The city built a community and health center for the community. And the people organized to get the transportation authority to run bus lines to Vellachery so that the people could have access to Madras for jobs and commerce. The people elected leaders to administer their community and selected individuals from their midst to run the library, the health center and the community center. With the guidance of World Vision India, they formed several employment cooperatives that employed the people of Vellachery and provided a steady income stream to the community. The total cost to the city and state for building the Vellachery community was $1,500,000 US. The cost to World Vision India for the initial relief and the salaries of the five community organizers for five years was only $25,000. And so, the people of Vellachery learned how to use power; as the state and city governments learned to respect the power of the people. The result is a hopeful future for the former street people of Madras, now the proud creators of the town of Vellachery!
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