IIT Bombay wants to throw adivasis out of campus

Laadki Barap of Peru Baug in Powai (Mumbai) starts her day by going to the nearby lake to cast a net with her grandson Madhu in tow. At around noon, she cooks some vegetables on a sigri fuelled by firewood. Barap and many of her community stand out in their surroundings.

Peru Baug is nestled between IIT Bombay and National Institute of Industrial Engineering in Powai. Over 267 adivasi families live in the IIT campus; around 180 of them are believed to have been living there long before the concrete foundations of IIT-B took root — since before 1935. Many of them, like Barap, do not know their age.

Now IIT wants to build a new research centre and MMRDA has been tasked with the rehabilitation of the indigenous tribe. Arrangements have been made in Kurla.

On Saturday, the adivasis raised the issue of their means to livelihood and residence with MP Rajendra Gavit from Palghar constituency.

The BJP leader is an adivasi himself, with roots in Bhil community spread over Khandesh and Kokan regions of Maharashtra. "If we move out to Kurla, how will we fish, till our land and take our goats to graze?" said Savita, who does not have a homogenised last name to share. "IIT gave our people jobs because they are adivasis. Men from our families work as gardeners."

The community lives in metal-and-tarpaulin huts without official water supply, right next to the pipeline that carries water to the city. The power lines that go over their heads do not light up their homes, unlike the homes of their bethren in Aarey Colony. They cannot replace the rusted metal skeleton of their homes, or the hole-riddled tarpaulin, without permission from authorities at IIT.

"In Kurla, they will get flats measuring nearly 225 sq ft," says Kishore Aadge, an activist from Shramik Mukti, an NGO that works for adivasi rights.

"But if we move there, how will we continue farming? What will we eat?," says Venu, who estimates that she is around 30 years old. "Many of the vegetables we eat are not available commercially."

"The occupational and land rights of tribals are protected under the law, but it is not the case in reality," said Vivek Pandit, an activist for adivasi issues associated with the NGO Shramjivi Sanghatna, "Adivasis are being equated with slum dwellers and encroachers on government land. True rehabilitation for indigenous people does not mean just providing accommodation — they need to rehabilitated in accordance with their lifestyle so that they can live as they used to. The Supreme Court order – directing rehabilitation of adivasis to areas similar to their native lands so that they can continue their way of living – pertains only to those living in national parks. It also safeguards them from being evicted until such proper rehabilitation is arranged."

Gavit has reassured them that he will take up the matter with state Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the IIT chairman on Wednesday.