Prateek Tanmay
For the last 15 days, Amal Purkait has been without work. Yet every day, he returns to Platform No. 2 of Dum Dum railway station, only to stare at the rubble that once used to be his shop.
“Every day when I come here I keep wondering what should I do now? We are third-generation hawkers in the Dum Dum rail station premises. My grandfather started this shop. When he came from Jaynagar, Dum Dum station had no such platform. At that time, he began by selling sweets. My father continued the business and then I did. We used to sell kachodi, samosa and sweets for years. I have been coming to this shop for more than 30 years. At this age what will I do? Is it possible to start a new job now?” Purkait said.
Just two shops away, Sumitra Sarkar was standing next to her food kiosk of bread-ghugni. “I am struggling to care of my paralysed husband. There’s no option left for us. He can’t even go for check-ups. Sometimes it feels like there’s no way out of this suffering,” she said.
A deep sense of anxiety has gripped hawkers and daily-wage earners across the Dum Dum railway network since the night of May 30, when a coordinated anti-encroachment drive was carried out in the area.
Recalling the night, Purkait said, “It happened on May 30 around 11:05 pm, in front of the Metro station. It did not look like they had come to remove hawkers. It felt like they had come for terrorists and criminals. Hawkers are helpless now because the police have been picking them up and filing cases against them. Even hawkers who are simply moving around are getting arrested. We can tell people what happened, but the way it happened cannot be explained. CRPF personnel arrived, along with four cars and a bulldozer. All the exit gates were shut and then they started demolishing our shops. They razed every shop from Platforms 1 to 4, as well as those outside Platform 1.”
“We approached the court and fought in the street. We don’t know what awaits us,” he added.
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Just around 10 kilometers away from Dum Dum, a similar eviction drive happened at Sealdah-south railway section.
“I have been here for 50 years,” said Manik Bose, whose family set up a shop in 1951, shortly after the Partition of Bengal. “We had hopes when we voted this time. But now they are taking away our means of survival. If this continues, we may have to sit on the roadside and beg,” he said.
Amid uncertainty, some of the affected hawkers found themselves leading the protests against the eviction. One such hawker, Utpal Das, said they were even willing to negotiate.
“We are ready to pay the Railways for using the land or obtaining proper licenses. We are ready to knock on every door, including the Chief Minister’s Office to find a legitimate solution. But, we can’t agree with hawker eviction,” Das said.
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Meanwhile, for those on the ground, survival has already become precarious.
“Right now, we are just sitting with small baskets. But that’s not how business works. We used to have proper shops. Our earnings have almost come to a standstill. If they remove us as if we never existed, where are people like us supposed to go?” Jageshwar Mahato said.
In Jadavpur, barely 15 kilometres south of Sealdah, leader of CITU, the trade union affiliated with the CPIM, Sudip Sengupta said a full-fledged hawker eviction drive hasn’t been carried out in the area.
“Other forms of eviction took place, including the removal of markets and slums from railway land, which the authorities described as cases of encroachment,” he said, adding, “However, the Railways issued an eviction notice on May 31. After that, we approached the High Court, which issued a stay order on hawker evictions in several areas. Despite that, late on the night of June 7, they came with bulldozers to remove makeshift informal shops.”
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A local hawker of Jadavpur, Chandi Pandit, who fears the same fate, said, “They haven’t reached us yet, but we’ve seen what has happened elsewhere. Maybe in the next two or three days, our shops will be removed too. If they arrange something for us, we are willing to cooperate. But right now, there’s only fear,” he said.
Another local, Kalu Sarkar, said, “What do we do if they take this away? Does the government even want the poor to earn their daily bread? I have a family to feed. If they block our only way of earning, what are we supposed to do? If they provide us with nothing, we’ll be left with no choice but to resort to stealing.”
As the leaders put forward their plea to the legal system, they also put forward their plea to the commoners. “We request everyone to look at this through a humanitarian lens,” added Sengupta.
Eastern Railways, however, has declined to comment on the hawker eviction in the Sealdah north and south sections.
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(Debadrita Basu and Aleesha Ekka work as interns with The Indian Express, Kolkata)
